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.
Also it’s morally the right thing to do if you have the choice.
Ok, sure. Tangentally related, have you seen the ending to the show The Good Place?
That show pissed me off so much. They actually straight up concluded that there is no ethical consumerism under capitalism, and then… just rewrote the universe’s metaphysics so that you get a pass for that, and American consumerism becomes standard religious doctrine
Genuinely, thank you for sharing. That’s an interesting takeaway and a little different than mine. What do you think matters more the ethics of destroying/replacing the system vs the ethics of negatively affecting/interfereing with those in the system? Example: Would it be ethical to kill/euthanize all the cows in a cramped feedlot along with whoever is in charge so it wouldn’t happen again?
Clearly murdering a farmer is also wrong, if there were easy answers then we wouldn’t be where we are now.
But, I think the Judge had it right when she said “find another tomato”, and the scriptwriters allowed the main characters to handwave it away as “no that’s too hard” without being challenged any further on it.
It goes back to OP’s original point; we don’t have to go to total war, we just need enough people to draw a few more lines that they stick to most of the time.
Oh, I hope that didn’t come across as a trap question, sorry if it did. I don’t know the exact right answer myself.
I guess my thoughts on the “too hard” statement comes from the feeling of fighting for every inch I can get against the hyper-sucessful businesses creating the gross system I’m forced to be in. People’s basic needs are not taken care of and mental health is in crisis. I find it hard to justify judging people based on anything other than how they handle directly interacting with something or someone. After all, I buy local as much as reasonably possible and have reduced the meat consuption for my family, but sometimes I’m just exhausted and get a burger because I’ve been craving one all week. Those in power need to enforce moral imperatives on others in power before I focus on individuals.
I am glad to read that last part. Not enough small changes are celebrated and encouragement goes so much further than criticism. Especially when it’s in such short supply.