Red meat has a huge carbon footprint because cattle requires a large amount of land and water.
https://sph.tulane.edu/climate-and-food-environmental-impact-beef-consumption
Demand for steaks and burgers is the primary driver of Deforestation:
https://e360.yale.edu/features/marcel-gomes-interview
If you don’t have a car and rarely eat red meat, you are doing GREAT 🙌 🙌
Sure, you can drink tap water instead of plastic water. You can switch to Tea. You can travel by train. You can use Linux instead of Windows AI’s crap. Those are great ideas. Also, don’t drive yourself crazy. If you are only an ordinary citizen, remember that perfect is the enemy of good.
Both things are important. And most importantly, vote with your wallet when thinking about what corporations do.
Sure. Vote with your wallet.
But 52.4 million tonnes of edible meat are wasted globally each year. Roughly 18 billion animals (including chickens, turkeys, pigs, sheep, goats, and cows) are slaughtered annually without even making it to a consumer market.
This is a systematic problem that can only practically be addressed at the state level. Meatless Monday isn’t actually reducing your carbon footprint because you’re not actually the one emitting the carbon.
This isn’t like saying “I’m going to burn less fuel by driving less” it’s like saying “I’m going to burn less fuel by not taking the bus”.
They aren’t producing that meat for the fun of it, despite so much going to waste. Its still true that less meat would be produced if less people purchased it long term.
They’re overproducing because they’re heavily subsidized and operating under a functional price floor thanks to the wholesale market and industrial application of their products.
Grocery store ground beef is practically a waste product. Agg Business produces far more of it than they can ever hope to sell retail.
Less people in a single dense region, sure. If half of New York went meatless, you’d see a sharp drop in beef sales to the Five Boroughs.
But if you distribute those 4M people across the entire Continental US, there’s no market mechanism to reduce distribution that granularly. All you’re impacting is relative expected future profit margins per venue. No single business has an incentive to reduce wholesale purchases.
No politician is ever gonna run on a “no meat” platform lol.
Plus it’s not just a supermarket. It’s all the little mediocre burger shops that prop up around it and other restaurants like it.
Take some responsibility. Do what’s right even if it won’t work globally.
If you think something is wrong and is fucking up the planet don’t just throw your hands up and go “meh it’s gonna be at the grocery store anyway might as well eat meat 5x a day hehe yum, guilt free.”
Plenty do, in countries where the agricultural industry isn’t dominated by animal farming.
When meat over-production threatens the general quality of life, the issue flips from an anti-consumer issue to a luxury waste issue.
Just like with private jets and super yachts, the issue only becomes untouchable when your slate fills up with anti-populist corporate flaks.
Whatever helps you sleep at night lol