Eating less meat ‘like taking 8m cars off road’
A new Oxford University study pinpoints for the first time how high- and low-meat diets impact the planet.
8 metres of cars??? What is that these days, one ford f150?
I exclusively drive strech limos
Eight-metre cars.
Astute
Additional note: per UK. :) The predicted effect, either in meters or millions of cars, is if the UK inhabitants currently eating a high-meat diet switched to a low-meat diet.
great. but why don't we go double and also take 8m cars off the road?
"I want to help save the earth!"
"Great! Eat less meat."
" . . . . No."
I mean, I’m 90% veg for environmental reasons mostly. But every time we share this narrative that the effort needs to be on us while the true culprits are literally upping their consumption is fucking sick. Don’t guilt people for not doing 1% of what is needed while the people/corpos doing the other 99% are pushing this “personal responsibility” narrative and literally created the language to deflect blame. We should be way more upset and spend 20000x the effort shaming and shutting down those organizations.
It doesn't matter if you put 2000x your effort into something if it has no effect. If you spend all your day shaming these corporations on lemmy that won't do anything. So the question should be what actions can make an effect?
Protests don't really do much. Electoral politics, at least here in the u.s. , are completely captured by these corporations and will never truly challenge them. I doubt what just happened in NYC is a valid tactic either. A revolution or even just a general strike is pretty much out of the picture right now.
The best and only way to get at the mega corporations causing all the climate change is to boycott them. The meat industry is burning the Amazon and emitting tons of methane, boycott them and eat less / no meat. The fossil fuel industry is lobbying congress to deny climate change while increasing production and emitting more every year, boycott them and buy less gas by driving less or taking public transit.
In this capitalist hellscape the only real choice we have is of consumption, and choosing what to consume and more importantly what not to consume is the only real way we can effect the system.
I wouldn't worry much about the "I'm doing X more to offset you doing Y!" crowd. Probably a few act like that but firstly they'll say it to everyone they don't like (and one meat eater eating 2x meat can't feasibly offset more than one vegan, so their impact is limited) and secondly most of them are just ragebaiting.
The same people post shit like "omg getting a Starbucks!!!!" under videos calling for boycotts due to Gaza.
I absolutely agree with you. Meat is something that has a big impact on the climate and this is something that we as the consumers actively can control. If society decides to buy less and instead higher quality meat the demand will go down and therefore the CO2 footprint. However, this is nothing that is possible without the government supporting this change.
Sure, it's more than just encouraging people to drop meat and dairy. It's also voting for people who will make it financially impossible for those industries to continue.
Relatable
I ain't gonna stop eating meat to save 100g of CO2 a year while Taylor Swift takes her jet when she needs to tinkle.
Why is your moral compass calibrated according to the worst people? Is not being the worst possible human being good enough?
Also, as long the general public doesnt change whats acceptable and what not through their actions, why would the rich change anything? Theyre not the ones who will suffer from climate change and they dont care.
I've seen very few 8 metre cars on the road...
Visit the US, look for "dualies." 6.5m long trucks and people use them as daily drivers.
That's too dystopian for my mind to even imagine...
That's because I ate less meat, duh.
12 yards long, 2 lanes wide, 65 tons of American pride!
If eating no meat at all is too hard, from a climate perspective eating no beef will have the biggest impact. Eating no ruminants to be specific, but hardly anyone is eating bison/sheep/goat on the regular.
I went like 90% vegetarian and switched to the meat substitutes. If I can do it, anyone can. I've always had a meat-a-saurus diet until 2-3 years ago.
I've only met one person who couldn't go veg, because they had allergies to everything: soy, legumes, nuts.
There's been a lot of obsession with protein in popular culture when in reality unless you're a bodybuilder you don't need a ton and a veg diet will suffice. And there are tons of vegan athletes.
The point I was making is that there is one step even the laziest can take to have an impact: just stop eating beef. Going full veg is better of course.
I eat bison instead of beef, that way I'm a big part of a smaller problem rather than the other way around.
Hey how about you cut down on private jets and I keep eating my burgers
Yeah right, eating less meat smells awful lot like "calculate your carbon footprint"
Two things can both be done. Saying one thing is worse is only an excuse to do nothing. Those rich fucks on their jets will probably point to companies polluting more. Do what's best and advocate the same for others. Everyone just pointing to something else is how we end up in the situation we're in. "I got mine. Go attack them!" Changing ourselves allows us to see all issues and work on them all.
While I support not eating meat, I am also realistic and reducing is good enough.
But the problem is that not every meat is created the same. There is one footprint for meat feom animals that are grazing and are used in regenerative agriculture and much bigger from industrial farming of cows fed with irrigated alfalfa in desert.
