Do you recommend we all give up and not try to do what we can with our own agency? Is that how you live your life, have you given up?
The “personal responsibility for climate change” angle is a distraction. In the grand scheme of things, meat eating makes little difference. It’s the burning of fossil fuels by cargo ships, cruise ships, airliners, private jets, and by governments and militaries.
We’re not going to make a dent in climate change by not eating beef. We need to lobby and fight for extensive regulations on pollution and for investment into green energy generation.
An article like this is just a distraction.
Meat eating isn’t just about CO2 emissions. The meat industry uses a disproportionate share of land and water as well, which are both critical to meeting our climate goals.
Take this article for example: https://www.wri.org/insights/mass-timber-wood-construction-climate-change in it they suggest that part of the reason mass timber is not a viable is because it takes away land from the meat and dairy industry - an issue that would not be there if we globally shifted to plant based diets and used less land overall.
EXACTLY. The personal carbon footprint thing was literally made up by oil industry publicists. It wasn’t part of the discussion, the blame was being laid squarely at the feet of the companies who were destroying the earth for a buck. But lo and behold, here come the publicists and the entire environmentalist movement got caught in the trap.
Hold companies responsible. Do your own thing that makes you feel better, if everyone in this comment section went full-on vegan, we wouldn’t put a tiny dent in the emissions of one individual company—and not even a big company, like, a small-to-medium sized company.
Think about your grocery store. How many people that shop at that one store would have to go vegetarian before they changed their order? And how many stores would have to change their orders for the distributor to order less from the supplier? And how many different regions would need all of those people to all stop buying meat before the supplier put out less meat?
Now punish one company for what they’ve done. It’s in the news, the investors change their tactics, an entire industry could shift with one prosecution. This debate is beyond silly. It’s not individual responsibility. We didn’t cause it, it’s not on us to solve it. We couldn’t if we all tried. This entire community could go vegetarian and not even move the needle.
EXACTLY. The personal carbon footprint thing was literally made up by oil industry publicists. It wasn’t part of the discussion, the blame was being laid squarely at the feet of the companies who were destroying the earth for a buck. But lo and behold, here come the publicists and the entire environmentalist movement got caught in the trap.
Hold companies responsible. Do your own thing that makes you feel better, but even if everyone in this comment section went full-on vegan, we wouldn’t put the tiniest dent in the emissions of one individual company—and not even a big company, like, a small-to-medium sized company.
Think about your grocery store. How many people that shop at that one store would have to go vegetarian before they changed their order? And how many stores would have to change their orders for the distributor to order less from the supplier? And how many different regions would need all of those people to all stop buying meat before the supplier put out less meat?
Now punish one company for what they’ve done. It’s in the news, the investors change their tactics, an entire industry could shift with one prosecution. This debate is beyond silly. It’s not individual responsibility. We didn’t cause it, it’s not on us to solve it. We couldn’t if we all tried. This entire community could go vegetarian and not even move the needle.
Okay let’s hit the meat and fuel companies where it hurts: their wallets
Stop buying meat and fuel.
Look, I get that logic, I really do.
And do it. I’m not trying to stop anyone from going vegetarian at all. But think of how many people need to change before your not buying meat actually has an effect. Because, think about it: you don’t buy any meat, but the store you shop at doesn’t change their order. If you went full vegan today, the grocery store would still stock the exact same amount of those products.
My point isn’t that telling people to go vegetarian is wrong. Not at all, it’s a great thing.
My point is, it’s thinking way too small and it’s actively changing the tone of the conversation. And that change was literally crafted by industry publicists, drawing attention away from the true culprits. The waters are muddier.
If every article and every study that came out telling individuals how to change their lives and sacrifice in order to save the environment were, instead, about how 100 companies are responsible for 70% of emissions, how they had internal studies a hundred years ago about how their product was altering the environment, about how they’ve escaped change via lobbying and misinformation, the pressure wouldn’t be spread out—this conversation wouldn’t be happening. Our lifestyle changes would be exactly as important as they should be in this conversation: a nice addition. Nowhere near the focus. Instead, I see way more articles focusing on how we can all collectively change to fight the monstrous beast that is climate change. That’s telling people to fire bottle rockets at an attacking Air Force. It’s pissing in the wind. When there are white armies out there that get to write off doing shit because it’s on those people.
Again, changing your life for the good of the environment is a great thing. Doing it is admirable. But it’s also privilege-restrictive. Living an emission-reductive lifestyle is literally not possible for a lot of people. Just like being poor is expensive, being poor forces horrible carbon emission decisions on people. I haven’t crunched the numbers, (no one has) but if every privileged-enough person changed, would that be enough? Probably not. More and more people are financially restricted, and talking about eco-friendly lifestyle choices like it’s all about how much you care is incredibly unfair.
But that’s all after the fact of this being a tactic invented by the oil/gas industry to take pressure off of the few companies that literally are responsible for—and that could have a huge effect on—climate change.
This is playing marbles in a hurricane and yelling at the kid who is trying to blow the marbles out of place—is that contribution actually changing things? Sure, a little. But there is a fucking hurricane and any time spent talking about changing that kid’s behavior is time not spent talking about the hurricane.