I keep drifting back and forth between whole food plant based and vegetarian for about the past 13 years. I got no beef with meat eaters but I couldn’t imagine putting that into my mouth and the process of masticating it. Although on St Patrick’s Day looking at the corned beef sandwiches took me back in time for a brief moment.
US Army: ** is biggest CO2 polluter in the world **
Media: “You should eat more vegetables to save the planet”
Even funnier to me are vegans that argue with people about how animals are killed and how bad it is for environment to eat meat. While the military kills millions of innocent people for oil and burns a record amount of fossil fuels in the process.
Yeah, somehow I don’t think we are focusing on the right problems.
Well, you can be against fossil wars AND against the exploitation of billions of sentient beings as well. I’m pretty sure most vegans are.
And while you can not stop the US army from murdering children in the middle East, you CAN actually stop paying for slaves to murder our fellow earthlings in an instant. And you’d immediately save two-thirds of land, water, and CO2 emissions with that.who are these pro military vegans? are they in the room with us right now?
I’ve been on this diet for 5 years, I call it the “only meat on sale” diet
Aldi on Thursday morning for me.
Why thursday morning? What country?
I don’t know if it’s the same everywhere, but at least in the US, Aldi offers some meat at a reduced price on wednesdays and I assume on thursday morning they discount even more to clear out unsold stock.
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I keep proposing the adoption of personal carbon credits, it would not be difficult to implement.
ITT: peasants attacking each other instead of the people responsible for gestures broadly all of this
I don’t think peasants are tied to the land so that makes us all serfs which is even lower I believe. But yeah.
Ya know what would also limit it: Actually stopping like the top 5 companies causing like 60% of all pollution.
Just stop doing carbon credits because it’s a literal scam and just shut down any factory that pollutes more than an allowed amount until they get it under control.
These companies are producing products you consume. What would really limit the emissions is reducing the human population to under 1B worldwide.
This has already been debunked elsewhere in the comments
That seems to put the carbon produced on the buyer of a product, not the company that produced the item. It mentions electricity as one and its not like you choose how your electricity is generated. Others being land use and food production which again you can’t control because large corporations do that, not individuals.
If there were no buyers, there would be no producers. It is always on buyers.
And yet it’s easy to stop the production while it’s nearly impossible to stop the consumption.
Lol what?
It’s nearly impossible to remove people buying something while it’s very easy to stop a company from producing something.
Lol what? Do you even understand that a company only produces something because people are buying that thing?
You heard him, @FluffyPotato@lemm.ee, it’s been debunked somewhere 🤣
That article doesn’t back up your claim at all. It talks about an industry.
Also, GHG metrics by volume distort the picture when CO2, by volume, is like 25x less potent than methane
Interesting to note that the study has been funded by the Rockefeller foundation. Eating less meat is one piece of the decarbonization puzzle but I feel that the language of this article and the study implies that we need to focus mostly on this and turn a blind eye to the other ways we’re feeding into climate change.
You do realize the younger Rockefeller died like 70 years ago, right? That’s not the discrediting factor you think it is.
You know want would really help? More so then cutting actual food intake?
How about halfing the number of golf courses? Stop using grass and let more natural plants for lawns, stop the use of private planes and also just kill or reduce the Cruise ship industry to a miniscule amount. Plus other shit rich people use that has a disproportionate huge carbon footprint. Find it funny that I never see the news --or rich, holier than thou morons-- pushing for this.
Carbon footprint of food production in the USA is 9% of total. Beef is about 3% of total. So 9 for both beef and crops.
Just the cruise ship industry, for example, is about 3.3% of the world’s total carbon footprint. Let’s kill that. Also private jet use. They can fly Business class, if they are not hypocrites.
We need a total shift. All those things are things we should do too. It’s no doubt that rich people produce more emissions.
But you’re just trying to avoid shouldering any responsibility yourself for something were all responsible for.
This is something you can do, right now, to decrease your carbon footprint.
Btw, if you’re living in the west with constant access to Internet, and got a free education…you almost certainly are one of those rich people.
