My single greatest contribution for the climate is not having children.
YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat
Submitted 3 weeks ago by Wulri@lemmy.world to youshouldknow@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/3041d99b-25ff-4dac-8c2f-21bda6a1210d.png
Comments
cheeseandkrakens@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
That’s entire lives of (likely) red meat consumption! I also am never having kids, so I can have my occasional steak without feeling guilt.
TherapyGary@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
I hit a kid with my car once so now I can litter and stuff without guilt
state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
You know what would help even more? Eating other people’s kids.
lurch@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
And kicking people in the nuts 🤪
fuck_u_spez_in_particular@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Nah you got to start at the source, more efficient, eat the (future-) parents.
renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net 3 weeks ago
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”.
Carighan@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That’s meee! ✋
I still eat meat, but quite little, and quite rarely. There’s the odd salami at home, or every few months some ham for carbonara when I get guests over, or something like that. But it’s such a small percentage of what I consume now, I feel like I’m effectively vegetarian, anyways.
And yeah for most things I use alternatives because it turns out they’re often easier to handle. The Barista This Isn’t Milk is nice because it foams more reliably than actual milk and lasts much longer which is important as a single household.
renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net 3 weeks ago
Oh yeah, our house basically gave up on real milk once the alternatives got good. The shelf life alone was a huge driver.
JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
lasts much longer which is important as a single household
This is an often-overlooked argument for veganism. If you plan carefully, you literally don’t need a fridge.
Angry_Autist@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
If you only understood the damage you were doing.
Rather, I feel you fully understand the damage you are doing and are probably doing it deliberately
renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net 3 weeks ago
I suspect l’ll regret engaging with this, but… what?
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
what has helped me is just pivoting heavily to chicken, i used to basically just eat beef and pork, so simply eating a different kind of meat helped ease into eating non-meat meals as well.
meat alternatives are of course great, but i also think soybeans (or similar) are very underrated, just raw green soybeans are astoundingly meat-like for being a straight up unprocessed vegetable. Great in salads.
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
cutting your meat consumption by half can have a significant impact.
i doubt it. many people have done that, and meat production grows year-over-year every year.
Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Sure, but like ~8 companies produce like 75% of the pollution. Their biggest con was shifting the responsibility to individuals to change their habits instead of forcing them to clean up their factories
booly@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks 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.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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.
Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip 3 weeks 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.
brendansimms@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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
merc@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks 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!”
Outwit1294@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
Both things are important. And most importantly, vote with your wallet when thinking about what corporations do.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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”.
ardrak@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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.
Wilco@lemmy.zip 3 weeks 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.
LanguageIsCool@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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.
Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 3 weeks 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.
LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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?
AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
A surefire way to zap a bunch of ideologically-motivated activists into a puddle of fatalistic nihilists.
bitjunkie@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Operative word you. Individual action was a deliberate red herring constructed by the FF industry propaganda machines half a fucking century ago, because they knew who the actually significant contributors to the problem were.
BussyCat@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s a manner of perspective, Coca Cola is considered one of the largest polluters on the planet but that’s not because corporate Coca Cola is out there polluting for funsies it’s because they make a product that individuals purchase and then individuals improperly dispose of. Sure no one person can stop Coca Cola from polluting but isn’t the pollution caused by your individual purchase your own responsibility?
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
If everyone got together and did the individual action, it would become significant.
But getting a big percentage of the population to come together and do something is the challenge.
Wulri@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Operative word you. Individual action was a deliberate red herring constructed by the FF industry propaganda machines half a fucking century ago, because they knew who the actual significant contributors to the problem were.
I agree that large scale changes require tax reform, advertising bans and massive investments in trains and public transit. But you can’t do that without political power.
Large scale changes starts with people being aware. Otherwise, it fails.
Look at what just happened in Canada.
