this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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It's an article about environmental impact
"The impacts of vegans were a quarter of those of high meat eaters for greenhouse gas emissions, and land use, just 27% of the impacts for water pollution, 46% for water use and 34% for biodiversity. "
But let's be honest, you probably dont care, no one seems to care. People who do care are unusual and caring and taking action is unusual and might even earn you derision.
Personally I'm still trying to figure out whether there's any point in trying to change anyone's mind. I have a feeling it's a hopeless waste of energy, which is terrible. If the people do do care lose all will to try to encourage others to see what seems obvious then nothing will get better, it will probably get worse.
I don't think convincing average people to go 100% full vegan is a good strategy. What I would focus on is convincing people to eat less meat, eggs, dairy, etc. It can be a gradual process to even further reduction, or even just a permanent flat reduction is still an improvement.
Convincing two people to reduce their animal consumption by 50% is as good as convincing one person to go full vegan.
i think ed winters has changed his focus from moralizing and guilt-tripping and is now actively trying to make vegan foods more available/accessible. so i don't even think you need to talk about meat at all: just offer people food that happens to be vegan. and i don't mean trick them into eating a soyburger: just make food that is naturally vegan and tastey and then that's the meal someone has eaten instead of a meaty one.
To add to this, a good dish that's inherently vegan is always going to be better than a meat-based dish with the meat replaced.
Amen to that - plants are delicious on their own, no need to try (and fail) to make fake meet with them. Just like I don't want/need my pork chops to taste kinda-sorta but not quite like tofu or beans, I don't want/need my tofu or beans to taste kinda-sorta but not quite like pork chops...
Moralizing and guilt-tripping is never going to work. People will dig their heels in harder or completely cut out your message as toxic and abusive (and let's be honest, guilt-tripping is toxic and abusive shit and people who engage in it should be cut out of your life anyway).
Making items more accessible, available, and affordable is going to do more for your cause than turning a bunch of people away from you ever could.
I think a solution is going to be less about changing minds, and more about changing incentives.
Meat-free food should be cheaper and easier. Walking into a supermarket or convenience store, one should be greeted with affordable, tasty, plant-based meals. The more affordable and accessible we make plant-based meals, the more people are going to eat them. And showing people that they can taste just as good as meat-based meals, will mean people won't immediately steer clear of them.
It’d also be great if they were nutritionally equivalent.
Plant based meats aren’t equivalent to animal meat on that front.
Plant-based diets are usually superior, health-wise, to meat-based diets.
There are a couple of nutrients that vegan diets at one point may have fell short in, like B12 and D being common examples, but at this point those are present in fortified vegan milks or breads.
The only other ones I can think of off the top of my head are a fatty acid present in fish, that is easily supplemented. Or less essential nutrients like taurine, which are also easily supplemented if one finds that they really need higher levels.
Exactly. Most livestock gets supplemented B12 anyway, since the ground/soil is too clean for it to occur naturally like in the past. Might as well cut out the middle~~man~~cow.
It can be difficult to get enough protein with vegan options for people who aren't knowledgeable about the options.
Not really. Protein is not something particularly difficult in a reasonably balanced vegan diet, for most people. There are plenty of dietary sources of protein in vegan cooking.
Anybody requiring particularly high levels of protein is probably already supplementing it. Usually with vegan sources anyway.
Of all the possible deficiencies in a vegan diet, protein is by far the least of people's, already small, worries.
It does get harder when you have to cut out an entire food group because of food allergies though.
There have been multiple scientific studies asking whether vegans get enough protein. The conclusion is always that they do. Here is one of them.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6893534/
I didn't say they don't, I said it's difficult for people who don't know how. You have to spend time on education when you go vegan.
Of course this is just one anecdote, but I stopped eating meat for the climate, because of the numbers. People posting papers, making informative comments (like your first half) changed my mind.
Same, it’s one of the good things that I got from being on Reddit/Feddit.
That's encouraging
I don't think you can change many minds. It would be more effective to make factory farming illegal so that meat prices increase dramatically. People will eat less meat when they can't afford not to.
Again, factory farming seems so, totally, horrific it's obvious that it should be consigned to history.
But feeling that way is something that only a tiny minority of people seem to share. Most people just don't care.
People love meat and are willing to totally ignore the suffering behind it. Never mind environmental impacts. .
Animal products were and should be again luxury products.
That would be nice, but in a democracy, no one is going to vote to inconvenience to themselves. We have to find motivation by other means than being forced, or we will create a society where nothing good happens without being forced to.
Some people will, because they recognize that something is more important than their own convenience. But there are, regrettably, a lot who won't.
