• SmolSweetBean@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 year ago

    OK, but what if instead of going vegan, I just don’t have kids. Because adding more people to the world also creates more greenhouse gasses.

    • derf82@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      Exactly. Not having kids covers my any excess from meat and driving easily.

      We’ve been eating meat for millennia, while climate change has only been an issue for a century, yet somehow meat eating is the problem, not the billions of people we have added.

      • Spzi@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 year ago

        Fossil fuels are the problem, but not eating meat is a juicy, very low hanging fruit.

        There is no other way to prevent that much emissions for basically not changing anything. You will still eat 3 meals a day for a similar price.

        • derf82@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 year ago

          It’s not nothing to me. Eating isn’t a mere chore, I eat because it is enjoyable. Vegan entrees just are not consistently palatable to me. Take away meat and I’m sorry, but my list of reasons to live will dwindle.

          And besides, I’d argue not having kids is an even lower hanging fruit by your reasoning. That even saves money. A lot of money.

          • Spzi@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            1 year ago

            Take away meat and I’m sorry, but my list of reasons to live will dwindle.

            Seems you haven’t had a good veggie dish yet. I totally get how enjoyable food is central for a happy life, but you don’t enjoy it because it was killed instead of harvested. I’m pretty sure you have a few veggie foods you enjoy, maybe without realizing they don’t contain meat.

            And besides, I’d argue not having kids is an even lower hanging fruit by your reasoning. That even saves money. A lot of money.

            As said in a nearby comment: Only if you didn’t want to have kids anyways. In which case it should not be counted as a saving.

            If you want to have kids but don’t because of climate, that’s probably tougher to stomach than a slight composition change on your plate.

            • derf82@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              0
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Seems you haven’t had a good veggie dish yet. I totally get how enjoyable food is central for a happy life, but you don’t enjoy it because it was killed instead of harvested. I’m pretty sure you have a few veggie foods you enjoy, maybe without realizing they don’t contain meat.

              Or maybe I have different tastes than you.

              I really hate that attitude that because it isn’t much of a sacrifice for you, it isn’t for anyone else. People are different.

              Heck, even if I found your one magical dish, I’m not going to eat it for the rest of my life. Even with meat, I choose variety.

              As said in a nearby comment: Only if you didn’t want to have kids anyways. In which case it should not be counted as a saving.

              If you want to have kids but don’t because of climate, that’s probably tougher to stomach than a slight composition change on your plate.

              Oh, so personal preference suddenly matters? Seems you haven’t found the right hobby yet. I totally get how kids are central for a happy life, but you don’t enjoy them because they are your kids instead of pets. I’m pretty sure you have a few activities you enjoy, maybe without realizing they don’t contain kids.

              See how you sound?

              How about this, you don’t eat meat, I’ll not have kids? We’ll see in 100 years who had a more meaningful impact on climate change.

    • Bipta@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      What if you don’t have kids and just make an effort to reduce intake of animal products knowing it contributes to global collapse and also represents a modern holocaust.

      Animal products don’t have to be as all or nothing as having kids.

      • kartonrealista@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        That moment when your veganism goes so hard you commit a hate crime on the internet implicitly comparing Jews to cattle

        Edit: I’m from Poland, the country where most of the Holocaust happened - this is where the Jewish population was the highest and where Germans build their death camps. We read about it extensively at school, including eyewitness accounts describing the atrocities involved in this horrific campaign of human extermination, from the home of the Jew, to the ghetto, to the transport train, to the camp, to the gas chamber and to the furnace. Many of us heard those stories from our grandparents, of their neighbors being humiliated and taken away, ghettos liquidated, and public executions. I don’t know what kind of deplorable scumbag one has to be to equate factory farming with the Holocaust.

        • Primarily0617@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 year ago

          *implicitly comparing the treatment of Jews during the holocaust to the treatment of cattle today

          also, you can compare two things without equating them

          I think if you actually cared about the words you wrote, you wouldn’t have used them as the basis of a lazy strawman to win an argument on the internet against veganism

          • kartonrealista@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            I don’t care about arguing about veganism. Just stop bringing up stuff like this. Also, do you think calling something a “modern holocaust” is not a comparison in terms of scale of harm? As opposed to every other time those words are used?

