This crucially important caveat they snuck in there:
“Prof Scarborough said: “Cherry-picking data on high-impact, plant-based food or low-impact meat can obscure the clear relationship between animal-based foods and the environment.”
…which is an interesting way of saying that lines get blurry depending on the type of meat diet people had and/or the quantity vs the type of plant-based diet people had.
Takeaway from the article shouldn’t be meat=bad and vegan=good - the takeaway should be that meat can be an environmentally responsible part of a reasonable diet if done right and that it’s also possible for vegan diets to be more environmentally irresponsible.
That’s both absolutely true and a massive distraction from the point. An environmentally friendly diet that includes meat is going to involve sustainable hunting not factory farming. In comparison an environmentally friendly vegan diet is staples of meat replacements and not trying to get fancy with it. It’s shit like beans instead of meat, tofu and tempeh when you feel fancy. It means rejecting substitutes that are too environmentally costly such as agave nectar as a sweetener (you should probably use beet or cane based sweetener instead).
So in short eat vegan like a poor vegan not like a rich person who thinks veganism is trendy
I upvoted because this message still didn’t reach everyone, but I guess it’s just that people are in denial… like, isn’t this obvious? And weren’t there already dozens of studies proving it?
people ate meat for MILLIONS OF YEARS with negligible global warming effect from the animals
vegans going start blaming the Assyrianz for inventing husbandry before blaming Exxon Mobile BP
like dude pick your battles
You have no idea of the scale we are dealing with.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357
Vegans still care about the ban of oil and many other topics like zero waste, it is not exclusive.
Due to the current infrastructure not everyone can just stop using fossile fuel based transport, but we all can go vegan. So yes, we pick battles, those we can win now and we still fight against what we cant change as individuals.
the whole world can choosd to be a Catholic mate. and it would be a good thing
thats what you sound like. a fascist. People have the RIGHT to choose what they eat
OK, but what if instead of going vegan, I just don’t have kids. Because adding more people to the world also creates more greenhouse gasses.
The problem is not the amount of people but how much each individual consumes. Getting meat out of your diet is a simple and a small sacrifice. Besides the health benefits there is also the fact that you don’t contribute to the culling of 70 billion animals per year (of which 40% is probably not eaten and thrown in the trash). Not only that but you don’t contribute to the greatest cause of deforestation, antibiotics resistance, decline of biodiversity, water waste, …
Besides the global population is steadily stagnating (Africa is still booming) as a lot of countries see population decline (less than 2 children per woman).
Couldn’t we just stop food waste? Most food is discarded before even making it to the store. Seems to me being more efficient with how we distribute food is more realistic that trying to convince everyone to go vegan.
Because I’m not going to stop eating meat and the amount of ppl like me is larger than you think
Many people will also not reduce food waste, for exactly same reasons you won’t stop eating meat. Convenience, habit, cost, time investment.
Were you totally going to have children before you found out how bad they are for the climate? If not, you’re resting on literally fictional laurels. For example, maybe you planned a genocide of all black people, but then chose not to do it when you heard racism is bad. Therefore, by your logic, you prevented millions of deaths. You’re basically an anti-racist hero!
But finally, as a childfree, carfree vegan myself, I don’t understand why you can’t just do your best
Here’s a list of things I didn’t do, just to save the planet:
- Have 200 children
- Eat an entire cow every day
- Drive 10 gas-guzzling, coal-rolling cars SIMULTANIOUSLY via remote control 24/7, 365 days a year
- Invent the Globarzinator, a device that produces 5 BAJILLION MEGATONNES of CO2 every Planck time unit
The environmental impact was not the ONLY reason I’m child free but it was definitely a factor in that decision. Same with being carfree. In fact I do a lot of things for not than one reason.
The point is that even without that reason you wouldn’t have any kids. It’s not the cornerstone of your childfree-ness. Neither is it for me, which is why I recognize that it’s morally lazy to rest on the imaginary laurels of not birthing children.
By that logic, every parent could ALSO claim they are doing their part for the earth. Simply by not having EVEN MORE children. Hell, maybe they are better than you because you only didn’t have 2 kids, but they didn’t have 4 additional kids. Thats twice the savings, twice the reason to not make the world a better place and blame everyone else!
Eating the rich is by far the most eco-friendly approach as it can dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Ok, are actively working on this? Is your work on it so horrendously demanding of all your attention of every single day, that you couldn’t ALSO go vegan, or vegetarian, or just eat less meat? Eat the rich is just a fun day dream and a lazy excuse to not do what you can (like going vegan).
Eating the rich would also vastly reduce racism, sexism, classism, and worker exploitation. Can I therefore ignore my negligible personal impact, and keep being racist, sexist, classist, and buy only the cheapest clothes crafted by the most exploited third world toddlers?
You sound like you are fun at parties. This was obviously a joke. Also, Why can’t we do both?
Again, would you think this a joke if racists made it after you told them about small way they are racist every day? Wouldn’t you see very clearly that it’s a way to remove any and all personal responsibility?
And if you had read my comment, you’d actually see I do think we should do both. Most vegans agree, do you think most non-vegans agree? Which of the two groups do you think is more likely to actually do things that affect change in the real world? The shit posters, or the people demonstrating a willingness to change fundamental lifestyle choices?
Well that’s no surprise. Raising animals for meat is horribly inefficient compared to plants.