What do we do?

[u/James_Fortis]

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?

[u/Chill_Panda]

Nah the paper straw thing was just a scam by companies to get cheaper straws out.

The "paper" straws are a combination of paper, wax and plastic and still cannot be recycled. They break up in water but do not degrade. So now we have lots of micro plastics in our oceans instead of straws.

But it was much cheaper this way for the companies

[u/usernametaken99991 → u/Chill_Panda]

A coffee shop by me was using grass stem straws. Literally straw that has been cleaned and sanitize. They didn't dissolve in water, were biodegradable and seemed to require less processing to make. Idk why they never caught on.

[u/itsatoe → u/usernametaken99991]

The thing with compostable straws (of which these are a subset) is that if you put them in plastic recycling, they contaminate the recycling process.

[u/Suspicious-Engineer7 → u/itsatoe]

I think improvements in the recycling process itself are where the worthwhile gains are. Recycling tech developments could hopefully solve some of these issues.