YSK that apart from not having a car and voting, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat.
YSK that apart from not having a car and voting, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat.
Red meat has a huge carbon footprint because cattle requires a large amount of land and water.
https://sph.tulane.edu/climate-and-food-environmental-impact-beef-consumption
Demand for steaks and burgers is the primary driver of Deforestation:
https://e360.yale.edu/features/marcel-gomes-interview
If you don't have a car and rarely eat red meat, you are doing GREAT 🙌🙌 🙌
Sure, you can drink tap water instead of plastic water. You can switch to Tea. You can travel by train. You can use Linux instead of Windows AI's crap. Those are great ideas. But, don't drive yourself crazy. If you are only an ordinary citizen, remember that perfect is the enemy of good.
No shade on people trying to make sustainable choices, but if the solution to the climate crisis is us trusting everyone to "get with the program" and pick the right choice; while unsustainable alternatives sit right there beside them at lower prices, then we are truly doomed.
What the companies behind these foods and products don't want to talk about is that to get anywhere we have to target them. It shouldn't be a controversial standpoint that: (i) all products need to cover their true full environmental and sustainability costs, with the money going back into investments into the environment counteracting the negative impacts; (ii) we need to regulate, regulate, and regulate how companies are allowed to interact with the environment and society, and these limits must apply world-wide. There needs to be careful follow-up on that these rules are followed: with consequences for individuals that take the decisions to break them AND "death sentences" (i.e. complete disbandment) for whole companies that repeatedly oversteps.
The single best thing you can do for the climate is not existing. The next best thing is not having kids. The lifetime of consumption of a person is out of the equation without that person. Until we figure out how to live sustainably on this earth, overpopulation is a real problem.
Edit: To be clear, I want you to still exist with us in this world. Especially since I don't believe in any kind of afterlife. I'm just stating a tough truth with no clear action statement, besides maybe figuring put how to live truly carbon-neutral. Some things are just a catch-22.
Eating meat also means lots of animals have to suffer just for yout pleasure. I know people get triggert real fast if you mention how bad eating meat really is. It's like a drug for some people.
This needs to be normalized by calories. Soymilk and soybean oil shouldn't be that far apart.
What bother's me about these sorts of posts is they don't give people a consumption goal. Blindly telling everyone to consume less isn't exactly fair. Say, for example, there's person A who consumes 1 unit of red meat per month, and person B who consumes 100 units of red meat per month. If you say to everyone "consume 1 unit of red meat less per month", well, now person A consumes 0 units of red meat per month, and person B consumes 99 units of red meat per month. Is that fair? Say, you tell everyone "halve your consumption of red meat per month", well, now person A consumes 0.5 units of red meat per month, and person B consumes 50 units of red meat per month. Is that fair? Now, say, you tell everyone "you should try to eat at most 2 units of meat per month", well now person A may happily stay at 1 unit knowing that they're already below the target maximum, they may choose to decrease of their own accord, or they may feel validated to increase to 2 units of red meat per month, and person B will feel pressured to dramatically, and (importantly, imo) proportionally, reduce their consumption. Blindly saying that everyone should reduce their consumption in such an even manner disproportionately imparts blame, as there are likely those who are much more in need of reduction than others. It may even be that a very small minority of very large consumers are responsible for the majority of the overall consumption, so the "average" person may not even need to change their diet much, if at all, in order to meet a target maximum.
Beef is overrated. Pork, poultry, and wild caught shrimp are where it's at.
I could devote all my time to recycling, reducing carbon emissions, not driving, voting, not eating red meat, including forcing everyone i know to do the same - and the net result would be an iota of a drop in the ocean of change. i.e. nothing.
As others have said, until there is a global shift on how the world operates and the major oil companies, cruise lines, and airlines all shut down, nothing you or i can do will matter.
Edit: folks still don't get it. It's not a matter of apathy, it's pragmatism. You will never, ever convince enough people to make a significant change relative to the big consumers. You will be dealing with the people who literally pollute and consume out of spite, and/or principle, or ignorance. For every thing you do, someone's doing the opposite. We failed the planet a long time ago though lack of education and giving too many greedy people power. The world is too large and the snowball is over the hill.
