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Beef produces 85 kg CO2e per kg of food. Tofu produces 2.9 kg CO2e per kg of food.
(ourworldindata.org)
this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
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I like beef
Cool. I like rainforests, a stable climate, and my health. But I guess we each have our own priorities.
The answer isn't to change the ancestral diet of an entire species (everyone going vegan is simply not going to happen, even less likely than degrowth), it's to degrow into numbers that are sustainable for the planet (i.e. eliminate the exploitative economic systems that drive this population growth).
Sadly, what's almost certainly gonna happen is neither of our choices because we're going to continue our population explosion AND eat meat until famine or something like that wipes our unsustainable societies.
So you're saying it's easier to get an entire population to dramatically reduce their rates of procreation than to give up some of the meat in their diets? Not sure I buy it
Yep, not only procreation but consumption and waste as well, and actually both have evidence of them happening.
https://www.npr.org/2021/05/09/995172945/u-s-birthrate-drops-to-lowest-level-in-four-decades
https://www.euronews.com/2023/06/28/auf-wiedersehen-schnitzel-meat-consumption-hits-record-low-in-germany
What I'm really saying, is that if a solution depends on everybody becoming a good person and doing the right things forever into the future, it's a non-starter. How are you going to ensure nobody eats meat? Gonna have global enforcement? What's the punishment? Humans are hard-wired to crave meat, that isn't going away and telling people not to eat meat is akin to telling people not to have sex.
Instead, if the economic system and the culture changes then the motivation to do certain things changes. Maybe our culture changes so that getting married and having kids is no longer the expected route and you don't become the weird aunt/uncle for doing so, happening already. Maybe flexitarianism becomes more popular and reduces damage and cruelty from animal agriculture without expecting radical shifts in ancestral diets?
I'm not sure how old you are, I'm nearly 50 and trans and I've seen massive cultural change and that's really the key to changing the world. For example, I'm a trans woman, when I transitioned 20 years ago it was viewed as absolutely bonkers by everyone around me, and that was in California. I lost most of my family and friends and had no right to employment or housing. Now, it's common and though there are outspoken right wingers, liberals are like "oh, you want to be girl, sure, also the state protects your right to employment and housing".
I'd trade all the beef for not having to wonder if the planet is going to take a dump right when I'm getting old and am less able to handle it.