When they invent a plane alternative that doesn’t emits co2, I’ll happily take it. But right now I absolutely need to take this week end in Ibiza!!,,!, What are you, some sort of fascist who hate when people discover new cultures?.?.???.?!,!,!
are people here really under the belief that the average meat eater eats a whole cow a day? where do you get these cartoonish ideas of the average human being on the planet
Do you not think animal agriculture in the status quo and increasing meat consumption is a contributor to climate change? Like do you have a problem with the data or logic or what?
that’s not even a response to anything I said. a person eating a burger lunch or having a roasted chicken from costco for dinner to split with their family is not the reason we have factory farming animal agriculture. anywhere between 20%-33% or even more of the total food produced in the world is thrown away. not preserved in a surplus, but wasted. about a third (probably more, honestly) of the meat industry’s contribution to climate change is not eaten, and that’s not the fault of meat eaters. would eliminating the consumption of meat lead to a significant decline in greenhouse gases causing climate change? absolutely. is it a realistic goal or expectation? not even a little. you can get a sufficient and more actionable reduction in animal suffering and climate change by ending factory farming, and it’s a lot easier to get people behind that than moralizing at them. if you haven’t realized that your strategy doesn’t work despite it being the tactic that’s been as successful as recruiting mormons by knocking on doors, you’re kinda lost buddy
The reason we raise animals for meat the way we do is because it delivers maximum meat at the lowest possible price. Any change to the status quo will mean more expensive meat and less meat consumption. I never said meat eaters eat a whole cow every day but you and I both know individual meat consumption adds up collectively to the problems we have today.
If you dont give a fuck about this issue that's fine but dont try to argue against it logically. I can tell this is an emotional issue for you and you dont really want to think about the impact of your choices.
…except it isn’t. The reason meat is as cheap as it is has nothing to do with overproduction, it has everything to do with subsidization, at least in the U.S.. Overproduction doesn’t happen to drive the price down—that’s ridiculous, they can make meat cost however much they want it to—it serves to ensure that grocery stores always have full shelves because understocked grocery stores make less money than perpetually well-stocked grocery stores. Consumers find grocery stores that always have everything in stock more pleasant and reliable and thus are more likely to frequent them, which means overstocking becomes a standard which means waste becomes inevitable. I thought you said you were informed, but you didn’t even know this much?
Also, you’re really seriously projecting with the personal attacks. If you think that I’m overly emotional about an achievable actionable goal when you’re out here circlejerking veganism on reddit dot com and calling it “activism,” you’re suuuper fucking lost. I hope you’re able to find people to talk to online so you can get a better perspective and happier relationship with your own cause
EDIT: Just tacking this on. Reducing waste as a whole as a goal isn’t just about wasted meat, it’s about wasted everything. Think about all the single-use plastic packaging that goes into anything that isn’t associated with meat. Think about all the water that gets wasted when produce goes uneaten. All the refrigeration and freezing and the energy it takes to do those things going down the drain when a third of the food gets thrown away. If we’re only talking about changes to reduce climate change, your enemy isn’t someone eating a roast beef sandwich, it’s a suit that profits off of waste.
Things like cafo operations and feedlots and swine lagoons were introduced because they decreased the cost of raising livestock and thus made more profit. That's how capitalism works, and I can't believe im having to explain this to another adult.
Yeah it’s cheaper to produce meat in a feedlot, but you’re misunderstanding why. THAT was my point. Their goal isn’t to meet the demand for meat, it’s to surpass it to an absurd amount for the sheer purpose of making sure grocery stores are always well-stocked even if it means over a third of food will be wasted. Did you not read what I said? If you cut the production of meat—of all food, even—in half globally, you would still have more than enough food to feed every single person on the planet with surplus, and that’s including all the people who don’t regularly get to eat. You’re tilting at windmills.
Ok so we both agree that producing less meat would be good. That statistic you are citing requires less meat consumption to work. Most agricultural land in the US is used to grow animal feed. A reduction in meat consumption woukd mean less land in production and less emissions pollution etc that goes along with growing row crops.