Poxlox@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
All you fuckers act like your individual choice to not eat meat or have kids won’t just have another eat up the same resources or have kids in your stead. We need smart people to have ethical kids and we need extreme systematic political change for any real affect whatsoever. Even if the ENTIRE WORLD dropped red meat, while still a good chunk, it’s only 6% of our global annual emissions that we’d save. The top 3 sectors for emissions are energy transportation and general industry which makes up about 75% of global emissions, at about 25% each. The individual choices not mattering as much as political systematic change is huge, and that won’t happen if the Trumpers are having most of the kids and we’re having stupid divisive arguments about what our individual food choices should be.
usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
It’s enough to make it difficult to keep to 2C climate targets on its own. Its not something we should ignore - especially since much of it comes in methane emissions which means reduction in it can be felt quicker and reduce chance of hitting feedback loops
To have any hope of meeting the central goal of the Paris Agreement, which is to limit global warming to 2°C or less, our carbon emissions must be reduced considerably, including those coming from agriculture. Clark et al. show that even if fossil fuel emissions were eliminated immediately, emissions from the global food system alone would make it impossible to limit warming to 1.5°C and difficult even to realize the 2°C target. Thus, major changes in how food is produced are needed if we want to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357
That’s also on top of other environmental issues that it contributes to besides just climate change. Land usage, water usage, waste runoff
Transitioning to plant-based diets (PBDs) has the potential to reduce diet-related land use by 76%, diet-related greenhouse gas emissions by 49%, eutrophication by 49%, and green and blue water use by 21% and 14%, respectively, whilst garnering substantial health co-benefits
www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/html
And pesticide and fertilizer usage is lower
Thus, shifting from animal to plant sources of protein can substantially reduce fertilizer requirements, even with maximal use of animal manure
www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0921344922006528
The diet containing more animal products required an additional 10 252 litres of water, 9910 kJ of energy, 186 g of fertilizer and 6 g of pesticides per week in comparison to the diet containing less animal products
LanguageIsCool@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Emissions are just a piece of it. There’s land use, consequences of this land use, etc, which involve changes in rain patterns, soil acidification, and so forth.
chunes@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Not having a kid eclipses all of these by orders of magnitude.
blue_skull@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
Bloomcole@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
YSK you should stop guilting us peasants.
Everyone knows who’s to blame.
Tired of this shit.commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
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.
skisnow@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
perfect is the enemy of good.
I wish vegans and vegetarians would be a bit more willing to promote this viewpoint. It’s insane how many otherwise normal people will refuse a single vegetarian meal for no reason other than identity politics.
LanguageIsCool@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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 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.
sndmn@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
You forgot number one: By far, the best thing you can do for the climate is not have children.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
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.
theguardian.com/…/want-to-fight-climate-change-ha…
Capitalism hates this one weird trick.
Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
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.
jsomae@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
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.
piyuv@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
How much less red meat to offset all the private jet that flew to Venice for bezos’ wedding?
Zacryon@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Do billionaires count as red meat? I am asking for a friend.
brendansimms@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Not loving that the exact source of the data in this graph is not clearly linked in the description.
AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
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.
NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 3 weeks ago
What about not having children?
DogWater@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Not disagreeing that meat is bad for the environment, but I think not having kids is probably way above that.
Kyouki@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah let us do the microscopic differences while some industry totally ignores it…
imTIREDnhungryboss@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
or eat the wealthy is a better start
drsilverworm@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
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.
hobovision@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
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.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Veganism is good, necessary even, but more than voting we need to actually overthrow capitalism and replace it with socialism. Profit will destroy the planet unless we take control of the reigns from capital.
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Also not having kids. Strange how that one is left out.
nadram@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
kadup@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The idea that we have to grow food for food is ridiculous. Cows turn grass into meat just fine, why do we need to grow corn and soybeans for them
I bet it’s because, like with hogs, we’ve bred them to be so growth optimized they can’t get enough calories from grass anymore.
usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Unfortunately grass-fed production is no solution. It both does not scale or help reduce emissions
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/…/aad401
muntedcrocodile@hilariouschaos.com 3 weeks ago
Nope it because politicians need votes from farmers so they continue to give farmers corn subsidies cos they lose votes if they take away the subsidies they where given decades ago.