The amount of fuel used by the cruise industry in about 1 minute, on average, is more fuel than you or I or any normal person would consume in their entire lifetime, by a lot. That's on the low end. They consume 500,000 to 1.5 mil gallons an hour. The average person uses maybe 20 to 50k gallons their entire lives. You'd have to convince millions and millions of people to stop driving completely for 40 years to offset that. Tens of millions probably.
Not gonna happen. That's just one industry.
Everyone's not gonna just stop flying. Or stop driving. Or stop eating meat. It's idealistic and impossible and frankly imaginary, no matter how much it may be necessary.
Why waste your time and energy doing things that will do nothing? Focus your efforts elsewhere. Policy change probably has the best chance of helping. But then I point back to the people actively and purposely thwarting any attempts at curbing consumption, and these people are billionaires etc. And at least in the USA, running the country.
i’ve replaced beef in my diet with kangaroo for exactly this reason… it’s not the same, but it’s great in its own right and contains a load of iron. makes cutting beef out much easier
bonus: roo populations have to be managed otherwise in modern australia they tend to multiply uncontrolled and it’s a problem, so it’s either eat the meat or waste it… roo meat isn’t farmed
You forgot number one: By far, the best thing you can do for the climate is not have children.
I guess it's a good thing that the lone star tick is moving north
People will look at an image like this, read that 80% of deforestation in the Amazon happens for cattle, and go “I’m powerless, Exxon is bad” and continue to not only eat meat 5x a day but also actively try to convince other people that reducing their meat consumption is silly and they might as well keep eating it as much as they want because grocery stores will stock it anyway and Elon Musk rides a jet.
This is true, and also not usually well taken by most people, even the ones claiming to be pro environment.
Wait until this thread gets full of people saying that their habits are irrelevant because companies pollute much more - which they do indeed, but that absolutely does not negate the many studies we have that calculate a major impact if we simply dropped red meat.
Which is again quite obvious if you think about the energetic demand of growing food only to feed an animal that then will become food, rather than skipping this step and eating the original food instead.
The prevalence of people telling everyone not to have kids in the context of our current culture is weird.
Alt-right: "Hey we're trying to have as many kids as possible so there's more of us, and less of you. Do us a favor and don't have kids."
Evidently a lot of people on the left: "Sounds good dude."
May I propose a reasonable alternative? If you don't want to have kids, cool, don't have kids. If you want to have kids, have the financial and social security to do so responsibly, and a partner who wants the same thing, then have kids (but also go vegan, ride a bike, and raise them to do the same).
Aka, you do you.
That's almost certainly the biggest dietary change you can make.
But for overall impact, there's one winner and it's bigger than everything else put together.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children
Capitalism hates this one weird trick.
The metric of per kg of product, while entirely fair, can be a bit misleading when it comes to making high impact decisions in your life. The switching to tea example is a good one to criticize because on this chart coffee is quite high up there, but I consume only 15g of coffee a day, compared to probably close to a kg of meat, egg, and dairy. Eliminating coffee would not be a high climate impact decision.
Not loving that the exact source of the data in this graph is not clearly linked in the description.
I've been the bane of chickens all my life...
Does the graph include how palm farms are built on precious forest land that has since been burned down? and that the land primarily being burnt is some of the most important land for storing carbon and providing oxygen?
I like chicken more anyway.
Here's the perspective that helped me the most with this:
You don't have to quit meat (sorry for the pun) cold turkey.
Even cutting your meat consumption by half can have a significant impact. Start by ordering a vegetarian option instead of meat every once in a while. Experiment and find veggie alternatives you actually like, there are tons of options now. I heard someone refer to this as "microdosing veganism", and it can really help make the change less exhausting.
Over time, you might even notice your tastes start to shift and vegan options become actually enjoyable instead of a "sacrifice".