Personal carbon credits would make it very easy to solve all of that.
I mean, we can do all of those things and reduce our meat intake. They’re not mutually exclusive. How about we encourage people to do everything they can, rather than gate-keeping solutions?
Eating meat is not your religion. Why do you feel so offended?
At least for me these articles are a bit annoying since it seems that businesses world wide give a shit about the consequences of their actions but news outlets decided to pin the issue on the consumer.
Don’t get me wrong. I think consumers are at least partially in charge when it comes to decisions about their consuming behavior. And reducing the meat intake is something that is not too hard and can improve the health for some people. But propagating this as the solution to our climate problem and on top not looking into the effect of lower income on nutrition / eating behavior makes me angry. The article just briefly mentions that the government has no success in influencing the prices through taxes.
At least here in Germany meat is so unbelievably cheap that it’s very understandable people got used to eating it on a daily base. And it’s hard to change this without businesses like supermarkets supporting this with price changes (meat up vegetables down) and an increase in minimal income since environmentally friendly food is currently more expensive than “garbage food”.
And it’s hard to change this without businesses like supermarkets supporting this
A crazy amount of the EU budget goes towards subsidizing farming. Enough of that goes towards the meat industry. It’s not supermarkets that enable this to be cheap. It’s loads of things. Huge subsidies, regulations enabling intense farming, governments giving subsidies in various ways, then there’s also a bit about supermarkets.
Yeah, let’s f stop those subsidies for instance. I don’t see why taxes should be used to destroy the environment in such a clearcut way.
I mean, to be fair, this isn’t proposed as the solution to climate, but rather part of the solution. Your points about income and meat prices are totally valid, but they’re things that we as citizens can pressure our governments to adopt as part of the encouragement of a reduced meat diet.
Considering every 100 pounds you add to your vehicle you reduce fuel economy by 2%, I wonder how much less CO2 we’d produce if everyone got to a healthy BMI.
I couldn’t help but think there’s no way luxury cruise ships is 3% of global carbon emissions
Was this your source? https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/maritime-sustainability
I can’t help but notice it says “cruise ships and other maritime vessels” which isn’t cleared up anywhere in the article. You have to remember that if this includes container ships it’s fully expected, we all buy shit from across the world all the time.
This article says the shipping industry is 3%: https://sinay.ai/en/how-much-does-the-shipping-industry-contribute-to-global-co2-emissions/
So either greenmatch is intentionally rage baiting everyone or they both emit 3% each, sus.
I really hate misinformation. It’s very easy to rally and hate on the rich but it would be very funny to me if that 3% you said to “get rid of” means you would have to completey change your consumer habits and not only just affect “the rich”
But yes regardless don’t mistake my comment for defending luxury cruise ships.
The type of golf course matters. Where I live, a lot of golf courses are public, packed with big trees, surrounded by bushland, act as a green space and native animal refuge among the suburbs, some of them protect wetlands, and are local government owned. While they do use up a lot of water, its still probably less tgan if it was all just paved with suburban housing and their shit lawns. And all the trees would be gone.
I guess I’ve been a flexitarian since 2016ish. I have a few vegetarian days a week for environmental reasons.
My first goal was to preferably have 2 meaty days a week and leave the rest meat free. After about three years I got to the point where I realised I hadn’t eaten meat in a while. I simply forgot to.
Now I just eat meat when I visit friends and family, or to keep my iron levels in check. It’s surprisingly doable.
Yeah if you’re flexible (I get it now) you can totally get free meat on the regular. Plus my dad goes on Costco runs and just gives me spare meat. I haven’t really had to buy any in a while and like you don’t really notice when I don’t have any for weeks. The real thing for me is the odd hotdog or whatever craving, that’s when I actively seek it out.
I’m watching the new climate town video as I see this.
Glad the media is still telling us it is our fault as consumers while industry and governments actively work against us.
Yes eating plants is better for the environment and your body. Yes I try to eat mostly plants and I encourage you all to try it, but Capitalism is what is killing us and eating a salad isnt going to fix it.