In Australia most of our beef is grass fed. Not only is it cheaper (when u don’t account for the reduced price of subsidised corn) but because much of Australia is so desert like it can only support grass and cattle are the only way to convert that grass to food and profit.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
we need to feed them corn and soybeans because people want lots and lots of meat, and that’s the best way to get lots and lots of meat.
that’s… kinda why people advocate for eating less meat, so that there won’t be such a powerful incentive to turbomaximize meat yields to meet the huge demand…
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
we don’t. but we do grain finish most cattle, because it’s faster.
Azzu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Well, it’s not “growing” per se, but we produce fertilizers which are “plant food”, so you could say we grow food for our food even for plants.
iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
My partner and I reduced our red meat intake but I don’t think I could stop completely. A steak a few times a year just hits the spot too much. I’m keen for lab grown though.
logicbomb@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
My big problem is not with individuals ethically trying to do the right thing, or about people trying to convince individuals to be ethical and to do the right thing.
My big problem is the amount of effort in this when it will have only small gains. In today’s society, meaningful gains come from changes in government regulations and policies.
If you want people to stop eating as much red meat, get the government to stop providing subsidies to cattle owners. I have a money-focused relative who owns cattle only because of the subsidies. At least let the price of beef go up to its actual market value. You’d think that would be an easy sell for Republicans who believe in the free market, but they’re the ones who want the subsidy the most.
Of course, then, you can add additional regulations and encourage environmental responsibility.
usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
We should push for large institutional change, but don’t ignore individual change either. Problem is how will you get said governments to act if people aren’t also stepping up and they expect backlash to it? The more people expect it to be cheap and highly consumed, the harder it will be for them to act. Moving people the opposite direction makes it easier. Movements that succeed usually have both individual and institutional change
Institutional change that is achievable at the current moment is smaller. There’s been some success with things like changing the defaults to be plant-based (which is good and we should continuing to push for that), but cutting subsides is going to be an uphill battle until a larger number of people change their consumption patterns
Feyd@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
How dare you ask people to change literally any habit they have! It’s obviously someone else’s responsibility to change!
jwmgregory@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
i find it annoyingly ironic how you’re acting like these people are behaving in some absurd manner when you’re, at the same time, asking an event more absurd thing of humanity by demanding the majority of people concurrently start behaving differently regardless of their privilege or economic status.
i swear to fucking christ every single person banging the individual activism drum in environmentalist circles is some corpo plant or something. do you not understand the vast majority of people who contribute personally to climate change by ignoring these suggested principles don’t really have a choice? sure, it’s john’s fault personally that the only economically viable way he can feed himself in the local food desert is calories from beef…
it isn’t a matter of morals or will - what you are asking or hoping for is functional impossible and has not happened once in human history, ever. even if all people agreed with these ideas and somehow magically got on the individual action horse, it wouldn’t fucking matter. because what makes individual action not work is systemic and has nothing to do with the moral quality of the choices people are making or their personal opinions and has everything to do with harsh economic realities that can’t be whimsically subverted by shaming people for the sins of corporate America.
humble_boatsman@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Hence the bumper sticker that has been around since the 70s
REAL ENVIRONMENTALIST DONT EAT MEAT
Homesteaders and locally grown meat is a necessary way of life for those living in the country. CAFOs and suburban grillers can burn in hell.
FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
I think it’s also a bit of a thing where most people treat it like a binary.
They either think you have to go full on vegetarian or you eat meat.
When what we should really be encouraging most people to do is cut down on meat. (You’re gonna have a lot less sucess if you ask them to straight up stop).
Auli@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
I eat meat and it has very little impact. I hunt.
Angry_Autist@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Fuck your gatekeeping and special pleading
Screen_Shatter@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I enjoy red meat, but I avoid it most of the time because of trying to be healthier. Also guilt from seeing videos of happy cows looking like gigantic dogs.
