this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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I don't like these kinds of articles because they always have an undertone of making it a matter of personal consumer choice as opposed to systemic change.
WRI published an interesting article on this subject a week or so ago:
https://www.wri.org/insights/climate-impact-behavior-shifts
I like the bikelane analogy, actually.
It shows clearly that (a) yes you do need activism (like Critical Mass) and a few crazy ones that will bike regardless of the adverse conditions, (b) political will to shift towards bikelanes, (c ) wider adoption but also sustained activism to build better bikelanes (not painted gutters on the side of stroads, but protected lanes, connected with transit).
We definitely do not lack (a), but (c ) FOLLOWS (b). If you want to go from "just the crazies" to "everyone and their 5 year old", systemic change needs to be backed by very concrete top-down action.
Without very meaningful (b), telling people to change their eating habits while stuff is otherwise the same is like telling people to take their kids to school on bikes next to crazy SUV traffic: it's not happening.
Except it is happening. And its not fucking dangerous to cook a pot of beans instead of dead birds lol
Good. But until it becomes as cheap and easy for a family of 4 to eat vegan as cheaply, completely and easily as it is to not, let's not make finger wagging the political strategy for change. Nobody wants that.
Do you really think that beans, broccoli, lentils and all the vegetables, fruits, legumes.. are more expensive than meat? Don't forget that meat also has subsidies to lower the final price, so you are also paying in taxes this "cheap" meat.
Fortunately it's always been cheaper to eat vegan. Typically 30% cheaper, on average.
Sure, but you're not factoring in the cost of time spent learning how and the time spent preparing. I can afford that time, not everyone can. Again: the issue is systemic, not about personal smarts or purity. Ask the simple question: what is the cultural default and what do you have to go out of your way to get. What is easy for regular people? For example: in India, even the language used is indicative: veg vs non-veg. Veg is well supported with cultural practices, abundant and easily and conveniently accessible yummy veg food. In North America, it's literally the opposite.
That's why I like the cycling analogy. The Dutch are not better people, they just have infrastructure that encourages cycling. The easy, the default.
true, but you have to learn to cook and try out a whole bunch of dishes from around the world. you don't get to just go to mcdonald's anymore you gotta take it into your own hands
Systemic change doesn’t happen without political will. Political will depends on personal opinions. Try to bring in systemic change with an election win but not overwhelming support then you get reactionary backlash like we’re seeing right now.
Which is why I think it's better to start with some kind of populist attack on the excesses of the super rich. How many beef burgers was Katy Perry's publicity stunt in low orbit?
But you don’t really have an advantage there. The super rich have a populist army of their own (maga) and they’re going all out with it in an attempt to destroy the left by attacking its foundation: academia.
If we simply stopped subsidizing meat consumption entirely the rising cost would shift more people to plant based diets.
Nope, the government would get replaced at the next election, though.
But it has to be both if only because somebody has to show the way. Governments are not going to clamp down on meat ag when the whole electorate is cheerfully eating meat.
Personally I see the argument "I can't do anything, it's about the system!" as a extremely convenient cop-out. Any system is made up of individuals.
And all ills in the current world are the result of a very small set of people. A small group of people has been pushing meat eating like crazy.a small set of people placed tiny taxes on meat.
A tiny percent of people are the reason why shipping is so big and so polluting. I can't change that, nobody can change that, except a tiny amount of people.
A tiny percentage of people are the reason why we have such differences in wealth in society.
It's a tiny amount of people that are the push behind all wars
I could go on for a while but blaming the common people for the world's ills is disingenuous from my perspective.
You want everyone to eat less meat? Start taxing meat properly. That requires politicians to do their jobs: make decisions that will make the world better for everyone, instead of making decisions that will make him or her get elected again.
Most politicians are lazy and or think people are stupid. People would understand meat being more expensive if explanations of why would be clearly posted everywhere and alternatives would become cheaper and more abundant.
Then again, we now live in a world where all idiots have a bigger megaphone than any scientist ever had. That too should change. I'm aorry, fuck your free speech, not everybody should be allowed to have a megaphone and talk about stuff, but that is a slightly different subject. Either way, that too could be solved by a tibt sliver of people
The gulf between your worldview and mine is so wide as to make a productive discussion impossible. Unfortunately.
