You should see the carbon footprint of concrete…
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 8 months ago by Wulri@lemmy.world to youshouldknow@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/3041d99b-25ff-4dac-8c2f-21bda6a1210d.png
Comments
Tattorack@lemmy.world 8 months ago
remon@ani.social 8 months ago
Yeah and it doesn’t even taste good.
lemmylommy@lemmy.world 8 months ago
You are right of course, but „per kg product“ is not a fair comparison when it comes to how the population is fed. Cheese (3000-4000kcal/kg) vs. milk (500. kcal/kg) is the best example for that.
huppakee@feddit.nl 8 months ago
Meat alternatives are often scored on how environment friendly they are per gram of protein, same with milk alternatives. Though i suppose better per kg of product, you’d still miss important data if you’d only consider proteins.
obinice@lemmy.world 8 months ago
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?
match@pawb.social 8 months ago
what the fuck are they doing to make farmer shrimps worse than pork
PrivateNoob@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
Luckily I prefer chicken anyway :3
Cheese tho…
Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
I eat chicken maybe 30 times more often than red meat.
I eat cheese all day every day tho…
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Back in the 1990s I did a thought experiment using 1990s industrial cost figures and production volumes, that were readily available online. Turned out Americans could save the Brazilian rainforest by cutting our beef consumption by 10%. I don’t have the math on hand but the gist was that if demand for beef dropped 10% so would demand for cattle feed, which was mostly corn. Reducing corn production by that much and devoting the land to hemp cultivation (which would work) would produce enough hemp fiber to replace all the wood pulp being imported from Brazil to make paper. At tha time most trees being logged in the Amazon region were being pulped and exported to the US to make paper. So boom, demand for Amazon pulp logs drops to zero, rainforest saved!
Admittedly this was simplistic and did not account for pulp producers selling to other countries that may have been competing with the US to buy the pulp. But they would have to compete with whatever other pulp sources those customers already had. Anyway, just the fact that the numbers worked out so well gave me a little understanding of how a tend in one area can affect seemingly unrelated areas.
FlexibleToast@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Not true. The single greatest thing you can do to have a lower carbon footprint is to not have any children.
Toneswirly@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Beef and pork is no problem…but cheese and coffee aint goin quietly.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
there are remarkably acceptable vegan cheeses these days, i’ve tried one from i think it was Valio or Oddlygood (which might be the same fucking company anyways iirc) and it’s just slightly weird starchy cheese that melts in a strange way.
bitjunkie@lemmy.world 8 months 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.
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 8 months 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.
bitjunkie@lemmy.world 8 months ago
if everyone got together
And this is where it falls apart.
jwmgregory@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
it’s more than a challenge, it’s a fucking fantasy dude lmfao. people don’t wake up everyday and choose to do these things, they do these things out of necessity. even if individual action was effective in stemming climate change (it’s not), you have to acknowledge that people aren’t choosing where and how they get their food. you can’t blame someone for not being willing to sacrifice their own comfort or economic posture for a *checks notes*\ infinitesimally small, improbable, and uncertain chance that their actions might help the environment, maybe, just a little bit. that’s fucking patently absurd to expect any rational agent to make that choice the way you are advocating.
even in this weird victim-blaming mindset people advocating on this basis have, the corps are still at fault! it’s fucking doublespeak and brainwashing, i swear.
BussyCat@lemmy.world 8 months 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?
bitjunkie@lemmy.world 8 months ago
No. Coke could make biodegradable packaging and choose not to because number go up. Next question.
Wulri@lemmy.world 8 months 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.
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
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”.
JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Roughly true, but you’re eliding a very, very problematic activity into “travel”: aviation.
Per kilometer, flying is pretty carbon intensive (about the same as driving - basically: the extra efficiency of being packed into a tin can is offset by exponentially higher wind resistance at high speed). The problem is that airplanes allow you to burn up massive distances really quickly.
A single transatlantic flight will blow a 2-ton hole in your personal carbon footprint. That’s 10-20% of an average European’s annual footprint - or 100% of a sustainable footprint. For anyone who flies more than once a year (i.e. likely a bunch of people here), cutting down on flying is likely to be the single biggest thing you can do for the climate.
Jack@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Tonnes of CO2e, averages:
1.60 a roundtrip transatlantic flight 2.40 one year car use 58.60 one year for every child you have
JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 8 months ago
That’s helpful. These estimates do tend to vary a bit depending on assumptions (type of plane or car, what occupancy etc). The 2t I quoted was slightly high. My point was that there’s no other way to emit 1 tonne in 6 hours.