Fucking shit though I had no idea coffee was so high up the list. I probably should drink less of it anyway, but ouch, that one hurt me way more than the beef.
artifex@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
If it’s any consolation, at least a kilo of coffee is many more servings than a kilo of beef.
BlueLineBae@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
Same here. I only eat beef a few times a year as a treat both for health and environmental reasons. But coffee and chocolate so high up the list is more of a killer for me. I definitely enjoy a couple cups per day as well as at least one bite of dark chocolate. Probably should cut back now that I can’t claim ignorance.
ApollosArrow@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I was surprised it was that high. I don’t ever drink coffee, so hopefully it offsets some of the meat. We have already reduced our consumption.
NewNewAccount@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This argument drives me crazy. Companies, in this context, are the people. The companies pollute exclusively on behalf of their customers. WE ARE THE COMPANIES.
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
most people don’t want to eat grass or soy cake. letting cows graze, and feeding soycake (the byproduct of soybean oil production) to pigs and poultry is a conservation of resources.
kadup@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
It’s worth noting that soybean meal is not a byproduct. When we look at the most common extraction method for soybean oil (using hexane solvents), soybean meal is still the driver of demand
www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0926669017305010
This is even more true of other methods like expelling which is still somewhat commonly used
www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/9/5/87
muntedcrocodile@hilariouschaos.com 3 weeks ago
I’m one of those people, and I’ve brought the critical thinking required to prove it.
U see the issue with those studies is that they are calculating methane output from the animals themselves and that’s it. It demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of thermodynamics and chemistry. Methane is CH4 and is a product of fermentation (which takes place in the gut of said animals). We know that matter cannot be created or destroyed so this carbon and hydrogen must come from somewhere in the animals diet (in this case grass). Now the grass must get those elements from somewhere and if u did heigh school chemistry u would know that the answer is photosynthesis (6CO2 + 6H2O + Light Energy -> C6H12O6 + 6O2).
So what’s happening is grass gets eaten by an animal. Most of that grass passes through unprocessed and is excreted as shit (a carbon sink contributing to the biomatter of the soil). A small fraction of that grass undergoes fermentation and a small fraction of that fermented carbon is byproduct methane. All that carbon originally came form the atmosphere due to photosynthesis. A majority of that atmospheric CO2 is sequestered in the cow shit by contributing to the soil biomatter. That’s not even accounting for the additional plants that the cow shit helps to grow which are also carbon sinks.
Now as an Aussie where 99% of our red meat is grass fed that’s actually a net carbon negative activity. As for the dumbass yanks feeding livestock corn (due to politicians buying votes with corn subsidies) then u have a problem. But nobody is gonna acknowledge any of this they just gonna spend all day shouting at each other.
BestBouclettes@jlai.lu 3 weeks ago
The problem is not only the farts, the problem is the absolutely humongous amount of feed and space cattle needs. Most crops grown around the world are used to feed cattle, just like most farmland is used to grow cattle. That’s what’s polluting, producing so much green house gases, deforesting, etc.
ReluctantZen@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
Just a note before my comment: my reference is the Netherlands, which is struggling with too much cattle and too little land.
Methane is a worse greenhous gas than CO2 though (28 times more) and just growing more grass, which gets eaten pretty much immediately again, does not necessarily compensate for it.
But methane is not the only problem with large amounts of cattle. The shit can actually become problematic in for the soil and water due to ammonia. This is a large problem in The Netherlands right now (and sadly we don’t have politicians in power willing to make actual changes here). Biodiversity and water quality are going down significantly and a very big contributor is cattle farming.
0x0@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
What people are saying is that their habits are negligible because companies pollute much more.
But sure, try to shame the little guy who might be doing their negligible effort instead of going after the big polluters, that’ll help a lot.
selokichtli@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
See, OP is not saying we should “just drop red meat”, and this is probably why you get that kind of reactions.