It should certainly be the first step. I've started like this, continuously less meat, your gut-biome slowly adjusts. I'm still not vegan/vegetarian but basically eat no meat anymore (mostly leftovers of others). A good part of it is that I just don't really like meat anymore (tastes kind of rotten?).
I recommend going this route, as I think it's easier to get into a vegan diet.
That said I think we (as a global society) should strive towards eating only vegan long-term. We got the food science and it just feels wrong (moral, inefficiency, health) and isn't sustainable.
While I support not eating meat, I am also realistic and reducing is good enough.
No, we gotta completely uproot the animal agriculture industry if we want to save the planet and no “regenerative farming cattle” still uses too much land/water and has bovines abused and slaughtered for nothing.
Okay, then I might as well just keep eating as much meat as I do now though? If we have to be perfect and most people aren't going to be perfect, there's no point in even trying.
Or maybe get off your high horse, accept that humanity isn't perfect, and try to get people to eat less meat first, then worry about getting them to eat no meat at all. 50% of people doing 70% of what they should is more useful than 10% doing 100%.
Well okay then.
If my only options are, "Continue eating all the meat you want and the planet is fucked."
...or, "Stop eating all meat and go completely vegan...and the planet is still fucked unless everyone else does it too."
Well...
... fire up that grill, man, I've got some steaks and burgers in the freezer.
God, seeing the comments from some people that I'm even nominally on the "same side of the aisle" makes me see how the other side finds it so easy to not only ridicule, but automatically unite in opposition against it.
Like, nothing brings me closer to being understanding and sympathetic to the people I'd normally be ideologically set totally against...like visiting Lemmy and seeing the shit flowing from the people I broadly tend to align with.
How many cars off the road does a dead executive take?
What about Taylor swift...
I am all about eating less meat for various reasons but this some idiotic thesis.
Why not both?
Are you implying that we should only do good things if they are the most good things in existence? Like, I shouldn't have an electric car because planes exist? Please enlighten me.
You transition out of meat to save the environment.
I transitioned out of meat because of meat recalls and all the chemicals they sneak in a cow, and was ripping the hardest farts that would clear out a room.
We are not the same.
Dat odorless, anxiety-free, harmles fun of vegan farts!
Not kidding. Had a vegan apologize when she ripped a loud fart because steamed carrots made her gassy.
Not a single person smelled anything.
A bit underwhelming when put into the context of the estimated number of cars being closer to 1.5B, but worthwhile to pursue regardless.
Its also way better for you.
Legit, I was so warned about eating disorders when I was young, I never learned to just eat light and how fasting is a thing.
Eat some nuts and enjoy some other stuff. Meat shoumd ve cuts, and it should only 2-3 times a week.
I am a fan of context. There were about 29.1 million vehicles on the road in the USA in 2023.
8 million is a lot, and part of the overall solution.
Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/859950/vehicles-in-operation-by-quarter-united-states/
The article is just about the u.k. The number would be larger for the u.s. due to both population size, and that the u.s. eats more meat, around 50% more. Although we do drive more per car here as well, so that may effect it as well.
why are the slabs of meat in little towels like they're on a spa day
It's cheesecloth, and not sure. Dry aging? My immediate thought is someone has an Egyptian predilection. What are mummies, if not dry aged meat.
There are an estimated 1.475 billion cars/trucks/vans in the world, as of 2023. 8 million is 0.005% of 1.475 billion.
Now, if they're going by the number of vehicles in the UK, then that number is obviously different. 41.2 million estimated vehicles in the UK. 8 million is a significantly larger percentage in that equation (19.4%). They also don't mention whether they're talking about ICE or electric cars, but I think it's safe to assume ICE. In 2023 there were 851,000 licensed zero emissions vehicles in the UK, up 57% from the prior year.
I'm a strong proponent for cutting your beef, lamb, cheese, coffee, and chocolate consumption , as they're among the worst, emissions-wise (bearing in mind this chart is by kilogram, not by calorie) by a long-shot, but we should be realistic about the things that are likely to do the most good.
We recommend four widely applicable high-impact (i.e. low emissions) actions with the potential to contribute to systemic change and substantially reduce annual personal emissions: having one fewer child (an average for developed countries of 58.6 tonnes CO2-equivalent (tCO2e) emission reductions per year), living car-free (2.4 tCO2e saved per year), avoiding airplane travel (1.6 tCO2e saved per roundtrip transatlantic flight) and eating a plant-based diet (0.8 tCO2e saved per year). These actions have much greater potential to reduce emissions than commonly promoted strategies like comprehensive recycling (four times less effective than a plant-based diet) or changing household lightbulbs (eight times less).