That says more about you than me.
I think it's a bit more nuanced than that. If you look at the history of regulating substances or practices deemed harmful to the public, it's almost always led by governmental oversight. We knew asbestos was harmful way before it was regulated, but that didn't stop corporations from utilizing it in everything.
The whole point of federal governments is to moderate corporations at the systemic level. Corporations know they can win the fight against individual responsibility, but they're terrified of regulation.
We've already done this with the environment once before. The creation of the EPA popularized the push for clean air and water at a national level. Prior to the regulatory action there were of course people worried about pollution, but nothing really came of it until there was a regulatory body put in place.
Yes yes, I understand all that. It remains that people are using the systems argument as an excuse not to change their own lives. I've seen this in action and so have you. No democratic system is going to change when citizens are not lifting a finger individually.
There's a legitimate argument to be had about the hypothesis where voters continue not to lift a finger but vote for green parties that promise to force them to. But that scenario seems to me too absurdly hypocritical and schizophrenic to be worth considering.
Of course it's necessary to change the system, but that's never going to happen until a critical mass of individuals put their actions where their mouths are.
I mean everyone including you does that to some level, otherwise we'd all be eco-terrorists. The small sacrifices you or I make are virtually meaningless, and are really just ways to make ourselves feel better. If you or I really put all our eggs in the basket of individual impact then we'd be blowing up oil wells. But we don't, because we want to be comfortable just like the people "not lifting a finger".
I would say that we don't really live in a democratic society..... More systemic change in America is driven by the will of a few powerful individuals than the voting majority.
How do you quantify lifting a finger? To reach a "critical mass" we'd still have to enact systemic change for items like education and economic safety nets. People aren't going to "lift a finger" for something like meat consumption when they are living paycheck to paycheck in a food desert where most of their calories are coming from premade food from convenient stores.
Or simply to act to with moral coherence and avoid unnecessary cognitive dissonance. So that's one difference between our attitudes.
That would IMO be a negative impact. Ecoterrorism does not work. Wrong ethically, and counterprodutive. So that's a second difference.
These are questions of deep philosophy, not simply judgements based on facts. You don't see things as I see them, and vice versa. In a pluralistic society that should be manageable.
Hence this third difference. The very fact that we can express disagreements like this and not be arrested is proof of something. The fact that our politicians are useless or malevolent is because we are those things. No societies in human history have been as free and democratic as the modern West. Things were (much) worse before, and soon they're going to get much worse again.
Anyway. An unbridgeable gulf. Others can decide which of us, if either, is "right".
Which is a way to make ourselves feel better...... I don't eat meat because of my morals, but I don't think for a second that its meaningful on a societal scale, or makes me somehow morally superior to those who do.
But if we reach a critical mass of people who do think eco-terrorism is good then we would stop climate change.... If you're not willing to lift a finger for the environment how do you expect anyone else to?
Eco-terrorism can only be a negative impact because of the social mores it clashes with, which will never change if voters don't really care about the environment. As far as ethics goes, that's really a matter of perspective. Is it really morally troubling to destroy property than it it is to let that property destroy entire ecologies?
Btw, im not actually advocating for eco-terrorism, I'm just utilizing your logic to make a point. We all could be devoting our entire lives to push society to be more green, but we are human. And part of being human is wanting to be comfortable and live within our social norms. No amount of personal responsibility is really going to make a difference at a scale that really matters unless we are already in a position in that society to do so.
Two unimportant people discussing mundane topics without being arrested has been fairly standard in just about every society in human history.
Eh.... I tend to believe that power corrupts and that the corrupt seek power over people. I would hope that you or I are both more morally upstanding people than the people in charge of our society.
Lol, that's just incredibly naive. There is a higher percentage of people in prison today than ever before. I'm not arguing that there haven't been times and places where it's worse to be alive....but it's simply impossible to accurately claim that the modern west most "free" society that's ever been created. Freedom means different things to different people at different times, as does modernity.
Lol, it's only unbridgeable because you refuse to participate in discourse. This isn't a right or wrong type of conversation, the whole point of communicating in an open forum is to learn. Nobody cares about the opinions of two schmucks talking about ethical consumption on the Internet.