It’s an article about environmental impact
"The impacts of vegans were a quarter of those of high meat eaters for greenhouse gas emissions, and land use, just 27% of the impacts for water pollution, 46% for water use and 34% for biodiversity. "
But let’s be honest, you probably dont care, no one seems to care. People who do care are unusual and caring and taking action is unusual and might even earn you derision.
Personally I’m still trying to figure out whether there’s any point in trying to change anyone’s mind. I have a feeling it’s a hopeless waste of energy, which is terrible. If the people do do care lose all will to try to encourage others to see what seems obvious then nothing will get better, it will probably get worse.
I don’t think convincing average people to go 100% full vegan is a good strategy. What I would focus on is convincing people to eat less meat, eggs, dairy, etc. It can be a gradual process to even further reduction, or even just a permanent flat reduction is still an improvement.
Convincing two people to reduce their animal consumption by 50% is as good as convincing one person to go full vegan.
I don’t think you can change many minds. It would be more effective to make factory farming illegal so that meat prices increase dramatically. People will eat less meat when they can’t afford not to.
That would be nice, but in a democracy, no one is going to vote to inconvenience to themselves. We have to find motivation by other means than being forced, or we will create a society where nothing good happens without being forced to.
in a democracy, no one is going to vote to inconvenience to themselves.
Some people will, because they recognize that something is more important than their own convenience. But there are, regrettably, a lot who won’t.
Look at the election in the Netherlands, the government had declared plans to reduce the nitrogen poisoning by the animal industry, the animalfarmers made a campaign and the people voted for a conservative right “farmers party”
We need to show support or those who are against change will win.
I think a solution is going to be less about changing minds, and more about changing incentives.
Meat-free food should be cheaper and easier. Walking into a supermarket or convenience store, one should be greeted with affordable, tasty, plant-based meals. The more affordable and accessible we make plant-based meals, the more people are going to eat them. And showing people that they can taste just as good as meat-based meals, will mean people won’t immediately steer clear of them.
It’d also be great if they were nutritionally equivalent.
Plant based meats aren’t equivalent to animal meat on that front.
Plant-based diets are usually superior, health-wise, to meat-based diets.
There are a couple of nutrients that vegan diets at one point may have fell short in, like B12 and D being common examples, but at this point those are present in fortified vegan milks or breads.
The only other ones I can think of off the top of my head are a fatty acid present in fish, that is easily supplemented. Or less essential nutrients like taurine, which are also easily supplemented if one finds that they really need higher levels.
It can be difficult to get enough protein with vegan options for people who aren’t knowledgeable about the options.
Not really. Protein is not something particularly difficult in a reasonably balanced vegan diet, for most people. There are plenty of dietary sources of protein in vegan cooking.
Anybody requiring particularly high levels of protein is probably already supplementing it. Usually with vegan sources anyway.
Of all the possible deficiencies in a vegan diet, protein is by far the least of people’s, already small, worries.
No individual average person can do anything of significance to fight climate change or have a meaningful impact on the global environment. Only governments or massive organizations can.
If you could do an alternate reality type thing, where one version of you lives a perfect life, environmentally speaking, and the other version lives the worst, the world would be the same at the end of both.
Its not about one person preventing climate change alone, first step is not supporting climate change. Then people around you see that it’s not black magic and that they can do it too. We are now at 2%, 3%? vegans. A change in society needs 10% to have a critical mass. If you decide to go vegan, for the animals, for the climate, for your health, and make others think about and maybe even change one other persons view you did better than most.
If you don’t you are not passive, you are actively supporting it and showing others that its OK.
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Eating meat is actively supporting the industry and everything that comes with it.
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Silently not supporting it with a plant based diet is the passive position.
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Actively fighting against it is the real fight against the industry.
Governments will not act against the will of the voters alone. They have to have some support to even consider making change. Massive organizations live from the participation from people, from you.
I don’t eat meat. But that’s beside the point.
There’s a difference between one person doing something and 10% of the population doing it. The latter would have a meaningful impact, but the former would not.
And the key part of my point is the average individual cannot make 10% of the population do anything.
If 10% of the population are vegetarians, it has nothing to do with what any single person did. A single person is almost always powerless to affect the world.
I have not power over 10%, like you said. But have the power over me, and my choices and for what I want to be responsible. 10% is just 800.000 single persons making a choice and not hiding from responsibility.
It is not going away and will only be more urgent and more visible. You don’t have to do it alone if you want to have more impact. Join groups and organizations, go out and protest. If you want change it does not have to stop at your plate. Go out and talk to people about why you are vegan, be the change you want to see.
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No shit? Is this not obvious and generally understood?
It is amazing how the focus shift from blaming gas and oil industries and focus on food. Blaming individuals, with a sub message ( you are the reason for climate change because you buy animal products) while big corporations and their investors, and ceos continue enjoying their massive wealth.
Disclaimer, didn’t read the article but the title it triggering…
Why we can’t ignore the meat industry’s climate impact
We also need to address fossil fuels, but the meat industry is large enough in emissions to make us miss climate targets even if fossil fuels were eliminated today
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.