I get that individuals aren't the problem impact wise but couldn't it be the case that if the majority of people life a more sustainable life it will be easier to create laws that put stop the real poluters bc people are in support of such regulations?! If the majority of people think the existence of billionaires is immoral, it will be easier to tax the rich...
Mmm, close to 700 comments. Have fun yall.
the graphic you posted comes from this article, which shows it is based on poore-nemecek 2018. i've detailed teh problems with this study in another top-level comment here, but, basically, it's not good science. i feel you're spreading misinformation.
You can't survive around here (eastern Kentucky) without owning your own car. The nearest Walmart to me is a half hour drive at 60mph and we don't have taxis in any of the towns around me. That's 7 hours of walking, each way. No buses or trains either. The closest store of any kind to me is a Dollar General and is about 2 hours each way if I walk.
Coffee is a big one for me along with cheese. I'm waiting for cheese to get better with vegan alternatives, the last time I tried shredded vegan cheese it melted and tasted like plastic, although that was 3 years ago now, and I am willing to try again.
Coffee is something I think can be helped if people were more picky on what brands they chose from. I do not believe Starbucks is the most sustainable coffee brand, as they trained me when I worked there to believe.
Ontop of that, factory farming is a lovecraftian horror that floods the universe with terrible agony. And there's very good reason to believe that the suffering of animals is as real and awful as yours or mine.
Looks slightly off TBH, sources? Nuts being lowest, while Palm oil being quite high. Nuts are efficient, especially when considering caloric value, but I'm pretty sure something like a potato is better per kg. Palm oil AFAIK is a very efficient (most efficient vegetable) oil, might be that the destruction of highly carbon rich forest is factored in there maybe...
I stopped eating beef about 4 years ago. It was a great decision. I much prefer pork/poultry anyway.
Just eat plants.
Yes, that is great on an individual level.
But the best thing to do overall for our environment and climate is supporting protest movements, especially those employing nonviolent civil disobedience. Per pound/dollar/euro, they reduce emissions the most. But if you can, attend events in person.
This should not neglect that we need both individual and system change and they depend on each other. You should reduce your meat consumption and advocate for a world where everyone reduces meat consumption (and even become vegan or at least vegetarian).
If you don't have a car and rarely eat red meat
To be fair, only one of these is a choice in many parts of the world.
True. Though maybe also activism until manufacturers are held accountable for their production methods and clean up costs. I do my share but I'm tired of being told it's on me. It's on corporate greed. Instead of spending on lobbying to avoid any changes to the status quo, they could spend much less coming up with different cleaner methods of production.
This can easily be solved with a bottle of food colouring. I've compleltly replaced my red meat with blue meat. Problem solved.
Can we please have a source for the YSK statement you made in the title and the graph?
I have seen data on not having kids being the biggest choice a person can make to prevent future emissions. You also didn't mention flying less often, or not flying when a reasonable alternative exists. What is the relative impact of all of these things compared to dietary changes? Numbers on that would be helpful.
Sure. Imma keep using my jet though.
Have children. Flying. Driving. Buying a whole range of carbon intense products blah blah blah.
Vegans just are not credible.
Not eating red meat is so fucking easy now. If I can be an old man who went to school uphill in the snow both ways for a second, I dropped meat 20ish years ago in the US deep south, and holy fuck talk about an impossible diet. Even the vegetables had meat in them, and that is not a joke.
This is obviously going to depend on your area and how much of a food desert you’re in, but I’ve never seen so much access to so many kinds of meat replacements in average grocery stores and not just bougie upscale places. Tofu, tempeh, fake meat everything! Which isn’t even a big part of my diet, but I love having the option when I want something new.
I personally don't eat red meat, and I agree it's worse for climate change, but I've heard the argument that meat from larger animals is more ethical, because to get the same amount of meat from smaller animals means a much larger number of them have to die, and I'm not sure how to weigh that against the climate, assuming that someone isn't going to give up meat entirely.
Not having kids is a whole order of magnitude more impactful. Or even just having one kid instead of 2 or 3+.
