Comment by epolanski
2 days ago
> I don't understand people freaking out over this
Personally I'm not a fan of any diet that recommends high meat consumption and I say that as someone who eats everything.
Cattle outweighs the total livestock on this planet by a 10 to 1 factor.
While governments pretend to do stuff for the environment, they seem to always ignore the extreme cost on the environment and pollution caused by cattle. Even focusing on CO2 emissions by industry avoids the elephant of the room of the insane levels of methane produced by cows, a gas that's 200 times more harmful.
There is little evidence that a meat heavy diet is good for people, but there's plenty of evidence of the contrary.
So, to be honest, while I don't freak out and I'm all for freedom, there has to be also some kind of consciousness into how do we use the resources on this planet, and diet is by far more impactful than the transport of choice.
The livestock industry is an ecological disaster of unimaginable proportions. 50% of all habitable land is used for agriculture. Of that land, 83% is used for livestock, despite the fact that it only provides 18% of the calories consumed worldwide.
> While governments pretend to do stuff for the environment, they seem to always ignore the extreme cost on the environment and pollution caused by cattle.
While governments and politicians generally like to portray themselves as being driven by morals, they are actually driven almost entirely by economic interests.
> So, to be honest, while I don't freak out and I'm all for freedom, [...]
Well, I would like the freedom to live on a planet with an intact ecosystem. I also think that animals would like the freedom to live a life free from unnecessary exploitation.
> [...] and diet is by far more impactful than the transport of choice.
Both are high-impact areas, but changing your diet is much easier than changing your choice of transport - in some countries. Transport emissions account for about 25% of all emissions, 60% of which are caused by individuals' use of cars.
And after all of this, we haven't even touched on what fishing is doing to our oceans.
> While governments pretend to do stuff for the environment,
Not the one that put out that statement
Very reasonable but it could not be more unpopular right now to tell people to stop eating meat
It’s maybe unpopular, but people should feel bad about it, especially they should feel shame. I don’t feel it either, who knows this for decades, and even tried a few times. But I should. There is exactly zero pressure regarding this.
Based on how people react to me simply being a vegetarian in their presence, without me commenting on what either of us are eating, people do feel shame. It's just that the shame is outweighed by the pleasure of eating whatever.
1 reply →
I don't think people should feel bad about it, but at least informed.
A better thing would he to have a carbon tax, so you have higher vat on beef than poultry and higher for poultry than eggs.
4 replies →
> it could not be more unpopular right now to tell people to stop eating meat
If we phrased it from a carbon perspective that would probably help it be more popular, at least for beef which is a huge methane emitter.
https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat
Yeah, the meat industry has successfully tied meat consumption to the American ideal of masculinity and there is an endless supply of insecure men that buy into the world of bro-science.
“If the entirety of the US were to go vegan for a year, the reduction in GHG emissons would be 2.6%”
https://youtu.be/sGG-A80Tl5g?si=yFnHO9cX3apu1yBh
I think cows get to much blame
> I think cows get to much blame
I think that incredibly biased channel and extensively criticized video gets too much credit
> Cattle outweighs the total livestock on this planet by a 10 to 1 factor.
It seems odd not to include cattle in total livestock.
The point is to emphasize that there's more cows on this planet using more resources than all of the other animals combined (excluding fish and water mammals).
You could add all the squirrels, elephants, lions, cats, birds, all of those, and you're not even at a fraction of mass of the cows we grow.
Yeah that seems phrased wrong, but here's xkcd visual: https://xkcd.com/1338/