• ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    38
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    3 months ago

    It is the largest positive impact a single person can have on the environment. Kurzgesagt video with the analysis.

    As a vegetarian for decades, it’s also cheaper, often healthier, and isn’t difficult at all once you find some new recipes you like. You also don’t need to switch all at once. Ease into it by cooking one vegetarian meal a week and then increase it as you find ones you like.

    • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      3 months ago

      Vegan ≠ Vegetarian.

      Veganism starts and ends with “no animal exploitation”. And due to some weird ingroup/outgroup dynamics Extremely Online Vegans will get batshit insane radical with it and refuse to feed meat to their cats or insist that eating honey is fundamentally unethical.

      I eat very little meat, mostly for environmental and partly for ethical reasons, but bringing up the environmentalist side of vegetarianism to defend veganism (a radical dogma based on a specific ethical stance) is missing the mark entirely.

      With all that said, everyone should eat less meat, and way less red meat.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        3 months ago

        I do agree the zeal of the recently converted veg*ns are not very helpful in messaging. Wagging your finger at people as individuals for a lifestyle and notions about nutrition (“but where do you get your protein from”) they were likely born into/just accepted as a truth is not too helpful. Yelling at people for a dab of honey or egg or butter in something served to them…not really helping. Who has ever had their mind changed by such behaviors? If anything, this will make people double down in their delusions about how the SAD is good for them.

        Yes, most animal proteins are probably setting you up for diabetes, cancer, heart disease. And it’s not really hard to discern this from looking at the evidence. Honest actors in the medical profession are already saying this, if they aren’t compromised by the SAD industry complex. They are, IMHO, not saying it nearly enough. Far too many people still think they need “protein” (in their minds, meaning dead flesh which also happens to have lots and lots of fat, too, but they don’t call this “a fat”, they call it “a protein”, lol) to live.

        In my opinion, if you compare the crazy levels of animal protein consumption in America with the arc of Big Tobacco and the levels of denialism also associated with it, we are maybe in the 1980s phase - when everyone but the most reactionary knew that using tobacco AND secondary smoke were life-threatening, but just before much was being done about it - the bans on indoor smoking only started in the late 1980s.

        Many people are starting to wake up from the Big Tobacco-esque levels of carnist propaganda…we’ll see what action is going to be taken by governments, institutions, etc…

        • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          3 months ago

          We’re like 1960s tobacco industry at best. I don’t see the subsidies on red meat going away in the next 10 years, and probably not the next 20 if I’m honest, short of a catastrophic food crisis that would cause us to re-evaluate the number of human calories produced per hectare of agricultural land.

          I’d like to be wrong, and change does come in waves so maybe 10 years from now I’ll change my mind. Maybe. But right now the idea of not subsidizing red meat production is fringe even within the left of the left – and the left hasn’t exactly been making electoral strides in most countries recently.

    • BallsandBayonets@lemmings.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      22
      ·
      3 months ago

      Infinitely incorrect. Not reproducing is the greatest lack of a negative impact a single person can have on the environment (which is all going vegan can do, not eating meat will never have greater than a zero net impact on emissions).

      • capital@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        3 months ago

        Infinitely incorrect. Not reproducing is the greatest lack of a negative impact a single person can have on the environment

        Don’t stop there. You can end all your emissions now by killing yourself.

        NOTE: I would not like anyone to kill themselves. I am pointing out the logical end to this particularly stupid argument.

      • itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        3 months ago

        Not having children can also at best have a net zero impact. If we’re taking opportunity costs for future actions into account, the single highest reduction in emissions for an individual is to die.

        In day to day life, veganism has the single highest impact. Still, I’ll never have (non -adopted) children, emissions are a part of it, but mostly because I don’t want to bring someone into the world that’s so thoroughly fucked at the moment

          • itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            3 months ago

            That’s not what I said? I was making a point about how not having children isn’t in the same category as going vegan, when it comes to emission reductions.

            I’ve personally been vegan for years.

          • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            3 months ago

            This is a weird thing to get offended on when you’re the one that brought up the thing it’s countering. Anyone saying it is just being pedantic, and while they are technically correct they (usually) aren’t suggesting people kill themselves instead of going vegan. You getting offended at pedantry is… odd.

        • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          3 months ago

          In day to day life, veganism has the single highest impact

          I don’t know how this can be quantified, but id love to see how you try.

    • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      30
      ·
      3 months ago

      I’m not watching your YouTube video. if you can’t articulate a compelling reason, just say so.

      I find it hard to believe that it is the biggest impact a single person can have. can you enumerate the other strategies it is weighed against?

      you also aren’t supporting your claims about affordability, health, nor ease with anything but anecdotal evidence.

      • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        20
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        3 months ago

        I’m not watching your YouTube video. if you can’t articulate a compelling reason, just say so.

        What absolutely trash reasoning. “Please type up a compelling reason just for me, I don’t want to watch a well researched and produced discussion on the topic.” It’s bordering on sealioning.

        • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          8
          ·
          edit-2
          3 months ago

          I did watch that video. probably a dozen times. it gets posted often. I shouldn’t be expected to debunk an argument that isn’t made.

          I rewatched* it after I made my comment though, and it does not establish what they claimed. it doesn’t cite sources**, and it’s primary thesis is “it’s complicated”

          edit(s):

          * i actually listened to it. but just now, after i made this comment, i scrubbed it and i found:

          ** they do some pretty hard-to-see and also hard-to-research citation in the form of citing academic papers in the bottom right of the screen around the time they are making the claim. and let me tell you, poore-nemecek is the basis of the lca analysis (which i could have guessed), and that lca analysis is flat out bad science. it’s certainly not a compelling reason to be vegan.

          • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            3 months ago

            Those are very fair objections and that video isn’t perfect - I was only objecting to your apparent refusal to consume a video. A lot of content these days is produced in video form so it’s not reasonable to reject an argument based on media - some topics just aren’t well expressed in a written form.

            But, TL;DR I wasn’t criticizing your opinion or decision - just the common response of rejecting something based on the media it’s presented in.