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Eating Meat Is Bad for Climate Change, and Here Are All the Studies That Prove It
(sentientmedia.org)
this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
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Yes. Sloppy choice of words on my part but this is a climate change topic, here.
Chicken meat uses 4x less water than beef. I'm not disputing your point, just firming up the perspective for anyone lurking.
Clearly, vegetables are way way better. But in terms of what kind of behavior change people are willing to consider, cutting out beef is a way way easier sell than cutting out all meat.
I tell people to try going without beef temporarily. What often happens is in doing so they learn to cook a bit and cut it out (maybe not fully but mostly) long term. Then they go after pork, chicken, etc. You're right that beef is the worst offender, but we want to be careful not to overemphasise and make it seem like its the only offender. I think a lot of it is setting a tone. I'm veg not vegan but pick vegan options when available. I think the more we can normalise 'eat less meat' the better as that's pretty hard to argue with
IMHO, the workable solution is to get people to eat vegetarian once in a while, eat less meat in general (which is even good for one's health, as at least in the West people eat way more meat per-day than recommended) and turn eating beef (and, to a lesser extent, pork) into something that is more unusual than usual.
Reduction and more climate-friendly meat consumption is way easier to sell as an idea to beings who are omnivore (so have a natural desire for the stuff) than full vegetarianism (or, worse, full veganism) and I'm pretty sure some of those people will end up mainly or even totally vegetarian and even vegan, as they get used to and appreciate meat-free meals.
However the Moralists are as usually abusing and distorting a genuine concern to push an absolutist view (as it's anchored above all on a Moral viewpoint on meat consumption, so Environmentalist objectives are at best secondary), damaging the actual Environmentalist outcomes since it's a lot easier to both convince people to slowly rebalance their meat-consumption and have it happen in a safe way for even the less informed than it is to do it with sudden total abstinence.
Exactly. Don't make it a religion, just ask people to give vegetarian food a try until they crave meat. At least that approach worked for me - I could never see myself be a vegetarian. Turned out I am happy with eating meat twice a year.