            Edit: If you want to argue for veganism, stop bringing up Shoah. It’s disgusting, downplaying the severity of the genocide, and earns you no favors with the general population. It has negative convincing power.

            • r1veRRR@feddit.de
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              It’s 90 billion every year. If their suffering is 15000 less significant, that’s one holocaust a year, every year, since many years. Why are you using Shoah, if holocaust is so obviously only one thing? And why are the voices of holocaust victims/survivors/relatives totally fine to silence? Many have made that comparison, shouldn’t they know best whether it’s comparable???

              You are correct however that this argument is utterly stupid and useless to make, esp. online, where there is zero context.

        • Spzi@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 year ago

          implicitly comparing Jews to cattle

          Yes, it’s a tasteless comparison. I’m a German. Hello neighbor, nice to live in peace.

          The comparison also falls flat because while the Holocaust was a genocide, meant to eradicate, factory farming is the polar opposite.

          The population size of factory farmed animals is usually way above natural levels, because we farm them. A philosopher even called it an evolutionary win for the farmed species (which does not justify any harm done to individuals).

          There are more ways to express ‘very bad’ than comparing to the Holocaust, and many reasons not to, if you understand it.

          • renownedballoonthief@lemmygrad.ml
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            You’re right, it’s so much fucking worse than the Holocaust by orders of magnitude. At least the Nazis weren’t raping women to keep the Holocaust perpetually going.

      • Screwthehole@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        100 corporations contribute 71% of all emissions, and I’m supposed to stop eating the pork I bought from a local farmer? Fuck that noise!

    • jsveiga@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      Instead of going vegan or not having kids, I died when I was 5. Because living also creates more greenhouse gasses.

      In fact, having a small footprint is just a matter of choosing how miserable you’re willing to make your life.

      Unfortunately the Earth cannot sustainably support so many people living COMFORTABLY, and eating WHATEVER WE LIKE. The more people, the more miserable is the globally sustainable way of life.

      Curbing population growth - not Thanos-like, but through education and availability of contraceptive methods - is the only way we can all have the cake (and the meat) and eat it.

      Many wealthy countries have their population declining. Maybe if we get to the same level of wealthiness everywhere, less people would engage in procreation.

      In any case, if we just do nothing and the doomsday evangelists are even nearly right, extreme weather, plage and famine caused by climate change will indeed curb the population. Eventually it reaches equilibrium.

      In this case, the faster we get to the edge of the abyss, the quicker the situation will solve itself.

      • Spzi@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        having a small footprint is just a matter of choosing how miserable you’re willing to make your life.

        In many areas yes, but not when it comes to food. A plant based diet is in no way miserable. There are still too many places with bad kitchens making it seem that way, but that’s just a lack of skill on their part.

        I’d say my food experience rather became less miserable when I stopped eating meat, and my footprint decreased by a lot.

        Eventually it reaches equilibrium.

        In this case, the faster we get to the edge of the abyss, the quicker the situation will solve itself.

        If you open the window to ventilate for 20 minutes that’s different from replacing the air in your room in 2 nanoseconds. The violent shockwave of the latter will probably damage your stuff and harm your health.

        Similarly, the speed of climate change matters a lot. It is required for plants and animals to migrate and adapt, for people to migrate and adapt, for infrastructure to be built. It makes all the difference between a devastating blow and adaptation, while the reached equilibrium is the same in both cases.

    • Djennik@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      The problem is not the amount of people but how much each individual consumes. Getting meat out of your diet is a simple and a small sacrifice. Besides the health benefits there is also the fact that you don’t contribute to the culling of 70 billion animals per year (of which 40% is probably not eaten and thrown in the trash). Not only that but you don’t contribute to the greatest cause of deforestation, antibiotics resistance, decline of biodiversity, water waste, …

      Besides the global population is steadily stagnating (Africa is still booming) as a lot of countries see population decline (less than 2 children per woman).