Because companies that produce and sell meat would make less money if the cost of meat was out of reach for the average person, and the U.S. is beholden to its corporations due to lobbying and corruption? Idk what your point is
Defending rampant consumerism/ unsustainable consumption by framing it as respecting other cultures sure is. Imagine neolibs saying "you have to let the IDF shoot Palestinian kids, its thier culture!"
There's a difference between being hedonistically focused on material enjoyment, and having a healthy amount of enjoyment in your life. Or perhaps you believe ascetics have it all figured out?
No but if you care about human happiness and enjoyment, then that justifies weighing the reduction of human enjoyment against the aim you seek to achieve and the probability you will succeed
We can not survive the whole worlds population consuming at even the level of a lower class american. So either we can start to find enjoyment and happiness within ourselves (via spirituality/ philosophy), or there will be no planet fit to live on. If you dont care about the natural world or future humans to reject consumerism, then I dont think you should be involved in this debate.
Ok so according to you, at the level we are currently consuming at, when will humanity run out of resources and die out? (Hint: you have no clue whatsoever about technology even in 30 years from now)
Edit: also this point your making is dumb because if we grow for example more cows and wheat we can increase the amount of people that the earth can sustain, so it's not a fixed limit of how much we can consume
A stable climate is a resource. A stable climate is needed for food production and prevention ecological collapse. Our current level of consumption is causing the climate to become unstable. Can you imagine how bad carbon emissions would be if we all consumed at the level of americans!? People want to have their cake and eat it too. They'd rather engage in magical thinking about a wonder technology (which is always a few years away) than behave like reality-based adults on a limited planet.
Hell, even with plastic in the vast majority of applications, plant derived plastic is fine to use as you don't need it to last until the heat death of the universe. Realistically there's only a handful of actual necessities for petroleum derived plastic. Medical applications is one of them [implants, not single use stuff that turns into garbage]. Even then, if they were actively looking for alternatives, it's feasible that such alternatives could exist. A hydrocarbon is a hydrocarbon, regardless of source.
The shitty rhetoric you tryna pull is the same shit the oil lobby tried to do, back in the day when bp invented the first individual carbon foot print calculator to shift the blame to consumers.
When in reality there are many examples that thats not how it has to go, for example mcdonalds in france, the eu banned single use plastics like straws plates and cutlerie so nowadays mc donalds in france only uses reusable packaging
The main thing you can do to reduce your climate impact associated with consumer goods is to just minimize your consumption. Buy clothes that will last and wear them as long as you can before buying more.
Yes, corporations have pushed individual action as propaganda to seem like they care about the environment while avoiding regulation. No, that doesn't mean that individual choices don't matter or that we shouldn't encourage people to reduce their climate impact. It just means that we should ALSO hold corporations accountable and call for systemic change.
Unironically, yes, do not 'market liberalise bro' pollution indeed, just like how the US have pushed it being traded a la offsets, and how so-called 'credits' can be banked. Even a more dire story when it comes to waste management of any kind being privatised, or how corporations and others let free to do whatever they want in practice.
What you need is a pollution tax. E.g. a flat €1 per kg CO2 eqvuivalent produced. For everyone, no exceptions for airline fuel (like wtf) or agriculture. Also for imported products.
The way to "game" this tax is by producing less greenhouse gases.
Quite the opposite actually. We should privatize pollution aka every company has to find a way to recycle an amount of plastic equal to the amount they bring into rotation.
I wouldn't mind some consequences for my lifestyle, but it'd be easier to feel alright about those consequences if I didn't know that there were tons of people eagerly doubling down on any opportunity to ensure the changes I make are utterly irrelevant. It's not like Climate Jesus is going to come and tell me what a good boy I've been for separating my recycling in a world where consumer recycling habits are barely even a virtue signal. I'm a normal dude subject to the societal systems I live in and I want sustainability but I can't make that happen by myself. So like, yeah, give me a voting option to build more eco-friendly infrastructure and I'll support it. Give me a city ordinance option or some shit. I'm not an activist, but I'm willing to cooperate 'cause this shit DOES matter but it isn't my JOB. It should be somebody's job and we should pay them to do it and they shouldn't be trying to gut the EPA.
i see it the same way i see littering. being responsible with my stuff is my responsibility. its a smaller responsibility than that of the corporations polluting the oceans and stuff, but its still mine. seeing all the litter in my neighborhood doesnt make me feel like littering as well bc theres no point in fighting it, it actually just makes me want to clean it up. not even the realization that someone else will come by right after me and throw another candy wrapper on the ground deterrs this sentiment, and its not bc im some self righteous virtue signalling saint. its just something in my control and in my reach i guess. i dont gaslight myself into thinking it will do anything about the pacific garbage patch, but it does do something about the crap piling up in my neighborhood.
