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?
Jeff bezos probably tastes like drywall and hooker spit.
Hooker spit. Lol. Imagine Jeff Bezos paying you hundreds of thousands to spit on him while trying to hide the fact that, you would gladly do it for free.
I vehemently disagree with this statement.
We need to compost the rich and use that as a soil amendment to grow heirloom vegetables.
A couple of people have spoken to me before about wanting to cut back on, or completely cut meat from their diets, but didn’t know where to start. If anyone reading this feels the same way, here’s some fairly basic recipies that I usually recommend (Bosh’s tofu curry is straight up one of the best currys i’ve ever had - even my non-vegan family members love it)
Written:
- ‘Butter’ Tofu Curry (Written Recipe)
- Lentil Soup (Written Recipe)
- Caribbean Stew (Written Recipe)
- Sweet Potato & Cauliflower Curry Pies (Written Recipe)
- Afghan Kidney Bean Curry (Written Recipe)
Videos:
- 5 Minute Vegan Pasta Sauces (YT / Invidious)
- Ultimate Vegan Chilli (YT / Invidious)
- Enchiladas Verdes (YT / Invidious)
- Ultimate Plant-Based Fried Chicken (YT / Invidious)
- Mac & Cheez (YT / Invidious)
- Wicked Lasagna (YT / Invidious)
- Smash Tacos (YT / Invidious)
Tofu is also super versatile and is pretty climate-friendly. there’s a bazillion different ways to do tofu, but simply seasoning and pan frying some extra/super firm tofu (like you do with chicken) with some peppers and onions, for fajitas, is an easy way to introduce yourself. Here’s a little guide for tofu newbies: A Guide to Cooking Tofu for Beginners - The Kitchn. If you wanna level up your tofu game with some marinades here’s six.
Lentils and beans are also super planet friendly, super cheap, and super versatile! You’ll be able to find recipies all over that are based around lentils and beans so feel free to do a quick internet search.
Sorry for the huge, intimidating wall of text! I do hope someone interested in cutting back on meat found this useful though :)
Thanks for taking the time. This is wonderful.
I’m no veg(etari)an by any measure, but I have this to say to people who are exclusively meat-eaters: you’re missing out on a world of interesting flavours and textures.
Next time you make chicken curry, replace half the chicken with tofu. Bolognese - do half lentils & kidney beans. Beans and legumes are cheap as, great for the current economic climate (and the real climate, I guess…)
PS: mushrooms are the food of gods. There’s just so many varieties, you can use them for nearly anything.
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
If I source my beef or lamb from low-impact producers, could they have a lower footprint than plant-based alternatives? The evidence suggests, no: plant-based foods emit fewer greenhouse gases than meat and dairy, regardless of how they are produced.
[…]
Plant-based protein sources – tofu, beans, peas and nuts – have the lowest carbon footprint. This is certainly true when you compare average emissions. But it’s still true when you compare the extremes: there’s not much overlap in emissions between the worst producers of plant proteins, and the best producers of meat and dairy.
https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat
Plant-based foods have a significantly smaller footprint on the environment than animal-based foods. Even the least sustainable vegetables and cereals cause less environmental harm than the lowest impact meat and dairy products [9].
Yes, I think it’s vital to avoid thinking in absolutes over carbon footprints if we are to make real progress. We can argue endlessly over the “necessity” of consuming meat, but that becomes a distraction. Many things are not “necessary”, but most people are not realistically going to live in caves wearing carbon neutral hair shirts.
We need to continue increasing transparency on the impact of different animal products, so consumers can make informed choices. While also accepting they may not always be perfect.
Tax meat, subsidize healthy meat alternatives.
Could start by removing subsidies.
“Healthy meat alternatives” you can keep your phytoestrogens, soy and antinutrients. Thanks
What’s wrong with phytoestrogens?
It sounds scary
/s
You don’t need to cut meat out of your diet to make an impact!
Cut your meat intake down to just ONE meal a day. That’s it! If everyone did that, it would make an absolutely tremendous impact.
Start noticing how often you eat meat. Many people eat meat for literally every single meal and don’t even realize it, it’s so ubiquitous in most societies.
But also, give cutting it out totally a try, it’s probably not as hard as you imagine
In this thread: Shit loads of people who will say they care about the climate crisis on one day, then say they don’t care about the 18.5% of global carbon emissions that the meat industry causes the next day because they can’t get over the decade worth of anti-veganism jokes and memes that they’ve constantly repeated uncritically.
Individual habits MUST be changed to solve this part of the problem, there is literally no way around that. Getting triggered and writing screeds because you’ve spent decades getting caught up in hate over food choices won’t stop the planet burning.
On the other hand, we could always just wait for the rich to tighten meat production and put us all on nutri-loaf.
Ahh yes we can just wait for the rich to willingly reduce their profits. I’m sure that will come before the heat death of the planet.
Don’t worry, such a change would be accompanied by significant increases in the price of nutri-loaf.
Thank God for trees. Amirite?
Who cares how much meat I eat when there’s a billion cars, 2 billion factories and 1000 greedy billionaires burning the world to the ground?
deleted by creator
Vegans create more than four times the noise pollution doe.
Oh no, people are vocal about stopping animal abuse and climate change, how terrible!
Fully support stopping animal abuse and slowing climate change. Zero support for vegans and their tactics. Being from PDX, the land of angry aggressive vegans. They aren’t getting anyone on their side with those attitudes.
Calm rational argument: *Ignores it.*
Loud annoying spectacle: Why didn’t these noisy veg*ns try a calm rational argument?!?!
Reading OPs other comments, my comment fits perfectly.
Vegan bullies are not helping the agenda
Who have I bullied?
I’m a vegan who isn’t from Portland International Airport(???) and I probably don’t share their tactics.
