This is a wrong opinion.
Eating is what keeps humans alive.
If you live and care about the environment, stop driving, reduce the consumption of industrialised products.
You can live a full life without ever eating beef.
Is it really a full life without cordon bleu?
People who fly in planes…
People who drive cars…
People who work for corporations…
People who eat imported off-season fruits and vegetables…
People who have children…
There are thousands of personal choices everyone could make to make the world a better place, and none of them will be effective on their own. We’re all thoroughly fucked because the rich control the world and they think they will be able to ride out the collapse on their private islands and gated farms. Nothing you and I can do will stop the apocalypse, so stop being judgemental about choices other people make, and just enjoy the ride.
Beef farming has a massive direct impact on the environment, with rainforest being cleared to make way for cattle. It’s so bad that you don’t even have to give it up to make a real difference - just eat less of it. Eat a different meat instead, which has less of an impact.
Of all the things you can do to help mitigate climate change, reducing the amount of beef you eat is probably the easiest, healthiest and cheapest thing you can do. The fact that people don’t makes the OP’s point.
Sure, but one person not eating beef doesn’t have a direct impact on beef farming. People are already eating less beef now because prices have become unrealistic for most people, and yet it’s not having a direct effect on the environment. Cattle herds in America are at a 30 year low, but it’s mostly small ranchers going out of business. Factory farming is still destroying the climate, the conglomerates are just relocating their herds to better hide the damage and reduce overhead costs.
Personal choices are good. People should make good personal choices, because it is what they believe and how they want to affect the world. It is healthier and cheaper to eat less beef. It’s also cruel and disgusting the way factory farms operate, and the processing practices will probably make a lot of people sick.
But your argument that people should eat less beef because it will help the environment is flawed and hollow. Cattle farming is bad for the environment, but it is not true that eating less of it will help the environment. Oligarchs are clearing the rainforests because we’ve stripped the carbon from American topsoil, and it’s now cheaper to import beef than it is to raise cows in the Midwest. That additional damage to what should be protected forests, not to mention the global shipping and transportation, more than offsets the reduction in the total number of cows. And it’s not like pig farming or chicken farming or fishing is much better for the environment.
True change cannot be acheived with personal choices. We need legislative action, and we need to demand it of our politicians. It needs to happen now, and it needs to be drastic. We need strict environmental regulations and strict enforcement. And none of that is likely, so you may as well enjoy your cheeseburger.
Sure, but one person not eating beef doesn’t have a direct impact on beef farming.
In the same way that one person voting makes no difference, but people do it anyway. You are taking an extremely nihilistic and defeatist position that seems at odds with the effort you put into writing the reply.
And none of that is likely, so you may as well enjoy your cheeseburger.
At least if you cut down or give up eating them you can tell yourself that you are doing something to not actively making the planet worse for everyone. Is cutting down the amount of meat you eat really such an awful proposition? There are health benefits too.
There is also a massive difference in the CO2 produced for different types of meat - chicken produces 1/10th of the emissions of beef:
Source: https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-footprint-food-methane
you can tell yourself that you are doing something to not actively making the planet worse for everyone
but it’s not true. if i told you jumping jacks reduced global warming, how many would you do?
Well, what I said is true. I don’t really know what else to say if you are just going to ignore basic logic and facts.
you can say it’s true but you haven’t actually provided evidence
Not doing something that has been proven to be bad for the planet is making an effort to not make things worse. I’m not sure how you can argue against basic logic.
that graph is from poore-nemecek 2018, and should not be considered reliable.
Unlike random internet dudes, who are always 100% reliable.
all you need to do is read the LCA references they cite, in which it is explained that LCA data should not be combined, due to using disparate methodologies
It’s difficult to avoid nihilism neck deep into an apocalypse. But you’re right, I was being glib and dismissive. Sorry about that.
The reason I objected in the first place is that the oligarchy has used the personal choices conversation to quash criticisms across the board, and it’s extremely effective. You can’t complain about American manufacturing jobs going overseas because you drive an imported car. You can’t complain about slave labor because you buy Nikes or KitKats or strawberries picked by illegal immigrants. It’s a thought-terminating purity test that doesn’t even hold up to scrutiny.