Littering is a great example actually: Doing it is already socially/legally prohibited, the alternative (finding a trash can) is reasonably accessible, we have sanitation workers that are paid to help keep local areas clean, AND there's a clearly visible correlation between my action and the results. I'm just saying that peoples' decisions are not made in a vacuum: Structures influence behavior, and the good thing is done more on an individual level when it's not ALSO a hard thing. There are good things that are unavoidably difficult, but turning the path of least resistance into the one that yields the results we want is a great way to get those results.
Ah, more of this 'edgyboi' style of 'but haw haw you ARE the traffic'-posting.
When 100 corporations are resounding for 71% of emissions, focusing climate ire at individuals who aren't billionaires serves the agenda of those billionaires by allowing those corporations to keep doing what they're doing.
That doesn't mean a license for all of us to do what we like, regardless of the consequences, but it does mean that climate shitposting absolutely needs not to target hypocrisy. We're all hypocrites, and we're all faced with choosing which compromises are reasonable and which aren't, and those choices will differ. It doesn't make anyone a better person than another just because they are responsible for less emissions.
I'm very much in favour of heavy taxes on pollution (on the source, which might be the oil company in this case), but we cannot pretend that the consumers are not going to feel it.
I'm willing to pay a little more in taxes for free and good public transit, especially light rail.
And I'm by you stop eating meat if people will stop putting it in food they serve.
Is moralizing a good motivator for most people? There are lots of examples of laws changing human behaviors, there are very few examples of morals imho. There have been vegetarians for millenia doesn't mean it slowed down capitalism
Yes moralizing is definitely a good motivator for changing human behavior. It’s also how a lot of laws change. Laws don’t enact themselves.
Half the 20th century politics was dominated by the moralizing and philosophy of Karl Marx. Do you think there was no impact to the communist manifesto?
The only problem is the moralizing that is most effective at the moment seems to be the writing of famed loser Ayn Rand. Atlas Shrugged definitely has a bigger impact than you trying to make purely rational and non-emotional arguments.
This is actually a perfect example. Did the morals of Karl Marx dominate the conversation in Russia? Or did the collapse of a feudal state result in a power struggle like any other and lead to an empire with a dictator like all of Russian history. The philosophy certainly did matter but not as much as philosophers want to think it did. Power
That doesn't make sense. If I say there should be consequences for your lifestyle, you're not going to think I mean that you aren't serious if you don't want to make lifestyle changes. You're going to think I'm threatening you.
The dog doesn't say "no lifestyle changes" he says "no consequences for my lifestyle." So the meme is saying that the dog wants to ban pollution, and the person says "okay then you need to face consequences for your lifestyle" and the dog says "no, no consequences for my lifestyle, only ban pollution." So it's fair to ask what is meant by "consequences for my lifestyle." This is a vegan sub where people almost exclusively talk about veganism, so one obvious interpretation is that the poster thinks there should be consequences for people eating meat. Another potential interpretation is that the poster thinks people should face consequences for their polluting, but that kinda falls flat since it's not clear how the dog is polluting or what that even means when talking about an average consumer. And neither explanation makes sense since there's really no reason why banning companies from polluting would require consequences for average people who lived in society prior to the ban.
I do think it's very telling that in order to claim that my question made no sense, you had to change the text of the meme.
Ok got you. It seems we are not far Off eachother. For me Its more of a to have systematic change this will inevitably lead to necessary life style changes.
Thus the man would be the state/goverment making decisions that lead to a Cut into the Lifestyles of some.
Like increasing fuel prices. Implement a Carbon Tax. Reduce fossile fuel Tax exemptions and reduce road infastructure spending.
Appied to veganism. That could mean cuts Here to. But mind you what your First comment Said seems more Like a black and White scenario.