Look at the election in the Netherlands, the government had declared plans to reduce the nitrogen poisoning by the animal industry, the animalfarmers made a campaign and the people voted for a conservative right "farmers party"
We need to show support or those who are against change will win.
No individual average person can do anything of significance to fight climate change or have a meaningful impact on the global environment. Only governments or massive organizations can.
If you could do an alternate reality type thing, where one version of you lives a perfect life, environmentally speaking, and the other version lives the worst, the world would be the same at the end of both.
Its not about one person preventing climate change alone, first step is not supporting climate change. Then people around you see that it's not black magic and that they can do it too. We are now at 2%, 3%? vegans. A change in society needs 10% to have a critical mass. If you decide to go vegan, for the animals, for the climate, for your health, and make others think about and maybe even change one other persons view you did better than most.
If you don't you are not passive, you are actively supporting it and showing others that its OK.
Eating meat is actively supporting the industry and everything that comes with it.
Silently not supporting it with a plant based diet is the passive position.
Actively fighting against it is the real fight against the industry.
Governments will not act against the will of the voters alone. They have to have some support to even consider making change. Massive organizations live from the participation from people, from you.
I don't eat meat. But that's beside the point.
There's a difference between one person doing something and 10% of the population doing it. The latter would have a meaningful impact, but the former would not.
And the key part of my point is the average individual cannot make 10% of the population do anything.
If 10% of the population are vegetarians, it has nothing to do with what any single person did. A single person is almost always powerless to affect the world.
I have not power over 10%, like you said. But have the power over me, and my choices and for what I want to be responsible. 10% is just 800.000 single persons making a choice and not hiding from responsibility.
It is not going away and will only be more urgent and more visible. You don't have to do it alone if you want to have more impact. Join groups and organizations, go out and protest. If you want change it does not have to stop at your plate. Go out and talk to people about why you are vegan, be the change you want to see.
.000
you dropped this
See, even more single persons, do you think it is a single hive? those are all individuals you claim don't change anything.
I guarantee there aren't 800 million vegans
That’s not really true is it? There have never been more, better and more popular vegan food options. And while the number of actual vegans is (still?) low, the “less meat” contingent is growing every second.
We have definitely rounded a corner here.
And I haven’t seen any outright derision of vegetarians of vegans since I left college. And that was a long time ago.
If you think I'm going without the odd sausage roll, pizza, spagbol or chippy tea when we've got near-billionaire cunts like Sunak whizzing about the place in private jets, allowing companies to extract more gas from the North Sea, and going on mad rants about anti-car policies, you can think again.
The world is miserable enough without having to eat vegan food.
Yeah I totally get your point. And if everyone thinks like you we're all definitely fucked
@lankybiker @Blackmist well clearly not everyone thinks like him, coz what, 4% of the population are vegan? I’m Team Vegan. I’m really rooting for those guys. I hope they can pull us right out of this mess. I wish them the best of luck.
If you think veganism will save the world, you should probably look at a graph of greenhouse gas sources.
I don't drive. I've already done more than vegans ever will. Got an electric car? Good for you, but in the US that will still be powered by 60-70% coal and gas.
The only thing vegans have is the moral superiority on animal cruelty.
The only thing that will save the world is to stop burning fossil fuels. The only people that can force that change are governments. Once again those in charge have turned the people on each other. "Look at him, he's eating meat! Doesn't he know he's killing the planet?", while they're authorising another gas powerplant being built, or pushing back the banning of petrol cars by five years.
@Blackmist no, I don’t think veganism will save the world on its own. No single solution will… but veganism will be part of the solution. Animal farming contributes about 10% of the green house gasses, so it’s not an insignificant amount.
The world could ban office work in favour of remote work tomorrow. Eliminating the daily commute for a large portion of people would be a huge win fighting gas emissions. They can then repurpose those empty skyscrapers as lab grown meat factories.
Even there, the 10% (and I've seen figures between 8% and 15%) is mostly going to be from the extra fossil fuels used in the production of it, growing the corn, etc, that feeds them, transporting the feed, transporting all the livestock and meat around, refrigeration... Aside from the livestock breathing and farting, it's nearly all power.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357
Mind you, this is from 2 years ago: If we stopped all fossil fuels at that time, our diet would alone increase the temperature by 2°C
It is vastly proven by studies that vegans not only act different in regards of their diet but also in every other aspect, so you are not special. Vegans don't need more cars than any other group.
Even if we could afford to kill billions each year for taste, you yourself stated that it is morally preferable not to. So what is your excuse?
I'm not vegan or even vegetarian, but vegan food is for the most part absolutely awesome and not "miserable" in the slightest. I've had to seriously cut back on meat for health reasons, and I've discovered...I just don't miss meat. Vegan/vegetarian food is often just better.