Condemning every vegan for something a few people do is silly.
Oh, you are that is why I commented. Your last statement is exactly what they do. All meat eaters BAD unless they follow my diet. That doesn’t help to get folks on your side.
No those things are not equal.
Not every vegan acts like that but every meat eater… eats meat.
Vegans aren’t against it for dietary reasons, we are against it because it’s needless animal cruelty.
Reading your other comments, you are the angry vegan.
Bullying people to follow your values is not a win.
Could you try countering the arguments instead of resorting to personal attacks?
Can you point out how I’ve bullied anyone in this thread?
The TLDR: Here, you need to eat these grass clippings to save the planet. Never mind every store you go to has items made-of and encased in plastic. Never mind that your fuel efficient car is made of plastic. Never mind the climate spokespeople that live in houses and fly in private jets have an environmental impact of small cities. Listen to them tell you what to eat and how to live, just don’t question what they eat and how they live. If there is going to be real change, we won’t have yearly cellphone upgrades. Items will packaged in biodegradable materials. We won’t have same-day delivery for anything. Hospitals and medical offices will go back to glass, metal and reusables. They will sterilize instead of throwing away. Items will be repairable instead of refuse when they break. The burden has always been placed on the individual, but a company is given a pass because they say good things, not do good things.
You can easily be opposed to all those things and fight for change while being vegan.
Damn, that sucks.
orders a double cheeseburger for lunch
Edgy, bro.
Can anyone explain to me why being vegan is the new cool, while being vegetarian is equal to eating meat without eating meat? Like, when I’m looking for vegetarian recipes, I only see vegan recipes, no vegetarian ones anywhere.
Because veganism is better than vegetarianism. But also, what’s so bad about vegan recipes? A vegetarian can eat those too.
There is nothing bad about them, except when they start using other ingredients instead of eggs, milk or honey.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/u80_IrSILI4
https://piped.video/auJ0sxb-OsI
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
In my country, supermarkets aren’t allowed to sell eggs from caged hens. Only eggs from hens raised outdoors. There are four categories of eggs marked with numbers:
- 0: eggs from caged hens, not sold anywhere legally.
- 1: eggs from uncaged hens but raised indoors, very difficult to find.
- 2: eggs from uncaged hens and raised outdoors, easy to find.
- 3: eggs from uncaged hens, raised outdoors and feed with natural food, without pesticides and shit, easy to find.
By the way, US is neither the center of the world nor the only country in the world. Sorry to say that, but I think it’s necessary to say it.
The cruel practices are standard all over the world, not just the US.
Exploiting animals for profit is never gonna be humane.
Vegetarianism is totally awesome and you shouldn’t listen to purists who nag you about it.
Every time I read about meat and greenhouse gases I feel the need to explain the natural carbon circle. A cow does not produce carbon. It takes carbon from plants and releases it to the atmosphere. Then plants retake that carbon.
Humans are adding carbon to the atmosphere by digging out stored carbon from the ground and bring it to the atmosphere.
So we have to fix the part where we bring additional carbon to the atmosphere. But yes, there are other environmental issues with cattle if you read the op’s article.
The Biogenic Carbon Cycle and Cattle: https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/biogenic-carbon-cycle-and-cattle
I feel the need to explain the natural carbon circle.
You know that the problem with ruminants is that they produce methane and not CO2 which is 25 times worse? A cow takes carbon from the ground and the bacteria creates a 25 times more potent GHG. But you are right that creating new fields and tiling the soil is a huge factor.
I feel that anyone who advocates to stop eating meat for methane reasons is a vegetarian in disguise who latched onto global climate change to push their own agenda, having failed to dissuade meat eaters on animal rights grounds. They are doing the fight against climate change a disservice by muddying the waters. If they were serious about methane specifically (which anyone concerned about GHG should be, to within (x*25)% of its contribution), they would be dedicating 10 times more of their time in researching some kind of pill to give the cows to stop them from making methane - a much more feasible outcome. But doing so does not synergize with their animal welfare goals.
I feel that anyone who advocates to stop eating meat for methane reasons is a vegetarian in disguise who latched onto global climate change to push their own agenda
funny, I feel that anyone who complains about being told eating beef is bad for the environment is just two kids in a raincoat. Good luck proving me wrong!
The other thing is that cattle needs much more space. From all the fields that we could use to grow food, a large part ends up as cattle fodder.
That’s about efficient use of land space, not related to GHG specifically other than tangentially regarding deforestation. Also elsewhere in this thread cattle was accused of being inefficient precisely because they sit in warehouses and eat cereals instead of grass. If cattle can roam pastures and eat grass, that’s an equivalent amount of cereals that did not need to be grown, farm machinery that did not need to run (on fossil fuels) to grow them, and a good amount of land possibly too hilly and rugged for any use otherwise put to productive human use through grazing.
Too bad that’s not how it works. Because beef is profitable, ranchers have all the incentive slashing and burning rainforest to make more money.
You subsidize this process every time you spend money on beef.
A cow also produces a lot of methane, a much worse greenhouse gas.
Besides, the problem isn’t the grass from cows grazing, it’s the rainforests that go down all around the world to convert to farmland to produce animal feed.
It’s much more efficient to use that farmland to feed humans than to feed cows and then feed humans (1kg of meat needs 25kg of feed)
Disclaimer - I’m not vegan but I try to reduce my meat consumption overall, especially red meats.
The vegan agenda shows when they crumple everything animal under “meat” and everything vegetable under “vegan”, when there are some vegan foods that have higher cost to the environment to be produced than some animal products, when comparing nutrition to nutrition values.
Vegan agenda?
Veganism is first and foremost a movement to avoid harming non-human animals, the environmental benefits are a huge bonus really.
Overall plant based is clearly best, here’s the data.
https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food