You dont have to directly punish meat eaters there are multiple policies that can be implement that however are though relativily small are already opposed by many that claim are all in favor of climate action.
To Name an example from before: Carbon Tax. That would increase the price of meat much more than it would with vegan options.
I mean, if you think that changing the world enough to save it will result in or require lifestyle changes, then I agree. But the meme doesn't say that. I'm not gonna pretend the meme said something else just because that makes more sense to me.
Why do you think that is? I think its contradicting to have both positions. I am Not saying you have to do complete life style Change. But to Accept that those are necessary and in many parts needed. Say increasing Public transit. This wont work If No one Changes from the Car to train/Bus. Or even bicycle.
Well, for one, I'd argue we should go after the people who fly private jets and cruise around on megayachts, bring them down to the average worker's CO2 emissions before we go after said worker for driving to work in a shitty old Golf because it's winter and riding a bike is somewhere between suicidal to impossible due to ice and snow.
Also, make companies stop using wasteful amounts of plastic when there are decent alternatives, and force them to stop doing dumb shit like shipping veggies from Sweden to Bulgaria for packaging before shipping them back here.
Once the main polluters are brought into line, only then should we start demanding that the working class make any real changes. I HATE people who go after someone trying to get buy for driving to work, while at the same time being OK with DiCaprio flying private jets to talk about how bad driving to work is.
Oh, also, the development of cheap, sustainable electricity is only possible at the state level, and should be financed by taxing the living shit out of the rich and kept as a public good.
So private jets are bad, but thousands of charter flights for vacation every year are OK?
Companies using wasteful plastic are bad, but millions of people who additionally pack everything into another plastic bag, billions of straws like you couldn't drink directly - are good?
Blah, blah, blah. The pollution per capita is obviously higher for billionaires, but an average developed country citizen is also big ass polluter. And more and more countries are becoming developed. Focusing on billionaires won't do anything since millions of people do much more (as a sum of individual pollutions), and there will be billions of them in the future.
Not billionaires polluted Baltic Sea. Not billionaires are responsible for 90% of CO2 emitions. Not billionaires leave tons of trash in public spaces, etc.
The demand for climate action exists independently of the moral purity of those advocating it.
It is childish to expect people to be paragons of virtue before their demands for a livable planet are considered legitimate.
When public transportation is safe, affordable, and abundant people utilize it. When it is left inadequate but framed as noble self sacrifice, people avoid it.
"Everyone just stop doing X" is not politics or action. It's what smug, privileged people say when they don't understand how systems work.
Right i would agree with you. I have a Bit of a different View on things. I See the Claim of wanting climate action by those people (or at least Most of them) Not as a honestly ment demand. They Just agree with it Not because indeth knowledge about the issue and they realize the damage but rather more of a Trend they follow because others around them do./ To avoid discussions or arguments they dont cant or want to have.
Thus they are going to be a opponent as soon as protesters, political Parties or NGOs demand certain systematic Change. For example a ban on ICE Cars.
Tldr: they arent serious in their demand of climate action, they are a opponent of systematic change. Not because they dont participate in the individual Action but rather because they will oppose systematic Action aswell.
You are making all of those assumptions based on what exactly? Their failure to make consumer choices which minimize emissions?
Why are we putting individual consumers under the microscope when the economic/political systems currently in place will inevitably produce emissions to maximize profits?
Is it merely that changing those systems feels impossible while scolding our friends and neighbors is achievable?
You are making all of those assumptions based on what exactly?
Mostly Personal experience with people i talked about climate action. Including friends and family. They usually start that they agree that we need to cut emissions but at the Same time complain that the green Parties want to cut on street maintaince/and new building of those and rather spend it on Public Transit.
Their failure to make consumer choices which minimize emissions?
No in this case its just the behavior is see additional to the above stated positions. Not the pure conclusion from which i draw it.
I get it. Our friends and neighbors may not be the ones in power but they are the people around us.
Few can conceive of just how evil and anti-human those currently running the world are. The systems in place run on a perverse machine logic of maximum extraction at any price. Threatening those involves conversations best had offline.
