As negotiations get underway at COP28, we compiled a list of the leading research documenting the connection between meat and greenhouse gas emissions.
You’ve got some downvotes … and there’s a pretty strong “don’t be obnoxious to people if you want to persuade them to do something” attitude here … which I generally agree with.
Just to provide my own sentiment here … at a broad, like “historical” level … it does bother me that it seems like we’ve kinda become this coddled culture. Yes, we can be obnoxious about how our choices are better than someone else’s bad choices.
But having frank discussions about what choices and actions are good and bad without getting stuck into ego shit fights is not only healthy but I’d argue pretty fundamental. And that includes whether it makes sense for an issue to be elevated to the government/regulatory level … and then … how we as the electorate are going effect that (because in the end, leadership from government these days isn’t really a thing … which is also part of the this coddled “make every feel good about themselves” culture I feel).
I recently started calling this something like “secondary climate denial” (which I got from somewhere I can’t remember). The idea being that a fair amount of people (myself included I’d say) have acquired a sort of learnt helplessness and passiveness about the climate crisis … have learnt to deny the possibility of there being things that they can actually do and that are actually worth doing. Sometimes we expect things to be more effective and more quickly than is reasonable, so we do nothing. Sometimes we think the world is too big and powerful for us to move it, so we give up.
Sometimes we get worried about letting perfect be the enemy of good and so we give up. And what have we all got to show for it … what have we actually done?!
If/when it goes to shit and we’re sitting grand-children who are asking us why we didn’t stop it from happening and what we actually did … are we really going to be satisfied that, well, we had some arguments online about it and tried to eat vegan as much as possible? Won’t the grand-children then say “I’m vegan too, but what did you do to stop it? Didn’t you do anything?”
You’ve got some downvotes … and there’s a pretty strong “don’t be obnoxious to people if you want to persuade them to do something” attitude here … which I generally agree with.
Just to provide my own sentiment here … at a broad, like “historical” level … it does bother me that it seems like we’ve kinda become this coddled culture. Yes, we can be obnoxious about how our choices are better than someone else’s bad choices.
But having frank discussions about what choices and actions are good and bad without getting stuck into ego shit fights is not only healthy but I’d argue pretty fundamental. And that includes whether it makes sense for an issue to be elevated to the government/regulatory level … and then … how we as the electorate are going effect that (because in the end, leadership from government these days isn’t really a thing … which is also part of the this coddled “make every feel good about themselves” culture I feel).
I recently started calling this something like “secondary climate denial” (which I got from somewhere I can’t remember). The idea being that a fair amount of people (myself included I’d say) have acquired a sort of learnt helplessness and passiveness about the climate crisis … have learnt to deny the possibility of there being things that they can actually do and that are actually worth doing. Sometimes we expect things to be more effective and more quickly than is reasonable, so we do nothing. Sometimes we think the world is too big and powerful for us to move it, so we give up.
Sometimes we get worried about letting perfect be the enemy of good and so we give up. And what have we all got to show for it … what have we actually done?!
If/when it goes to shit and we’re sitting grand-children who are asking us why we didn’t stop it from happening and what we actually did … are we really going to be satisfied that, well, we had some arguments online about it and tried to eat vegan as much as possible? Won’t the grand-children then say “I’m vegan too, but what did you do to stop it? Didn’t you do anything?”