YSK this is BS. You ain't gonna stop corporate-created climate issues by eating one or two fewer cows. In fact, nothing you can do, will.

luckily u didn't suggest to cut the cheese 😅 cheese is life, I can eat less beef but not my cheeeeeese 🙃

The prevalence of people telling everyone not to have kids in the context of our current culture is weird.

Alt-right: "Hey we're trying to have as many kids as possible so there's more of us, and less of you. Do us a favor and don't have kids."

Evidently a lot of people on the left: "Sounds good dude."

May I propose a reasonable alternative? If you don't want to have kids, cool, don't have kids. If you want to have kids, have the financial and social security to do so responsibly, and a partner who wants the same thing, then have kids (but also go vegan, ride a bike, and raise them to do the same).

Aka, you do you.

this only holds for industrial red meat. I love it when everything gets lumped together and presented as "evidence". Non-industrial, small scale farming actually can have reverse effect. But we don't talk about avoiding industrial products, because... why? 100mile diet that includes sustainably raised meat (white, red blue - whatever) from local farm will have minimal impact on environment. Shall we talk about avocados in Canada or Almonds? Study lacks nuance and produces flashy headings with no substance.

Perfect is the enemy of good only if you WAIT for perfect. I eat minimal meat, get my veggies from a local farm share, have solar panels, an EV that charges only off excess solar production, a heatpump, have re-insulated the attic, ditched the gas range for induction that runs off solar, etc. My footprint is less than anyone around me, but probably still way higher than your average individual living in the global south.

I'm trying to hit net zero and once I hit it, I'll keep going because Canada (where I live) is rich and I want to continue to reduce my footprint (the dream is net negative in my life) because I'm privileged and have the resources to push harder. I make it a game - figure out what's my best opportunity to reduce my footprint, do it, move on to looking for the next thing I can do.

Giving up (most) red meat and patting yourself on the back is severely minimizing what you COULD be doing. I'm a long, long way from perfect, and am exceedingly lucky to have the resources to play this game - but carbon reduction is a way of life, not a checkbox IMO.

The real biggest thing you can do for the environment would be reducing the global human population.

Humans do not produce anything for the environment, the mere existence of humans automatically causes harm to the environment. Humans take from the environment but give nothing useful back. If humans were deleted from the Earth, the environment would not be negatively effected. Even the most "environmentally friendly" human still damages their local environment by being alive.

But you know, killing people is pretty illegal basically everywhere, and extremely unethical in many, many ways. Unethical Pro Tips I guess? Please nobody actually do this.

I can travel by train? Lol. Nice bubble you must live in.

True. Though maybe also activism until manufacturers are held accountable for their production methods and clean up costs. I do my share but I'm tired of being told it's on me. It's on corporate greed. Instead of spending on lobbying to avoid any changes to the status quo, they could spend much less coming up with different cleaner methods of production.

What else?

The statistics probably come from the farms where they keep the animals in one place and they bring their food there. Cattle can be successfully used in land regeneration with the rotational grazing systems. I do agree many eat too much meat, but not anyone does well on a vegan diet. I don’t. I rather eat it moderately and buying quality meat from happy animals.

Meat is a highly dense food source and has lots of essentials elements to human health. And in case of the cows, if they are fed as they should with grass, they transform a not digestible food for humans into a highly digestible one.

People that raise them for their own consumption will not overeat meat probably, because they know how much it takes to raise them well and they have a different kind of respect for the animal than someone buying pieces of meat in a supermarket.

I am very skeptical about statistics like these, because they are not nuanced, as the reality is. It’s like when they said eggs raise cholesterol. What they did not say is that they tested it by giving rabbits(a herbivore) egg yolks. And people then start spreading the misinformation.

I don't buy it.

In 2008 when the travel industry crashed in the wake of the market crash, and again in 2020 after COVID lockdowns started, we saw significant decreases in pollution.

Meat isn't the problem. Fossil fuels are.

Really? A greater effect than not having children, or tireless activism against one billionaire until they realise the error of their ways and turn to the light side?

I’m gonna drive my car…because that’s necessary, but I haven’t eaten meat (red, white, blue, whatever) for 20 years, so between that, not adding to the surface population, and not voting for complete jackasses, I think I’ve at least offset the driving.

I agree with the sentiment, but a small percentage of individuals doing this will make no measurable difference. If billionaires and corporations made similar changes that would make a difference.

Voting is guilt. If you vote for fake ass liberals and their posturing ecology you're no better than a rich guy with a yacht

Not having a kid eclipses all of these by orders of magnitude.