- FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.worldEnglish6 hours
LOL
This holier-than-thou bullshit again, probably typed out on a device manufactured with slave labor or assembled with parts produced via slave labor.
But sure. Okay.
- architect@thelemmy.clubEnglish6 hours
Ah so if it’s that black and white and surviving means I don’t care about the environment then I guess I don’t. Now you have one less ally. Great job!
- darthsundhaft@piefed.socialEnglish5 hours
One might say that I am a hypocrite. Yes, it is bad for the environment and yes I do eat beef on occasion.
I don’t believe complaining about the problem online will help anything move beyond that. I believe in total, immediate, cold turkey reform that probably causes just as much bad as it does good and I’m also fine with being the bad guy there.
Animal life is still life. Humans like to play God by herding cattle, domesticating, and breeding because they don’t want to commit to the greater good for all. They only want what’s best for humans.
Popular opinion around some corners here, generally more unpopular opinion when you touch grass.
But I’ve heard these kinds of arguments from people IRL, and my response is pretty simple: I do care about the environment, but there’s only so much time and energy I can devote to it. My day job is already essentially expanding public transit infrastructure, something the environment badly needs, just look at the GHG emissions of the transportation sector as an example. I don’t isolate myself politically, partially so that I can give people in otherwise more right-wing circles a bit of a window to what’s actually happening and give those that are more left-leaning (and more environmentally minded) in those circles who are somewhat worried about sharing their opinion an emotional home there. My phone is a fairphone, and I used my last phone for I think about 8 years. I can’t be perfect, and I never will, no one ever will. I do what I can. I enjoy beef (even though I don’t eat it super often), and I need to be able to enjoy things every once in a while to stay sane in this world. Even Greta Thunberg was “caught” using one-way packaging at some point, and you know what? It’s irrelevant. She isn’t perfect, either. She’s just pretty damn good at it.
If they still don’t get it, I show them my fairphone and ask them what their phone is. I shit you not, it seems like it’s always an iPhone, one of the worst offenders around. “You have an iPhone. So I guess you don’t care about the environment?”
- Fallibilist@feddit.ukEnglish14 hours
Then why am I picking up other people’s trash from the ground when nobody is even there to see? Why am I leaving half of my yard unmowed for pollinators? Why am I uprooting invasive species when I encounter them in the wild? The simple fact of occasionally eating beef nullifies all of that?
In a binary world you might have an argument there. We’re just not living in one. This is just a way to pick a single thing you do/don’t do and then congratulate yourself for being better than other people.
- 13 hours
Firstly i want to say i don’t think environmental concern is about judging the moral worth of a person - proving that someone is good or bad. That seems to me implied in both your comment and op’s title.
Purely in terms of impact to climate change, claiming a share of the greenhouse gasses and land-degradation of beef industry by eating beef is almost certainly much worse than the benefit from litter removal, half a lawn for pollinators, and some invasive species removed.
Those are all good things, and no one is “bad” for eating/not eating something, but in terms of impact, the harm from eating beef probably would nullify the benefits of the good things you do.
- Fallibilist@feddit.ukEnglish13 hours
“You don’t care about the environment” is a claim about one’s personal values. A person can value the environment while also valuing things like taste, nutritional value or convenience. Just because those values might at times be at odds with each other it doesn’t mean they can’t exist at the same time.
I value safety too but I also want to get to work on time which is why I drive 100 kph on the highway even though I know that it’s among the most dangerous things I do in my daily life. You simply can’t conclude from there that I thus don’t value safety.
- 12 hours
I think you can accurately conclude someone’s values from their actions - it’s the only way you can.
Are you familar with posiwid - “the purpose of a system is what it does”? The idea is it makes no sense to describe, say, our healthcare system as designed to maximise health when it fails to do that. What it does is maximize profit, that’s its purpose.
Similarly it makes no sense to describe someone as valuing safety when they don’t do that. Often our actions put the lie to values our identities encourage us to profess.
However deeply we feel them, values that aren’t reflected in our actions cannot be our values.
- Fallibilist@feddit.ukEnglish12 hours
The values don’t exist in a vacuum. There’s a life one needs to navigate in between. There’s always tradeoffs and nobody’s life survives this level of puritan scrutiny. OP might not eat meat but I have zero doubt that if we start going through their daily life with a fine-tooth comb we’re going to find plenty of other stuff there that they do that they absolutely don’t need to do that causes damage to the environment.
The starting claim is rhetorical overreach. Occasional beef consumption does not function as proof that a person places zero value on environmental outcomes.
13 hoursThis is just a way to pick a single thing you do/don’t do and then congratulate yourself for being better than other people.
Correct. That’s vegans in a nutshell.
why do I do all these things which are good for the environment but then do the one thing which outweighs all of those things in terms of impact?
Cognitive dissonance is one hell of a drug.
- Fallibilist@feddit.ukEnglish10 hours
Discussion is about values, not the total environmental impact of our actions.
I get it, but if you claim to care about the environment but needlessly participate in something which drastically harms the environment, that necessarily requires cognitive dissonance or acceptance of hypocrisy.
Totally agreed. But people are entitled to take up individual space without that being indicative of the greater collapse of society. I mean nobody asked to be born, we’re all just trying to figure out how to survive on this rock.
