When I was in elementary school, the cafeteria switched to disposable plastic trays because the paper ones hurt trees. Stupid, I know… but are today’s initiatives any better?
When I was in elementary school, the cafeteria switched to disposable plastic trays because the paper ones hurt trees. Stupid, I know… but are today’s initiatives any better?
Yes, go vegan and stop driving if you actually want to change your impact.
https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food
And if not vegan then at least not beef
Beef is 10x more carbon intensive than pork
Going fully vegan isn’t hard tho :)
It’s really not these days, but it is much easier if people start at least reducing. It is also much more approachable to people still used to animal products. It is a natural transition and still helps.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Most people simply arent going to go vegan, and many need to take baby steps toward it. Cutting out beef is a great first step.
But let’s also not make it seem more difficult than it is, it’s very easy to avoid animal products.
Shouting “BUT YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO IT ALL THE WAY” every time veganism is brought up is a bit silly.
The average British person emits 76 times more CO2 than the offset of one person going vegan for life. Even if everyone on the planet went vegan today, forever, their sacrifice would be undone by the number of new babies born in a single year, globally. Veganism isn’t going to solve climate change. It’s not even going to make a dent. We should be focusing on practical, real measures to reduce global CO2 output. For example, the move from coal to LNG halves CO2 output. This transition alone is an order of magnitude more impactful than the entire world going vegan for life. If you care about climate change you’ll invest your limited time and energy where it counts.
You can easily be vegan while advocating for other change like less coal.
If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares
Sorry, but major lifestyle changes are not “easy.” It’s “easy” to lose weight, and yet two thirds of Americans can’t do it. I like eating meat but would be willing to give it up if the juice were worth the squeeze. It’s not. Instead of spending your time telling people to make major lifestyle changes with almost zero impact to the climate, why aren’t you focusing on real, sustainable solutions?
FYI the top four metrics in the image you linked are for agriculture, not meat production alone. Agriculture includes the production of plants, fruits, and grains. It’s all food production.
It really isn’t hard, buying the plant based products instead of the animal ones is easy.
I find it very difficult. It appears that what you find easy and what others find easy are not the same.
What’s hard about choosing the plant based option in the grocery store or restaurant?
It’s literally just buying a different product.
I like meat a lot. Not eating meat will significantly degrade my standard of living.
You’d be surprised how many vegans said that exact same thing… and then went vegan.
I used to eat meat too and know it’s tasty but you’re probably not as addicted to it as you think.
Plant based food can be just as tasty and knowing your food isn’t harming animals or the planet is great.
Are your tastebuds really more important than the lives of other animals and the health of our planet?