Factory farming chickens (or pigs or fish or reduces carbon output, but comes with its own environmental horrors, like diseases, water contamination, pest control, etc. Everyone in the world could go full vegan tomorrow, and the oligarchy would be clear cutting the Amazon rainforest to plant soybeans and lentils the day after, because the problem has never been personal choices. We need systemic changes to fix systemic problems.
By all means, reduce your beef consumption. But if you want to actually reduce human-drive climate destruction, we need to start eating billionaires, not chickens.
Yes, you are totally correct in all that, but I’m coming from a personal perspective - self preservation in what seems like a hopeless situation. Yes, it’s all fucked and don’t stop trying to eat the billionaires, but if you can not play their game, even in a minor way, that is a small win for you personally. Not dancing to their tune is a better feeling than hopeless nihilism as you bite into another one of their burgers, giving them a little bit more money and power.
And if enough people did that, who knows - it might actually make a difference.
I agree with you but you are also undermining direct action.
People should be cutting all of that shit where ever possible
Obviously life is life but drinking water out of plastic bottles when 95% of US has safe tap water is peak braindead consumerism
choosing to shop in a different aisle in the grocery store is not direct action
Killing a specific parasite is ;)
You can’t do all the good the world needs but the world needs all the good you can do.
I used to think like you. But then I released that you aren’t gong to successfully convince billions of people to fix climate change through personal choices and carbon footprint efficiency.
Collective action to change government policy to make climate pollution uneconomical is how it changes.
Maybe that policy makes meat a luxury commodity and you get what you want, but human will is too weak to assume that people will stop eating meat out of choice.
The concept of our personal carbon footprint was one of BPs most successful ever marketing campaigns to avoid their accountability.
I agree and I’m not even vegan. Pork and poultry are both a lot less bad for the environment, and afaik it’s not at all hard to avoid beef in terms of cost and availability
Or animal wellbeing.
Climate change is animal well-being, just on a global scale.
I see this line on internet a lot: animal farmers don’t care about the welfare of their animals.
I know too many beef farmers to think that.
Jfc the vegan extremism in tech shows so hard on Lemmy it makes me both embarrassed to be in tech, and on Lemmy.
Fuck off. Feeling guilt (or worse yet, telling others to feel guilty) for eating beef when there exist billionaires with private jets is beyond absurd. Especially when we consider food availability, cost efficacy of feeding the populations…
Get your head out of your asshole.
You’re no better than the Christofascists telling ‘the gays they’ll go to hell,’ ramming ideology down peoples throats by way of guilt and shame. Exact same ideological posturing. Its abhorrant; it’s pathetic.
I don’t think it’s irrational to be critical of decisions just because there are worse evils. Whataboutisms don’t solve anything, because you basically invalidate any argument with “but rich people have private jets”.
You can have more of a bearing on your fellow man than you do on corporate untouchables, so if you want to see change, start with the small stuff.
Do you have a moment to discuss our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ?
🙄
I’m good thanks
No. That is just rampant stupidity. That is the same as a fat person celebrating eating a salad for lunch while still planning on gorging themselves on chocolate for dinner.
Blaming individual poor person choices IS ALWAYS WRONG in a world with billionares. PERIOD. This is fucking brainless in-fighting because you are too stupid to understand the sheer scale of the world or the rich’s impact on it. Genuinely, a pathetic attitude to have and especially to defend.
Cool so I should ignore issues around me because someone else out there is doing much worse. I didn’t even mention fighting people over it, I simply believe it’s worth discussing and debating these topics, regardless of its relative impact. Without community and localism, culture will vanish, and culture is how things change.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
deleted by creator
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Oh, good point. Beautifully articulate.
Tagged as ‘vegan douche.’
Removed by mod
I guess I shouldnt expect you to be good at reading. Pity.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
I’m embarrassed for you.
Seriously, reading skills worse than a 12 year old. You literally did misread, and Im not here to teach you how to complete a sentence before responding to it.
Blowing up my inbox like an incel after a bad date, like I would ever continue a conversation with you. Go touch grass yourself, lmao.