- nutbutter@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish14 hours
PS - soybeans and derivatives like tofu has all 9 amini acids, that is complete protein.
- remon@ani.socialEnglish7 hours
That’s why I prefer ground beef. Why bother wasting resources on plants and animals when you can just get it directly from the ground?
- 13 hours
I raise animals, I look after them well and at the peak of their lives I butcher them and use them tip to tail.
Someone eating impossible burgers and oreos have a much greater environmental impact than I do.
- threeonefour@piefed.caEnglish12 hours
That’s just incorrect. The water, food, and land taken up by your animals in the months from birth to slaughter are order of magnitudes above the amount needed to grow the equivalent amount of calories of plants.
Livestock need plants to grow. You need to grow plants first, then give it to the livestock, and you need a tonne of plants for each animal. Cutting out the animal and just eating the plants instead is an enormous gain of efficiency.
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
It’d be like saying you create your own energy on your property by maintaining a forest which you sustainably log to use as fuel for a boiler where you use the steam to turn turbines and that’s more environmentally friendly than someone getting their energy from a solar farm 100km away because the solar farm isn’t local.
- commie@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish7 hours
this conclusion is based on poore-nemecek 2018, a dubiously methodized study. the conclusion may be right but the study used cannot support that.
- BassTurd@lemmy.worldEnglish10 hours
So by that logic we just just cull all creatures because they require resources to live.
logic is not a strawman
Too bad it’s not logic.
Threeonefour pointed out that existing costs resources, and it is inefficient to use those resources to produce meat.
Bassturd made the leap to conclude we should kill those who cost resources (everyone)
Threeonefour did not assert that we should kill anyone.
That IS a strawman.
- NewDark@lemmy.todayEnglish14 hours
Good ratio for an unpopular opinion.
Agree to an extent but you can’t individual action your way out of systemic and material forces.
- Norn@lemmy.zipEnglish10 hours
Probably the systemic way to deal with this would be to have food prices cover environmental mitigation costs. How do we get there?
- architect@thelemmy.clubEnglish6 hours
Oh so starve poor people or force them on a diet. Mental health be damned. Just pump more humans onto the earth and punish 90% of them with a bug diet and tell them they should be happy to be alive!
Now that’s a strawman. Where was that other person using it incorrectly?
- Norn@lemmy.zipEnglish6 hours
Well, what do you suggest instead? Sounds like you’re saying we should reduce the Earth’s population?
If everyone wants meat to continue to be cheap, we’ll never get there. Which is where the “focus on collective action” position falls flat.
If you’re not willing to reduce or eliminate meat from your diet, are you gonna support policies that make meat expensive? If so, you’re a unicorn.
- 11 hours
As rage bait as the title is, it fails to be unpopular
- spankysalmon@fedinsfw.appEnglish14 hours
Your beliefs would only ever be true in an informed society.
What makes you think everyone is informed already and merely deciding to support cow concentration camps?
- NewDark@lemmy.todayEnglish14 hours
You have an uphill climb to convince a large percentage of people to care about humans outside of their immediate family or country let alone animals.
- spankysalmon@fedinsfw.appEnglish13 hours
I understand. I will never lament. Period. Ever. Ever. Write this down in your anti-bio notes; Fuck you.
- pulsewidth@lemmy.worldEnglish12 hours
Disagree because showing evidence that you’re uninformed is in itself evidence that you don’t particularly care about the issue.
Seeking to educate yourself about something is evidence you care about it.
- Fallibilist@feddit.ukEnglish12 hours
Individuals are not systems designed for a single purpose. They navigate multiple, sometimes conflicting goals under imperfect information, habit, social pressure, and especially finite attention.
- pulsewidth@lemmy.worldEnglish7 hours
And?
My premises:
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People learn about the things important to them.
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Almost every single adult in the UK (as an example, since that’s where you’re posting from) has been exposed to the idea that eating meat is more environmentally damaging than a plant-based diet many dozens of times over their lives.
If they don’t care to research that fact or choose to ignore it, then they mustn’t rate the environment as highly important to them.
“Life’s complex” is a cop-out.
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- Hayduke@lemmy.worldEnglish14 hours
There was a shirt my wife used to have, “Real environmentalists don’t eat meat.” We would get some pissy looks from people, even at earth day festivals which was amusing. The slogan does generalize to a degree, but in terms of the typical western diet, it is difficult to make much of a case against it. The cons seriously outweigh the perceived benefits at the end of the day.
So, not really unpopular for those who have invested some real time honestly evaluating the environmental footprint they leave. But for the majority of the population, it’s a pretty inconvenient reality to come to terms with.
I don’t think it would be so bad if Beef and other meats weren’t marketed as an every day staple of breakfast, lunch and dinner. I know people who eat hamburgers, steak, and other red meats as their primary caloric intake every day. Bacon & eggs for breakfast, hamburgers for lunch, steak or more burgers for dinner. That’s grotesque just from a health perspective, not even accounting for the environmental impact.
- 11 hours
Having children is the most environmentally damaging thing people can do
I’ll keep enjoying beef, and my freedom from children
