You Should Know

The metric of per kg of product, while entirely fair, can be a bit misleading when it comes to making high impact decisions in your life. The switching to tea example is a good one to criticize because on this chart coffee is quite high up there, but I consume only 15g of coffee a day, compared to probably close to a kg of meat, egg, and dairy. Eliminating coffee would not be a high climate impact decision.

I've been the bane of chickens all my life...

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.

Not loving that the exact source of the data in this graph is not clearly linked in the description.

Mmm, close to 700 comments. Have fun yall.

This is true, and also not usually well taken by most people, even the ones claiming to be pro environment.

Wait until this thread gets full of people saying that their habits are irrelevant because companies pollute much more - which they do indeed, but that absolutely does not negate the many studies we have that calculate a major impact if we simply dropped red meat.

Which is again quite obvious if you think about the energetic demand of growing food only to feed an animal that then will become food, rather than skipping this step and eating the original food instead.

Until Exxon and BP are no longer in business and global shipping transitions to zero emissions, there is nothing an individual human can do that will have an impact in any way on global climate. They problem is systemic, not individual

Nuts are nuts!

Not disagreeing that meat is bad for the environment, but I think not having kids is probably way above cutting out meat.

That's almost certainly the biggest dietary change you can make.

But for overall impact, there's one winner and it's bigger than everything else put together.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children

Capitalism hates this one weird trick.

Veganism is good, necessary even, but more than voting we need to actually overthrow capitalism and replace it with socialism. Profit will destroy the planet unless we take control of the reigns from capital.

perfect is the enemy of good.

I wish vegans and vegetarians would be a bit more willing to promote this viewpoint. It’s insane how many otherwise normal people will refuse a single meat-free meal for no reason other than identity politics.

My single greatest contribution for the climate is not having children.

Do billionaires count as red meat? I am asking for a friend.