Guess what? You’ll reply to this. Because you’re a petulant fucking child
Gonna block you now, byeee 🥂
this is based on poore-nemecek 2018, a paper with dubious methodology
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Tag me !! I wanna be on the obnoxious vegan list !!! That way you’ll avoid interacting with me on account of me being every bit as evil as a literal nazi
You were previously tagged as “douche”, and it’s clear you are consistent.
So no, I’m not tagging you. That was done months ago. I’m blocking you.
I suggest everyone reading this do the same.
Lol… I doubt that opinion is that unpopular but you can try the same set up with people who
Who fly for tourism Drinking bottled water at home Drive SUV Live in a large houses without sufficient head count
That ought to get people properly triggered. Beef is a low hanging fruit and even most beef eaters know this. Just eat less of it.
agriculture is also contributing to human accelerated climate change, jsyk.
True. Let’s try to reduce agriculture too. Let’s see what most of the farmed food is used for. Oh. It’s used to feed cows for beef.
yeah that’s a fair assessment.
Whatabout
yup, i guess. when someone makes a dumb blanket statement like that i feel it necessary.
No, citing a different, DIRECT CAUSE is NOT whataboutism. It’s pointing out your pathetic ability to understand how different things at large scale add up.
It is only your failure when someone points out a more significant thing and you then deny it. You’re denying reality at that point. Pathetic ignorance from you will not save any of us.
No, it’s not. Pointing out how you’ve missed much greater targets is only pointing out how your acope is braindead and too narrow. It is NOT a whataboutism to deacribe how you completely and utterly fail to understand the core problem.
It’s not so binary, so I disagree with the premise. Ofc I upvoted it. 👍
I eat beef and care deeply about a sustainable biosphere. The future depends on Forages. https://youtu.be/bDnZ-oNjatY
Top Soil depletion should also be very scary to people, its quickly running out via current mono-cropping industrial farming. The only way to restore top soil is via ruminants
Oh my, if you actually care then wait until you hear about beef farming in the Amazon rain forest.
https://www.farmsanctuary.org/news-stories/amazon-deforestation-beef-industry/
Now your moving the goal posts.
Your original post was “There exist no people who eat beef and care about the environment”. This is clearly wrong, and I disagree.
Now you want to argue “There exists at least one practice in cattle farming that isn’t a net positive for the environment” - Factory framing of both cattle, and mono-cropping, is bad for the environment - I agree.
There is no practice in cattle farming that is a net positive for the environment. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and cattle produce a fuck ton of it.
Ah, ruminants are part of the normal biocycle, they produce methane in a cyclic fashion and sequester it in top soil. They are not net producers of methane, they are nature itself. If you look at the entire biocycle the methane is just in movement.
Without ruminants we wouldn’t have top soil. I encourage you to watch Dr Ballerstedt’s lecture i shared with you two posts ago.
When you deforest an acre of the Amazon rain-forest to raise beef cattle it’s not a part of the normal bio-cycle. You don’t even know where your beef comes from when you eat it at a restaurant, do you? 🤡
Your moving the goalpost again.
You don’t even know where your beef comes from when you eat it at a restaurant
And you know that each bit of plants on your plate is locally sourced, not mono-cropped, using no pesticides, no industrial inputs, no imported fertilizers, and has never seen the inside of a sysco truck?
Please, you just want to argue and calling me a clown demonstrates how reductive your thinking is.
Whataboutism
Judging from the comments, this is truly an unpopular opinion. I wonder why it’s got so many downvotes … It is what it says on the tin.
It’s low effort rage bait
One could argue the kinds of posts perfect for this community are all rage bait.
Yeah, sadly.
You ain’t wrong 😒
You can have different degrees of giving a shit, though. Like you can give some shit, just not enough to quit beef.
Like a decade ago, I got to see Paul Hawken speak. His organization reviews the science to determine which methods are most impactful for reducing climate change. Here’s their list: https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions. The idea really stuck with me - and I was surprised by the impact of some activities.
Is eating the rich at the top?
Yes, but sadly not vegan.
Thanks for not eating beef then! You’re saving the planet. It’s a bit cooler outside today, the effects of your sacrifice are already noticeable. What would we do without people like … oh wait, gotta go, my steak‘s almost done.