Actually, quite the opposite. As long as you buy beef, cattle will continue to be a major driver of climate change. Under capitalism, it only gets produced because you buy it
isn’t it heavily subsidized? I appreciate that you’re using a textbook definition of capitalism but that’s not how anything actually works.
Indeed! I would add to this, we also heavily subsidize corn and wheat production as well. We waste an inordinate amount of what should be prairie land just so we can put up a bunch of beyond inefficient farms so that the rich can continue making money off of what theyve already been profiting off of.
Id also like to remind everyone that this sort of farming killed our prairies. In effect, this puts us at risk of another dust bowl due to the difference in size of root systems between corn/wheat and prairies tall grasses, and exacerbates the climate crisis further as prairies are incredibly efficient at pulling carbon out of our atmosphere.
And it isn’t just the plants. It is the centuries of plants that have lived and died to build the soil. Modern practices burn up the old plants (often, though no till and no burn practices to exist and are growing in popularity) making the soil consistently lose fertility. Also we cover them in pesticides and herbicides and monocrops.
Fun fact: The guy in the “It’s not much but it’s honest work” meme was a pioneer in no-till agriculture, and helped to research methods and popularize the practice. He did tremendous work in helping to reduce runoff and save our soils.
Honest work, indeed.
Worldwide? Not necessarily, no. Most of the growth in beef demand in particular is in developing nations. Subsidies increase access, but they don’t create demand in and of themself
Subsidies increase access, but they don’t create demand in and of themself
If something is significantly lowered in price, wouldn’t that affect demand? If not, why would it suddenly work differently?
You should also see how much of the EU budget directly goes to farming. That’s just direct subsidies, there’s also loads of indirect ones.
In my country meat is heavily subsided and if was put to market at true price less people would buy it.
They don’t remove them because It would piss off a lot of business to remove the subsidies overnight and many would lose jobs. But I say fuck them, it’ll work out in the long run
Yes you are right, but we don’t live in a truly free market. There are all kinds of shenanigans that happen to make our decisions have less impact. Also advertising has to be accounted for. Corporations use neuroscience to convince us to do things against our best interest. How can we account for that?
The article literally says producers, consumers, and government are all part of it.
We’ve gotten to the point that any mention of what an individual can do to reduce their carbon impact is met with “stop blaming us!”
The reality is that we are all responsible and we all have to change, including individuals. You just don’t want to change, you want everyone else to. You are just like the rich person that says they care about global warming, as they turn around and jump on their private jet.
I agree it is all connected.
I guess my complaint is the degree at which we as individuals make an impact vs Corporations and the Government. I could go completely carbon neutral tomorrow. Sustainably farm in the woods and never leave, but that wouldn’t touch the 6 million tons of Methane leaked from Natural Gas infrastructure this year.Pretty much everyone and everything can point to a bigger polluter. The reality is that we all have to change. If every time we are given ways to change, we instead whine that there are worse than us…well, then, we’re just fucked.
I guess I’m essentially a flexitarian at this point, though I have never labelled myself as such. I tend to opt for non-meat options but am nowhere near vegan as I only learned after my daughter started dating one. What an incredible minefield it is! You have to sit around and analyze absolutely everything. Like can you believe pepsi is vegan but not diet pepsi?!? But diet coke is. I don’t know about coke zero and am frankly afraid to ask…
Wait what did they put in the diet pepsi?
I think it’s a trade secret. Probably something like how Guinness used to use fish bladders as a filter
Here’s an idea, maybe the affluent and ultra rich can stop their decadent luxuries before us peasants give up the few pleasures in life left to us.
You mean eating meat?!
Me, I just like to rape, don’t take that peasure from me. Go for billionaires first!You’re fucking annoying
Why?
Do you truly lack that much awareness? If I didn’t already understand your point you would be the last person to teach me anything. You’re far too aggressive and as an abuse victim myself I don’t appreciate you using rape to make your point. I’m reading discussions and suddenly your comments pop in to completely derail it.
