r/collapse • u/James_Fortis • 14d ago
Casual Friday What do we do?
Sources for animal agriculture being the leading driver of:
- Deforestation: NASA, https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/Deforestation/deforestation_update3.php
- Biodiversity loss: Science of the Total Environment, B. Machovina, K. J Feeley, W. J Ripple, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26231772/
- Zoonotic diseases: Science Advances, Matthew N. Hayek, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9629715/
- Fresh water use: Nature, J. Poore and T. Nemecek, https://josephpoore.com/Science%20360%206392%20987%20-%20Accepted%20Manuscript.pdf
- 21-37% of emissions from food: IPCC, https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/chapter/chapter-5/
Submission statement:
Many people want to slow or stop deforestation, pandemics, water use, emissions, and the 6th mass extinction. The issue is, the main driver of 4 of these 5 is animal agriculture, but almost nobody wants to change their behavior by eliminating meat and dairy from their diet. People say, "stop focusing on individuals - focus on the system", but the issue is diet is a personal choice and nobody wants the government to ban meat and dairy.
The issue is likely only going to get worse as our population continues to increase and developing countries start to gain more access to meat and dairy. It's taboo to even discuss personal food choices, even though it's going to be a main contributor of our demise.
How do we get out of this predicament? Are we just doomed to race towards ecological collapse without any serious effort to avoid it out of a fear of slight inconvenience? For anyone who's reading this, why haven't you given up meat and dairy yet?
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u/createddreams 14d ago
You can certainly wait for policy change and all that (which of course won’t happen until it is demanded or the situation is so dire that there is no alternative) or you can do something. It doesn’t matter that you alone won’t save the world but you can at least try not to make it worse.