Comment on YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat

Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

• booly@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Those companies are creating the pollution to make the things we buy. They know how to reduce output when demand goes down (see March and April 2020 when COVID caused lots of canceled flights and oil drilling/refining to reduce to the bare minimum to keep the equipment maintained).

  Yes, ExxonMobil and American Airlines pollute, but when I buy from them, they’re polluting on my behalf.

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  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    when I buy from them, they’re polluting on my behalf.

    But that’s just it. The plane doesn’t burn less fuel because you didn’t buy a ticket. Hell, I’ve been on planes that were half full (in the wake of COVID).

    They’re polluting whether you are on them or not. The only remedy is regulation / downsizing / nationalization. There’s no future in which people individualistically shrink the industry. No more than you could have saved someone’s life in Iraq by not paying your taxes.

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    • Ksin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      You’re gonna need to come up with a better example, when covid hit a and fewer people where buying plane tickets there where a lot fewer planes in the air. Companies usually want to be as cost effective as possible, meaning they will do the least amount of work needed to still get their customers money.

      One big problem that regulation can tackle is that corporations seek to externalize as much of their costs as they can, which means the corporation won’t have to pay for the externalized cost, so they can sell their good/service cheaper, so consumption of the product increases, leading to an outsized environmental/societal cost compared to the cost of the product.

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      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        when covid hit a and fewer people where buying plane tickets there where a lot fewer planes in the air

        Thousands of Planes Are Flying Empty and No One Can Stop Them

        In January, climate activist Greta Thunberg tweeted her disbelief over the scale of the issue. Unusually, she was joined by voices within the industry. One of them was Lufthansa’s own chief executive, Carsten Spohr, who said the journeys were “empty, unnecessary flights just to secure our landing and takeoff rights.” But the company argues that it can’t change its approach: Those ghost flights are happening because airlines are required to conduct a certain proportion of their planned flights in order to keep slots at high-trafficked airports.

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  • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    They could also, I didn’t know … clean up their production processes and use alternative materials that aren’t as harmful. Exxon isn’t a good example of this, but there’s plenty of mega corps which can do this. But they won’t because our laws are structured in such a way that they are not Incentivized to do so.

    And those CEOs flying their private jets for an hour are more harmful than me driving my car all year.

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    • LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Vote with your pocketbook. Buy products that are produced sustainably- or if that isn’t an option, buy less.

      Corporations aren’t stupid - they are very good at making money. If company X could produce a product that 10% more expensive than their competitors but sold twice as well because it was more environmentally friendly, they would absolutely do so.

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  • brendansimms@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Okay then, join a general strike and we all stop polluting via mega-corps at the same time and demand a change: The General Strike

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  • merc@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Yeah, saying “it’s the companies (that I buy things from) that pollute and not me” is like saying “I don’t contribute to climate change because I don’t cook red meat, I go to the restaurant and order a steak and they cook the meat. It’s the restaurant that’s destroying the environment!”

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• Outwit1294@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Both things are important. And most importantly, vote with your wallet when thinking about what corporations do.

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  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Sure. Vote with your wallet.

    But 52.4 million tonnes of edible meat are wasted globally each year. Roughly 18 billion animals (including chickens, turkeys, pigs, sheep, goats, and cows) are slaughtered annually without even making it to a consumer market.

    This is a systematic problem that can only practically be addressed at the state level. Meatless Monday isn’t actually reducing your carbon footprint because you’re not actually the one emitting the carbon.

    This isn’t like saying “I’m going to burn less fuel by driving less” it’s like saying “I’m going to burn less fuel by not taking the bus”.

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    • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      They aren’t producing that meat for the fun of it, despite so much going to waste. Its still true that less meat would be produced if less people purchased it long term.

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      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        They aren’t producing that meat for the fun of it

        They’re overproducing because they’re heavily subsidized and operating under a functional price floor thanks to the wholesale market and industrial application of their products.

        Grocery store ground beef is practically a waste product. Agg Business produces far more of it than they can ever hope to sell retail.

        Its still true that less meat would be produced if less people purchased it

        Less people in a single dense region, sure. If half of New York went meatless, you’d see a sharp drop in beef sales to the Five Boroughs.

        But if you distribute those 4M people across the entire Continental US, there’s no market mechanism to reduce distribution that granularly.

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• ardrak@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Nah, I think their biggest is making people believe this exact discourse right here and keeping giving them money.

  They are psychos that can care less about being blamed for this or that when they can simply keep bribing governments and never facing any consequences.

  But they have real fear that people start being more conscious about what their own consuming and stop giving them money.

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• Wilco@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Exactly. This right here. Blame the politicians that deregulate the industry and let these corporations destroy the environment so they can post an extra .5% profit.

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  • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    They said voting is more important than this

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  • DarthFrodo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    They’re using the money they got from their customers to lobby politicians to keep doing business as usual. They have so much power because people vote with their dollar, for them, and not for sustainable alternatives.

    Blaming politicians while continuing to fund these industries won’t lead to anything.

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    • Wilco@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      It’s just corruption. The politicians could fix it … but money.

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      • DarthFrodo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        That gets difficult when billion dollar industries are involved, especially multiple. Some politicians will oppose the corruption, but the corporations will just fund the campaign of other politicians that are willing to act in their interest.

        Transparency and a vigilant civil society with consequences for scandals can mitigate that somewhat, to varying degrees. But ultimately there’s corruption in every government at every level of governance. Capital interests always find a way, unfortunately.

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• LanguageIsCool@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Yep, it’s definitely nobody’s fault people eat so much meat that the Amazon is deforested primarily for cattle and for soy (which is for cattle). Nobody feel bad or take responsibility because Exxon is greedy. Lmao gottem.

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  • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    That’s one way to not comprehend what I said, I guess.

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    • LanguageIsCool@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I think it’s pretty clear you said individuals shouldn’t feel responsible for any of this

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      • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        You’ve made it extra clear you’re still failing to comprehend all the words I said together. It’s unclear if that’s on purpose or you’re just slow.

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  • hans@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    cattle only eat some 7% of the global soy crop.

    …ourworldindata.org/…/Global-soy-production-to-en…

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• Showroom7561@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  You can never make animal production green. The amount of clear-cutting needed for beef as an example would blow your mind. Then you factor in the ground, air, and water pollution from these factory farms, and you’ve just fucked up into entire regions, just to sustain a food source that isn’t even needed.

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  • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    There are places already without trees where near can be grown…

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    • Showroom7561@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      You’d be permanently destroying that land, and any waterways in the area, so is that really a solution?

      And if the land isn’t already fertile, you need to set up alternative land to grow the food for those cows… then import the water…

      This is not sustainable, and should be discouraged.

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• LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  By the same logic, couldn’t you say that it doesn’t matter that eating red meat doesn’t matter because ~8 agriculture companies produce 75% of the livestock-related pollution?

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