this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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I wish I could cope as good as you. Is going vegan the answer?
Reducing your meat consumption is likely the most effective way of lowering your personal climate 'footprint'.
You don't even have to go fully vegan. Use 20%, 30% or 50% less meat and you're already doing a lot.
Also look up climate impact of different types of food (and where it comes from), and use that to prioritize. Chicken, fish and pork are up to 10 times less impactful than beef.
I hear this a lot, but I think the context of what other actions are available and their relative impact is important in this kind of discussion.
Of course, this is all with the knowledge that trying to put the onus of fixing climate change on the individual is both doomed to fail and a great burden for many. Climate change can only be properly addressed by top-down action, which we should all advocate for.
What's the difference between "Switch electric car to car free" and "Live car free"? The latter presumes a petrol car?
How would "kill yourself" rate on this chart? Depends on how old you are, I suppose.
7/11 isn't bad.
Too bad they crammed hard malthusianism at the end of the graph.
Vegans really need to embrace this strategy. Reduce meat consumption is a much easier sell to the majority of the world, and it would open them up to the idea that vegetables can make a complete meal.
Too many vegans I know try to get you to buy into their lifestyle from the start. Bruh, I'm an American and I can tell you from personal experience that most Americans, especially down here in the south, do not consider something a meal unless it has meat in it. You are not going to convince these people to stop eating burgers straight up. This is a cultural thing that isn't going to be easy to change. Going full vegan is a deal breaker. Cutting back on meat for your personal health might just gain some traction.
You don't even have to go vegan. You can just go vegetarian.
It's also extremely effective. Seems like people just forget it exists.
I'm vegetarian mostly to save money but if someone gifts me meat? I won't be wasting it.
But think of the bees!
People who know nothing about beekeeping and the fact that it is important to preserving the endangered species that are bees:
I have been told by many vegans that honey and sugar are not allowed, as they are both animal products. Apparently sugar is refined by using cattle bones. They told me you can use agave nectar instead.
Honey is fine honestly. Only miseducated people would be against the use of honey as honey harvesting causes 0 damage to the hive and beekeeping actually helps save bee populations. The alternative is not helping the bees, which are already endangered.
On sugar I agree though. Sugar can come from many sources and generally you wanna cut out sugar anyway since it's not healthy.
Give it a shot, can't hurt. You won't become Buddha overnight, but it can certainly put you on a path toward much different ways of seeing yourself and everything around you.
Even if it isn't you could use the same approach in many other ways. Increase game difficulty by giving yourself bonus objectives. I gamify life quite a lot to do the boring stuff and try to be healthy. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to keep it up.
Labeling this as "cope" is just straight slander against vegetarianism. Most people who are vegetarian don't expect "it's going to change the world" so there's no "coping" to be had with the fact that it's not.
Vegetarianism choices can be based in health, ethics, not wanting to support mega corps, dislike of the taste, environmental impact, among other things. "it's going to save us from climate change in light of everything else going on in the world" is a tiny clueless subset of just ONE of those rationales.
Vegeterianism isn't "hopeless" or "cope" unless you're delusional enough to believe that everyone doing so would instantly solve our problems. Sure, some people think if everyone did it, it would make a difference, but very few think it'd fix all our problems.