It seems like you’re willfully ignoring their point to attack them on tone. I think the parallel is that both comments are saying something of the form “I enjoy doing something that harms others, therefore it’s justified.”
Did you watch the video? I’d maybe approach with caution if not, because it deals with topics like sexual assault, but it really makes this point clear.
They could at least try to bring their point respectfully, instead of derailing and pushing gore into peoples faces.
We don’t need to tolerate their behaviour, let alone give their argument even an inkling of thought.
This kind of stuff is what gives an otherwise noble goal a bad name. It is counter-productive. I know plenty of people who would start eating more meat just to not be associated with those people.
You ticked some boxes off the Vegan Bullshit Bingo there. Plus I didn’t post gore (even though I could have, milk and meat production are incredibly violent and you know it).
It’s a short film of three people talking, you should watch it.
If you are going to use sexual abuse to make a point you better be concise or the very least be funny. So yah, tone would make sense to comment on as if that was the only thing. You want to lead someone to that video, the way they are going about it is piss poor. You think that video is something new? that i haven’t heard it before, get out of you bubble. If you can’t phrase it as well or better than the video, maybe let the video talk for itself.
i cut down my meat consumption to almost zero. maybe some beef pho on the weekend sometimes… but i HATE the term flexitarian… i refuse to call myself that…
Ehh, what you call yourself isn’t important. The point is you’re still eating a diet that’s compatible with not fucking the environment
what you call yourself isn’t important.
yeah, i agree… that’s why i hate labels.
diet that’s compatible with not fucking the environment
and for health, and for a bunch of other reasons… but we don’t need another label for it… my choice of food is simply my choice of food… it doesn’t need to be categorized
Half-vegetarian is another term
Plant forward is how fine dining advertises this concept. I tend to prefer that term over anything as vegetarian/flexitarian tends to have a stigma attached.
I think “plant forward” is actually a reasonable term.
My partner and I are flexatarians, it’s lovely. The only downside is that it’s hard to not eat carb heavy, which is also an issue with vegetarianism and veganism
I love vegetarian restaurants
I feel very grateful that I grew up in a non-veg household that still ate tofu. And now I am a tofu fiend.
However, eggs are still far less impactful than beef, so, protein options still exist, not to mention all the nuts and beans out there.
Also, what about vegetables? Though I admit these should be part of a diet no matter what your diet is, so doesn’t really count.
It’s not all carbs in non-meat land, is all I’m saying.
Power to you for whatever works for you though, no judgement.
I eat pretty much the same, except almost zero carbs because of diabetes. But I’ve been eating like this for decades because my stomach just can’t handle most beef or pork at all (except the sausage) … it sits like a rock in my gut and takes almost a full day to start feeling normal again.
Ever since pandemic, meat has been doing the same to me. Muscle meat in particular, ground meats I’m more ok with.
How do you manage to avoid carbs? It seems like almost everything nonmeat is some form of carb, except for mushrooms, milk, and eggs
What about vegetables? If you are talking about plant proteins with not a lot of carbs go for TVP or vegan protein powders.
I try to keep my carbs under 30 grams per day. Above that I gain weight and feel like crap.
Very VERY limited wheat products like bread, pasta, etc (once per week if that). I used to use konjac noodles as an alternative but they’ve become very expensive.
Zero sugar (I use stevia instead, but it’s an acquired taste).
I make protein shakes with 0% milk, real chocolate powder, collagen protein and stevia. I’ll have 2-3 @ 16oz per day.
I also make my own soda/pop with club soda, lemon and lime juice, and stevia.
Drink about a gallon/4 litres of water per day.
And because of cost I eat a lot of frozen veggies vs fresh … mixed with pasta sauce, melted cheese on top, or made into an omlet of sorts.
Homemade soups are also great, but I currently live in a rooming house so don’t have access to a freezer anymore.
You may not have discovered TVP yet. You should do so.
I’m not looking to add protein, I’m looking to reduce carbs. They’re in fucking everything from oat milk to fruit. At least, that’s what my Endo told me.
