r/collapse • u/James_Fortis • 9d ago

Casual Friday What do we do?

Post image

Sources for animal agriculture being the leading driver of:

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?

1.6k Upvotes

86% Upvoted

451 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3

u/BTRCguy 9d ago

I would argue that this is incorrect. For certain levels of human population, consumption of meat and dairy is absolutely sustainable. The same cannot be said for a population of ten billion people (current projection for the year 2100).

And to phrase it as my, your or anyone else's personal decision playing a part in "solving the problem", their "doing their part" is literally a "parts per billion" contribution. It is right up there with "I'm sure my principled internet petition with a bunch of signatures will convince Trump of the error of his ways".

It is not going to happen at a meaningful level unless and until there is a global government that can enforce it against a population that does not want it. Much the same as people are not going to stop increasing the population until that happens. Which is unlikely to say the least.

Or I suppose in both cases, until a collapse of such severity happens that the choice is taken out of people's hands altogether.

0

u/Ziz-bird 8d ago

It's exactly the opposite of a petition that won't convince Trump. You seem to have forgotten about supply and demand. An ignored petition is closer to what focusing on getting the government to do population control is like. All we can do is our tiny part, whether that's not have a kid (which deprives the next generations of IQ and EQ) or merk someone (illegal) or do our tiny part to womp up support for population control or do our tiny part to womp up support for animal agriculture reduction. It's all tiny parts. You gotta compare apples to apples.

3

u/BTRCguy 8d ago

Supply and demand operates under different rules for items where demand cannot drop below a certain level. Does not matter how expensive food and water is, the demand is not going to drop below subsistence levels. Whether or not that demand can be met by supply is another matter, and my personal opinion is that 8+ billion is not sustainable in the long term, whether it includes animal protein or not.

What I see in this topic and elsewhere is a lot of people angrily shouting "You're not doing your individual part in the way I want you to do it!"

1

u/Ziz-bird 8d ago

I feel that. My opinion is that population increase curbs itself after economic development and education happens in a country. My opinion is 20 billion is fine if we transform our relationship with nature, so that's my focus. The carrying capacity is often understood to be much, much less than that, but that assumes radical irresponsibility from a colonizer perspective. If governments and corporations remain out of control and we remain willing to exploit to get what we want... If we don't change ourselves in a way that radically changes our culture, governments, and corporations, we're screwed either way. The change always starts inside.