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Eating meat creates four times more greenhouse gases than being vegan, landmark study finds
(www.independent.co.uk)
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this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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Yeah 4 times 0.0000000000000000000000001% of what the largest companies produce.
A single individual? Sure, but that is a bad comparison. World wide food production is responsible for over a third of all carbon emissions. That isn't inconsequential.
But one person stopping eating meat compared to one company making a change. Heck one company adding solar panels to one office building is still probably going to make a bigger difference than one person going vegan.
Can you get companies to install solar panels? Few of us can, but (almost) anyone can go vegan. And even if you can influence corporations to reduce emissions, you can still go vegan! It's not either/or
It's not an all or none thing, either. You don't need to sell your car and swear off animal products - even small changes help. Pick one place you normally drive to and try biking there or taking public transportation instead. Give up beef but keep eating chicken etc. You can make a difference without doing a total 180 - and you might even feel healthier for your trouble.
But the impact of convincing 7 billion people to change their eating habits will never be as high as convincing 500 CEOs to change the direction of their companies to use cheaper, green energy and reduce their energy usage. Plus they'd save money in the long term where as individuals will lose money. Seems like a much easier task to undertake for a government.
I'm not so sure which one would have larger impact, do you happen to have any info about that? Of course the best option would be if both of these happened.
What I'm trying to get to, is that just because our own impact is small, it isn't a reason to do nothing. There is no need to feel existencial threat from eating a steak or flying, but it's best to remember that every little thing helps.
There is also the social effect: the more people make climate conscious decisions, the easier it becomes for others to make those same decisions! We are scial creatures after all.
Also vegan diet is generally cheaper, as long as you don't eat only things like fake meat. After all, lentils and beans are much cheaper than meat.
But changing society takes waiting a generation at least. We don't have that kind of time. People are already dying.
And yes when produced in bulk, a vegan diet can be cheaper but the meat industry is powerful and gets lots of subsidies. Plus animal products are used in lots of products other than food, so all of the industries have to change and subsidies moved to realize that savings. Right now it's definitely cheaper to buy animal products if you do a calorie to cost comparison which is what's important to the majority of the world. It's only wealthy places that are concerned with low calorie foods.
So again. What's easier/faster. Educate the young, wait for the old to die off, slowly change the industries as demand changes... Or incentivize the companies, that produce by far the majority of greenhouse gasses, to stop doing it now with their money and power to make quick changes. I mean even Walmart has shifted significantly to green energy. And not because of public opinion, because they obviously don't care about that, it's because it saves money.