(emphasis mine)
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357
There’s not really a way around consumption being reduced. It’s going to be hard to implement any systematic solutions to reducing meat consumption if people don’t take that step themselves too
The environment is more than just greenhouse gases emissions
But I should also point out that there’s more to the environment than just climate change which is why I would suggest at least skimming things before commenting for the future. The article and even its title (“across a range of environmental measures”) include much more than just greenhouse gas emissions.
on the environmental impact of their diets was assessed in relation to greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water use, water pollution risk and biodiversity loss.
[…]
The impacts of vegans were a quarter of those of high meat eaters for greenhouse gas emissions, and land use, just 27% of the impacts for water pollution, 46% for water use and 34% for biodiversity.
Other studies and environmental metrics
Why best case production of animal products still come out worse than worse-case production of plants
Plant-based foods have a significantly smaller footprint on the environment than animal-based foods. Even the least sustainable vegetables and cereals cause less environmental harm than the lowest impact meat and dairy products [9].
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/htm
Many argue that this overlooks the large variation in the footprints of foods across the world. Using global averages might give us a misleading picture for some parts of the world or some producers. If I source my beef or lamb from low-impact producers, could they have a lower footprint than plant-based alternatives? The evidence suggests, no: plant-based foods emit fewer greenhouse gases than meat and dairy, regardless of how they are produced.
[…]
Plant-based protein sources – tofu, beans, peas and nuts – have the lowest carbon footprint. This is certainly true when you compare average emissions. But it’s still true when you compare the extremes: there’s not much overlap in emissions between the worst producers of plant proteins, and the best producers of meat and dairy. https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat
Deforestation
Extensive cattle ranching is the number one culprit of deforestation in virtually every Amazon country, and it accounts for 80% of current deforestation
Draining desert’s water
Correspondingly, our hydrologic modelling reveals that cattle-feed irrigation is the leading driver of flow depletion in one-third of all western US sub-watersheds; cattle-feed irrigation accounts for an average of 75% of all consumptive use in these 369 sub-watersheds. During drought years (that is, the driest 10% of years), more than one-quarter of all rivers in the western US are depleted by more than 75% during summer months (Fig. 2 and Supplementary Fig. 2) and cattle-feed irrigation is the largest water use in more than half of these heavily depleted rivers
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=wffdocs
Biodiversity loss
Livestock farmers often claim that their grazing systems “mimic nature”. If so, the mimicry is a crude caricature. A review of evidence from over 100 studies found that when livestock are removed from the land, the abundance and diversity of almost all groups of wild animals increases
Increased synthetic fertilizer usage for animal products
Thus, shifting from animal to plant sources of protein can substantially reduce fertilizer requirements, even with maximal use of animal manure
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344922006528
Etc.
There’s a number more but this comment is already getting too long
industry serves people’s demands. it’s one way to influence agri industry.
Industry also drives people’s demands fwiw, without lobbying, subsidy, advertising, and the cultural dominance of meat production those things have brought about, meat consumption wouldn’t be anywhere near what it is today
✨it’s both✨
Both are driven by corporations but both can also be impacted somewhat - both by reducing carbon and harming corporation’s profits - with individual choice making. Both will also ultimately only be fully rectified by a new economic order.
Why should humans be cruel without necessity?
I’m in my 40s and the “rah rah steak!” Folks are dying from cancer and illness. I had to reduce my meat intake.
My tin foil hat believes the lax US laws on meat means it’s being pumped with some serious bad shit to keep meat prices from being so high compared to other countries. Not to mention our general health (and lack of affordable healthcare) means many more folks are succumbing to these illnesses.
The bad shit is the way cater is raised in the US. In france an exploitation with let’s say 200 beast is considered big. In the us some count thousands… There are reaaly big one in europe but it’s a minority compared to the us. This is atrocious and I really hope we all reduce our meat intake.
it’s being pumped with some serious bad shit
Quite literal, yes.
As is tradition, a paper proofs something that should be common sense and as is tradition too, it will likely be ignored. It’s a sad world to live in.
“veganism will not fix all of humanity’s problems, but no solution will be complete without it.”
Yeah but people will continue to be misinformed about dietary protein, and think eating fruits and vegetables is for wusses.
My dad is old and fat and is out of breath when he gets into a car. He eats cheap sometimes spoiled meat 3 times a day, everything he cooks is somehow the greasiest food i have ever seen.
I have a BMI of 21. I do an average of 18000 steps a day and mountain bike on the weekend.Somehow he’s embarrassed about my vegan diet and gives me tips on how to eat right and tells me that i’m godda die soon for the past 5 years.
I have many friends like that. Bro, i need that protein. You are overweight and you don’t do any sports at all.
I dunno, i find it very odd.From what I’ve seen its often just genuine ignorance. Thinking plants are entirely carbs, needing protein for muscle so of course you only get protein from animal muscle, and that old myth of incomplete proteins. Ill be honest I had the same assumption that something like a potato is entirely carbs