Voting is guilt. If you vote for fake ass liberals and their posturing ecology you're no better than a rich guy with a yacht
We can reach higher. Join me in end game environmentalism and become a serial killer today.
People here need to calm down. This isn't about cutting out red meat entirely from your diets; it's about lowering your consumption of red meats. If you really love eating meat (and I know I do), try replacing some of those with white meats like chicken or fish.
Humans are evolved to be omnivores; eating meat is only natural for us. And yes, corporations and capitalism are the biggest factors in ruining our environment. But like recycling, we can still do our small part by ordering a grilled salmon in lieu of a steak once in a while.
The most important takeaway for the target group:
“If you’re trying to reduce your carbon footprint, eat less beef,” Rose advises. “You don’t have to give it up entirely, but cutting back or making substitutions can make a significant impact.”
Any fewer beef meals you have helps. We're also just talking beef here. If you choose pork, chicken, fish, or even game meat over beef you're helping the climate.
Wrong. The single biggest thing most of us can do to reduce harm to the environment is not have kids. Each human, no matter how responsible, can't help but add to the problems. The mountain of diapers for each baby alone is obscene. Each baby you don't have is a whole ass person that will never add to food or electricity or water demands at all.
Hello, I would like to place one order of Kaczynski
For a brief moment reading this, I couldn't remember the last time I ate beef -- but then I remembered the summer sausage in the fridge... which probably has beef in it, so... yesterday. Other than that purchase, I don't know if I've had any other beef this year.
The study found that 12% of Americans consume nearly half of the country's beef
So if we got that particular 1/8th to cut down, we'd be half way there! Just like if we could get the 1% to cut down on [so many things], we'd be in the clear!
Damn I am good.
I do like some meat products but I naturally lean towards a vegeterian diet simply because noddles are love and I dislike preparing meats.Looks like the traditional Irish diet of potatoes, root veg, and onions is carbon-friendly af.
Isn't not having kids more impactful than anything as that's entire person's life of co2 you're not creating.
No thanks.
Perfect is the enemy of good only if you WAIT for perfect. I eat minimal meat, get my veggies from a local farm share, have solar panels, an EV that charges only off excess solar production, a heatpump, have re-insulated the attic, ditched the gas range for induction that runs off solar, etc. My footprint is less than anyone around me, but probably still way higher than your average individual living in the global south.
I'm trying to hit net zero and once I hit it, I'll keep going because Canada (where I live) is rich and I want to continue to reduce my footprint (the dream is net negative in my life) because I'm privileged and have the resources to push harder. I make it a game - figure out what's my best opportunity to reduce my footprint, do it, move on to looking for the next thing I can do.
Giving up (most) red meat and patting yourself on the back is severely minimizing what you COULD be doing. I'm a long, long way from perfect, and am exceedingly lucky to have the resources to play this game - but carbon reduction is a way of life, not a checkbox IMO.
Really? A greater effect than not having children, or tireless activism against one billionaire until they realise the error of their ways and turn to the light side?
I am a strict humanitarian. I only eat humans.
I would assume a competently executed strategy of eliminating the worst offenders (and/or the managing infrastructure thereof) would probably have more impact, they probably meant legal things though.
For instance, a solo campaign of taking out the biggest data centers would probably work. Difficult though.
I wish I could afford red meat...
I don't buy it.
In 2008 when the travel industry crashed in the wake of the market crash, and again in 2020 after COVID lockdowns started, we saw significant decreases in pollution.
Meat isn't the problem. Fossil fuels are.
this only holds for industrial red meat. I love it when everything gets lumped together and presented as "evidence". Non-industrial, small scale farming actually can have reverse effect. But we don't talk about avoiding industrial products, because... why? 100mile diet that includes sustainably raised meat (white, red blue - whatever) from local farm will have minimal impact on environment. Shall we talk about avocados in Canada or Almonds? Study lacks nuance and produces flashy headings with no substance.
