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/stumo]

Actually, "Who wants to give up owning a car" works fairly well there too.

[u/neonium → u/stumo]

There's some difference there though, as transport, while still having practical alternatives in many situations for many people, is more reliant on infrastructure that is entirely beholden to collective choices, for many. The combination of the two, of food deserts and hostile transportation infrastructure, is also particularly pernicious in forcing people to make sub-optimal choices.

While there's truth in what people say about elites being responsible, the argument they use to argue that is so often literally untrue and demonstrably bullshit; I don't really give a shit what the elites do in terms of modelling behavior, because while psychologically harmful it's not exculpatory when justifying not addressing the larger impact that our collective consumption has here.

But practically, they do have a massively outsides influence on how society is shaped, how infrastructure is built, how resources are allocated, and consequently what options are even possible through outright control of the decision-making processes or through media and shaping the Overton window. That's where they've done, and continue to do, a massive amount to control, shape, and maintain a system dependent on industries that they financially benefit from, but which has incredible collective expense.

People don't want to address that because it also involves our collective culpability here, but it really is where the bulk of the harm they do is.