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541/pdf
I wish cloned meat was a viable thing. No animal suffering, far less pollution, sticking it to the vegan.
• save the planet
• save the animals
• stick it to the people who thought of all that first
Why would this be sticking it to a vegan if you are eating a cloned organism with no experience of life? Its not a zero sum game, you can both have some (vegan) pie.
There are great alternatives today like impossible, beyond and tofurky. There’s no need to wait for lab grown meat. That’s like saying sticking it to the abolitionists and feminists. It’s silly to want to stick it to the most moral people in the world.
No idea what that is about, maybe because I do want to eat meat, without the moral implications.
Anyway, I doubt I can get away with it in this conservative shithole country. If I didn't live with my parents, I would have cut meat quite a lot. I actually prefer salads and such.
I don’t care what anyone says, take some dry aged ribeye cooked to perfection, or some smoked ribs falling off the bone and compare that to some frozen tofurky log and tell me with a straight face that that’s an alternative. Forget about ballpark, gardein and beyond aren’t even playing the same sport when it comes to something like a smoked turkey leg.
Veganism is admirable. Animal welfare, carbon emissions, nutrition, these are all good reasons to stop eating meat altogether. But let’s not delude ourselves here, meat can be just about the most delicious food in existence. I have tried tons of fake meat products and they all taste like sodium cardboard nuggets.
Very mature of you.
But they hurt my fee fees with their mean words!
"new" study, draws half it's methodology from referencing older papers, including the problematic poore-nemecek 2018 piece.
As long as billionaires are allowed to run around and do what ever the fuck they want I will continue eating meat and not giving a fuck about recycling.
As long as billionaires have zero consequences then I will have zero sacrifices.
Fuck you all as long as you let billionaires destroy the earth while the poors take the hit.
Nah fuck all that shit.
If you want me to stop eating meat then fucking make me.
That’s absolving yourself of your personal responsibility to your health, the environment and the animals.
Just because someone is stepping on puppies doesn't make it okay for you to do it too. No one should base their morality on the reprehensible things rich people do.
Besides the plant-based alternatives are great, you wont be missing meat for long.
I obviously don't know anything about you other than that you're a lemmy user and I get your sentiment. Remember that there are likely those worse off than you as well as those with more, and those worse off will be more affected by the ongoing climate crisis.
I'm not gonna make you do anything, but by not doing anything, you're throwing those even worse off than yourself under the bus, in the same way billionaires are throwing everone worse off than them under the bus.
We don't all have to screw people over who have less power than us, even if that's what billionaires do.
As long as Israel is allowed to bomb children with impunity I will continue to beat my children.
They kill dozens of children in a day and I beat mine maybe once, twice a week. They're the real problem, and I'm not making any sacrifices until they're held accountable.
Except it's not because the industry is not going to reduce its production and instead of being used it will just be thrown away at the store. They would require a significant chunk of the population to get on board with this to such a degree that it forced them to reduce production which will literally never happen there's other more realistic things we can be doing
Raising animals costs a huge amount of money. Who can afford to raise animals that aren’t selling?
Good point, but the market is very inefficient system for determining supply.
And big companies have other methods for dealing with low demand like
No, it will increase the production costs and reduce the profitability of meat products.
Going vegan is the best thing you can do for the environment as an individual. As animal agriculture causes at least 14.5% of emissions, uses up 75% more land and wastes ungodly amounts of water.
A whole foods plant-based will reduce your risk from chronic diseases and lengthen your life expectancy.
Do the 30 day vegan challenge and do better for yourself and the environment:
making food is a good use of land and water
I feel like you missed the part of my message where I said it wasn't realistic. You are correct that if we could convince a large portion of the population to switch it would reduce profits and ultimately cause the industry to scale down. The entire point of my message was that that's not going to happen no matter how much you talk about how good it is no matter how many facts you give you are simply not going to get a majority of the population to give up or even meaningfully reduce their meat consumption.
So instead of wasting your time spending your wheels on something that will never happen you could be doing something more productive that actually has a chance of succeeding.
Why don't we start by making private planes illegal instead? That amount of pollution to just move around a couple of rich assholes is insane.
Also, let's force the industry to repair and upgrade all their infrastructure to apply more recent carbon filters. That way, we could block a "very" big chuck of the problem at his source.
But no... Let's keep taking away things from the middle classes instead. After all, who needs meat, bugs are way cheaper, right?
Whole lot of whaboutism from personal responsibility and no body wants you to eat bugs.
instead
We're not doing either, because both the animal agriculture and private airline industry exist to benefit our liege lords
You'll be eating the bugs (and liking it) soon enough. Just have to find the profit motive