Not true. The single greatest thing you can do to have a lower carbon footprint is to not have any children.
your tulane link is not exactly good science. it relies on Clark (2019) which itself relies on Poore-Nemecek (2018). Poore & Nemecek built their data by combining LCA studies, a practice which is specifically discouraged by the studies themselves and the guidance on LCA studies generally. we can't really rely on those conclusions at all.
they also rely on Behrens (2017), which shares a problem with poore-nemecek, though a more nuanced one: they myopically distill data from input-output to calculate environmental impacts like water and land use and ghge. this seems reasonable at first blush, but in fact it overlooks the complexity of our agricultural systems. for instance, one of the things farmers feed cattle is cottonseed. cotton is grown for textiles, and the seed is largely waste product. feeding it to cattle is a conservation of resources, and doing so should in no way count against the land, water, and ghge statistics for cattle.
but that's not really here or there, as it turns out, because the thrust of the paper is not "these foods are bad for the environment" or "these foods are good for the environment". the actual claim made in the paper is "there is not actually sufficient data sources available to determine which foods have which impacts".
The statistics probably come from the farms where they keep the animals in one place and they bring their food there. Cattle can be successfully used in land regeneration with the rotational grazing systems. I do agree many eat too much meat, but not anyone does well on a vegan diet. I don’t. I rather eat it moderately and buying quality meat from happy animals.
Meat is a highly dense food source and has lots of essentials elements to human health. And in case of the cows, if they are fed as they should with grass, they transform a not digestible food for humans into a highly digestible one.
People that raise them for their own consumption will not overeat meat probably, because they know how much it takes to raise them well and they have a different kind of respect for the animal than someone buying pieces of meat in a supermarket.
I am very skeptical about statistics like these, because they are not nuanced, as the reality is. It’s like when they said eggs raise cholesterol. What they did not say is that they tested it by giving rabbits(a herbivore) egg yolks. And people then start spreading the misinformation.
I have a steak maybe once a year, usually as a sudden or persistent craving. But other than that it was amazingly easy to convert to poultry for all my regular recipes. Very easy step to make without much thought.
Reducing dairy is my dietary wall.
I like to go bottom up. If chocolate and coffee are off the menu, I'm not sure this life is worth continuing.
Just looked through our past few menus. We only eat beef once a week by nature it seems.
Thats crazy!! I do eat it, but not very often. However I do a lot to offset it, but still. Hard to get other foods that make you feel full and get you protein like a good steak though.
what the fuck are they doing to make farmer shrimps worse than pork
Still going to VOTE! Don’t know why that needed to be in there, next to car and red meat
I’m gonna drive my car…because that’s necessary, but I haven’t eaten meat (red, white, blue, whatever) for 20 years, so between that, not adding to the surface population, and not voting for complete jackasses, I think I’ve at least offset the driving.
Convenient for me, that is.
The real biggest thing you can do for the environment would be reducing the global human population.
Humans do not produce anything for the environment, the mere existence of humans automatically causes harm to the environment. Humans take from the environment but give nothing useful back. If humans were deleted from the Earth, the environment would not be negatively effected. Even the most "environmentally friendly" human still damages their local environment by being alive.
But you know, killing people is pretty illegal basically everywhere, and extremely unethical in many, many ways. Unethical Pro Tips I guess? Please nobody actually do this.
Mussles for life
luckily u didn't suggest to cut the cheese 😅 cheese is life, I can eat less beef but not my cheeeeeese 🙃
That one guy eating rapeseed oil:
What about ostrich? It’s red meat and much more healthy than beef, but I’m not sure it counts as poultry in this context.
So only eat beef from dairy herds? And you will half your footprint? Anyone know the rough specifics (Eli5 style) of why that is?
SCOP, it's what's for dinner.
how does hunted vs farmed meat compare?
Yeah I avoid red meat
Yeah I've cut down a lot, for health, ethical, and environmental reasons. I've got a perfect model in my family to avoid emulating. Red meat is a rare item in my house and I don't often miss it.
We're so disconnected from our food now, the journey here has been all abstract for me.
Cheese? Woah woah woah woah steady on there, mate.