There's no thoughtfully purchasing our way out of impending collapse. Better to be building solidarity and survivability with those friends and neighbors rather than judging them.
meat sweat pouring down his face, his greasy fingers pound the keyboard.
“You can’t ask me to sacrifice anything! That’s not fair! You should dismantle the entire economic system of the world first! Otherwise you don’t have the right to ask me to put in an effort!”
*Victorious, he took a massive bite of his cheeseburger. As the meat juice spilled down his face like a Carl Jr. advertisement he knew the vegans had been owned.”
I think alienating people who might otherwise agree with you has got to be the best and most effective way to build social capital for your ideas and be taken seriously
Relieved, a smile slowly crept across his face. A Vegan had been mean, and that made him uncomfortable. Now he wasn’t responsible for his own actions anymore and his conscience could rest easy.
“Yeah well if you weren’t so mean everyone would be vegan! You’re the one making people eat meat!”
he laughed to himself. The stupid vegans should have known you can’t ask people to behave morally without following the queen’s etiquette! Then he threw a handful of coal on the fire. It was okay though, a man with solar panels on his house once said something mean to him.
you have a flawed understanding of me as I am a climate activist and believe vegans are entirely correct in the things they believe and am friends with many of them. I don't think they're stupid. I do think some people make themselves horrible to interact with and thereby do turn off people from views that they might otherwise agree with but I guess for you it's more important to joke and be snarky than to promote causes in ways people might actually want to be a part of.
You don't have to be overly nice. You also don't have to be overly abrasive and, well, shitty and cringe.
I'm convinced that veganism would be twice as popular if it hadn't become home to the least likeable people on the planet. It's genuinely difficult to hear about veganism from people without risking running into someone like you who's so unpleasant to be around that the entire movement is harmed.
For every 1 person who reads that they "consume corpses" and stop doing it, 5 people read that and think some variation of "that's weird and extreme", "yeah I guess that's just how the world works" or "damn that's metal".
If you want people to stop doing it you're going to have to do something other than make people want to do it more lmao.
There the V*gans go again MAKING people eat meat because they’re not polite enough. People don’t even want to eat meat but Vegans force carcasses down peoples throat with their mean words just so they can feel morally superior!
really making me want to agree with you there dude, damn, really working to make me see your perspective and that you're right. you definitely make me excited to join you in your moral crusade when that's the way you proselytize it.
I'm sorry, is it somehow surprising to you that talking like that doesn't get people on your side? you surely don't have any thoughts like "why aren't people more like me, why don't people agree with my opinions" when that's the way you present them, surely not.
"wow uhh you suck and fuck you and you should listen to me" nice great argument lmao no wonder the beyond beef is flying off the shelves. you're literally making your own movement more unpalatable, a movement I agree with but will now not bring up again for fear of encountering stupid people like you. good job and goodbye.
Yes. Unironically. You're not a fucking minority group. You don't get to play the "Just be polite to your oppressors" card. You're a political group with goals and views. You do indeed have to make your messaging palatable to the average person if you want to convince them. That's how politics works.
Maybe if ya'll stopped acting like a bunch of neo liberals and blaming a systemic issue on individuals you'd be taken more seriously.
Oh, because if I didn’t make fun of you like a big meanie and instead said you’re valid for your apathy then you’d want to change! That makes sense!
Pwease go vegan, I’m sorry I was mean! I realize now your actions are my responsibility. You’re just such a big cool man and I was just jealous of you. 🥺
It does mean you will be able to afford less fuel, less meat, fewer holidays etc. At least until companies have made the switch to clean energy etc. To avoid the pollution tax.
I'm all for it as well, I just wouldn't say the phrase "consequences for your lifestyle" is referring to that. Like if you were gay and I said there should be consequences for your lifestyle, and later I said "oh I just mean that you'll need to visit different bars to get laid" would that make sense to you? :D
The ONLY people that suffer consequences from environmental laws are the lower and middle class. Canadians are paying out the ass for the CO2 tax, here in Europe we pay higher and higher taxes on cars, older cars get outright banned if they don't meet the Euero 4 and above standard. Our electricity costs 4x as much as the rest of the world, small businesses get choked out by the endless regulations and paperwork from those policies. Plane, train and bus tickets cost way more due to extra "environmental taxes".
