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://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-beef-industry-fueling-amazon-rainforest-destruction-deforestation/

https://e360.yale.edu/features/marcel-gomes-interview

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2023-06-02/almost-a-billion-trees-felled-to-feed-appetite-for-brazilian-beef

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. But, don’t drive yourself crazy. If you are only an ordinary citizen, remember that perfect is the enemy of good.

  • bitjunkie@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Operative word you. Individual action was a deliberate red herring constructed by the FF industry propaganda machines half a fucking century ago, because they knew who the actual significant contributors to the problem were.

    • BussyCat@lemmy.world
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      It’s a manner of perspective, Coca Cola is considered one of the largest polluters on the planet but that’s not because corporate Coca Cola is out there polluting for funsies it’s because they make a product that individuals purchase and then individuals improperly dispose of. Sure no one person can stop Coca Cola from polluting but isn’t the pollution caused by your individual purchase your own responsibility?

      • bitjunkie@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        No. Coke could make biodegradable packaging and choose not to because number go up. Next question.

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      If everyone got together and did the individual action, it would become significant.

      But getting a big percentage of the population to come together and do something is the challenge.

      • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
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        Economics will force something eventually… That’d how we ended up using plastics to wrap all of the food we eat 🤡

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        it’s more than a challenge, it’s a fucking fantasy dude lmfao. people don’t wake up everyday and choose to do these things, they do these things out of necessity. even if individual action was effective in stemming climate change (it’s not), you have to acknowledge that people aren’t choosing where and how they get their food. you can’t blame someone for not being willing to sacrifice their own comfort or economic posture for a *checks notes* infinitesimally small, improbable, and uncertain chance that their actions might help the environment, maybe, just a little bit. that’s fucking patently absurd to expect any rational agent to make that choice the way you are advocating.

        even in this weird victim-blaming mindset people advocating on this basis have, the corps are still at fault! it’s fucking doublespeak and brainwashing, i swear.

      • BussyCat@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        300m cows slaughtered a year at 500lb of beef per cow and 22lb of co2 per lb of beef is 1.65B tons of co2e a year from cows. Global aviation makes up 920m tons of co2 from flying

    • Wulri@lemmy.worldOP
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      Operative word you. Individual action was a deliberate red herring constructed by the FF industry propaganda machines half a fucking century ago, because they knew who the actual significant contributors to the problem were.

      I do agree that real change takes political power. You need things like tax breaks for people who use public transit, congestion pricing, taxing airports more, banning ads for SUVs, requiring electronic devices to be repairable, etc… These actions would be far more efficient than any individual action. Sure.

      But political power isn’t enough. Look at what just happened in Canada.

      Justin Trudeau banned oil tankers off the coast of British Columbia and he tried to ban single use plastics. He faced outraged reactions.

      Some angry politicians were publically taunting him on social media and sued his government :

      https://www.ctvnews.ca/calgary/article/we-will-continue-to-push-back-alberta-to-continue-single-use-plastics-ban-fight-with-federal-government/

      A guy literally campaigned on defending plastics and slashing the (tiny) tax on carbon.

      https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poilievre-scrap-plastics-ban-1.7514037

      See what happened? The guy was the Prime Minister. He tried some small changes. He faced brutal political backlash. Why? His people weren’t ready.

      Change starts with individuals. Only when you reach a critical mass of individuals can you start trying to push for policy changes.