PlaidBaron@lemmy.world 8 months ago
People always conveneintly leave out flying. Flying is one of the single worst things you can do.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
i feel like flying is something you either do fairly regularly, or you haven’t even considered setting foot on a plane for 10 years.
LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
I find it really hard to give up, personally. If I didn’t fly I would basically never see my family.
Green_FieldS@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Still going to VOTE! Don’t know why that needed to be in there, next to car and red meat
Dagnet@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Not having kids is a whole order of magnitude more impactful. Or even just having one kid instead of 2 or 3+.
kaitco@lemmy.world 8 months ago
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.
memfree@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
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!
grysbok@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months ago
I had beef last weekend in the form of my partner’s leftover canned Italian wedding soup. I think the prior time was a few months earlier when a takeout order was screwed up and my fish sandwich turned into a cheeseburger.
I try and avoid beef because of the environment and because of cute cow videos. But, if it would go to waste otherwise, I’ll go ahead and eat it.
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
So even this instance of personal responsibility is significantly offset by the actions of a few. I’m all for doing what each of us can, but that’s fucking hilarious.
Wytch@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
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.
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
plenty of people have tried that, and the production of beef continues to grow.
usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Beef production is falling in some countries. For instance in Germany
In 2011, Germans ate 138 pounds of meat each year. Today, it’s 121 pounds — a 12.3 percent decline. And much of that decline took place in the last few years, a time period when grocery sales of plant-based food nearly doubled.
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
ourworldindata.org/…/meat-production-tonnes?tab=c…
that hasn’t stopped the meat industry from growing.
then_three_more@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Isn’t not having kids more impactful than anything as that’s entire person’s life of co2 you’re not creating.
gon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
Convenient for me, that is.
RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 8 months ago
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.
salacious_coaster@infosec.pub 8 months ago
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.
Hubi@feddit.org 8 months ago
Why is there such a massive difference between beef from “beef herds” compared to “dairy herds”?
Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
You can’t get meat from a cow twice, you can get milk lots of times.
naticus@lemmy.world 8 months ago
What’s the carbon footprint of catoblepas?
mannycalavera@feddit.uk 8 months ago
Cheese? Woah woah woah woah steady on there, mate.
Brkdncr@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Idk, I feel like if you could do something to prevent a mass polluter from polluting further that would do a lot more than giving up meat for yourself.
Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
Doing neither while hinting that other people should do the work sure is revealing of the problem, though.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
People on lemmy will really be like ‘you believe in individual action? that pales in effectiveness to my strategy, firebombing an oil rig’ and then not firebomb an oil rig.
cheeseandkrakens@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
My single greatest contribution for the climate is not having children.
state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
You know what would help even more? Eating other people’s kids.
fuck_u_spez_in_particular@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Nah you got to start at the source, more efficient, eat the (future-) parents.
lurch@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
And kicking people in the nuts 🤪
Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months 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 8 months ago
I hit a kid with my car once so now I can litter and stuff without guilt
dan1101@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I agree with the sentiment, but a small percentage of individuals doing this will make no measurable difference. If billionaires and corporations made similar changes that would make a difference.
Miphera@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It really wouldn’t. If a corporation reduced their production of for example red meat, another one would simply scale up their production, because the demand of the market would remain unchanged.
Also, there’s already more than just a “small percentage” of people who have dropped red meat from their diet. All vegetarians, vegans, pescetarians, and people who eat meat but stopped eating red meat due to the environmental impact add up to several percentage points, which is absolutely measureable and impactful.
VictoriaAScharleau@lemmy.world 8 months ago
If a corporation reduced their production of for example red meat, another one would simply scale up their production
how can you prove this claim?
peaches@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
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.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 8 months ago
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.
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
Any fewer beef meals you have helps.
i don’t think that’s true, if meat production continues to grow.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 8 months ago
i don’t think that’s true, if meat production continues to grow.
If people are eating fewer beef meals, where is the beef production growth coming from in your theoretical?
Carighan@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It’s also important to consider that not only isn’t this about quitting entirely, it’s also specifically about beef (or other comparable meat). White meats in particular are still not good for the environment, but already like an order of magnitude better.
It’s just that beef in particular - also a type of meat that is frankly not even that good if I’m being honest, we’re all just used to considering it the best 🤷 - is absolutely horrible for the environment.
renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net 8 months 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”.
Angry_Autist@lemmy.world 8 months 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 8 months ago
I suspect l’ll regret engaging with this, but… what?
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months 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 8 months 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.
Carighan@lemmy.world 8 months 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.
JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 8 months 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.
renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net 8 months ago
Oh yeah, our house basically gave up on real milk once the alternatives got good. The shelf life alone was a huge driver.
pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
Yeah I avoid red meat