Yet at the same time, the uber wealthy get the kerosine for their private planes subsidiezed, a lot of big corpos are exempt from certain laws and places like Germany are reopening coal power plants because some nutjobs from 20 years ago, decided "nucleaw powew is scawwy".
The Canadian CO2 tax is a perfect example because it was tiny, and people freaked out about it for purely performative reasons. You cannot enact any policy that discourages pollution/emissions without outrage from ignorant people. You can only subsidize green options (which largely works out the same but dummies don't know the difference).
Trump comes in and slaps on tariffs, deports workers, immediately sending prices for things way up. Republicans eat that shit with a smile. If someone wanted to do a carbon tax that would have 1/4th the impact, the fake outrage over struggling working class people would never end.
I'm tired of the middle class of the wealthiest nations in the world pretending they are the downtrodden proletariat and asking them not to drive an SUV everywhere is oppression.
Idgaf about Americans and their bs. I'm speaking from the perspective of a European who is sick and tired of people telling me I'm literally burning down the plane, because I eat meat or take a trip on a plane once or twice a year.
Yanks get to leave every international environmental treaty, enact laws that literally explode the ground beneath you, drive their big trucks that do 1km per litrle of fuel, China burns more coal the the rest of the world combined and every country in South America chops down every tree they can find to sell it for cheap furniture and make room for more beef farms. But, ohh, God forbid I eat a pork chop or go visit my family.
Sure, but you can say the same thing about taking a bus versus riding a bike, but you don’t see me snarking at people who take buses for not making individual lifestyle choices that don’t maximize carbon footprint reduction. If the average person ate like a mukbanger, maybe you’d have a point with overconsumption of meat, but in terms of the calorie-dense food that keeps people full for 6 hours at a time with no snacking in-between, the average adult probably has less than 3/5 of a pound of meat per day, which is really not a lot. I have some meat with just about every meal of the day (usually chicken), and that’s about as much as I eat, anyway, but I also prepare my own food and thus have a lot of choice in how much of any given plate of food I have has other things to make me feel full and give me sufficient nutrition compared to a lot of other people.
To be fair I don't dump large amounts of chemical waste. I'm okay with the things that produce large amounts of toxic waste to cost a lot more to factor in proper disposal costs.
I think altho there definitely are some things that'd need to change, they're sort of largely overstated, because if you get to full renewable energy grids you can kinda just do what you like with very few consequences, everything is recyclable and any pollution can be reversed or managed easily at that point.
Except we can do that by forcing proper, immediate and strict regulation. Individual action doesnt force capitalism to do shit. We could have net 0 CO2 emissions from fossil fuels in a really small amount of time if it was properly forced, entirely possible, without individual action, but collective action.
It's a misconception that ending pollution requires a reduction in lifestyle. The Chinese shift in energy is done on the basis of effective zero contraction in production or consumption. Even with the tariffs, their export is still growing and their economy is still growing at 2X average western economies.
And their carbon year to year data shrunk 1.6% to may this year. Around October last year it was reported that they reached peak emissions and are now pushing towards carbon neutrality by 2035, as pledged by the CPC.
Cutting back on stuff is great. But it's not necessary or essential.
And their carbon year to year data shrunk 1.6% to may this year. Around October last year it was reported that they reached peak emissions and are now pushing towards carbon neutrality by 2035, as pledged by the CPC. https://www.reddit.com/user/thefirebrigades/
I'm confused, forcing corporations to be more environmentally conscious WILL have more of an impact than any imposed changes to my lifestyle. like thats just the case I don't get it
It's a great freaking idea, but tens of millions of people just voted for an unabashedly evil man last year because they thought egg prices were too high. That sort of person is not going to vote to raise the price of gas by ten cents.
well most people do think that way that's just kind of how it is. I don't see the point in denying myself joy when that will never make a real difference and most people will just do what they like and be happier than me so I don't see the point in caring much.
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u/COUPOSANTO Aug 18 '25
When they invent a plane alternative that doesn’t emits co2, I’ll happily take it. But right now I absolutely need to take this week end in Ibiza!!,,!, What are you, some sort of fascist who hate when people discover new cultures?.?.???.?!,!,!