the demand will always be there. Humans like to eat meat. I doubt very many will give up the privilege, esp. when others are not.
So any solution that improves the production of meat should be a good outcome. Ideally, lab grown meat (of the same quality and taste as from a cow) with low emissions is the best, but we aren't anywhere near that level of tech yet.
I guess that's why we're all doomed to a broken planet. As long as we keep using "well, no one else is going to change" as an excuse we'll inherit the world we deserve.
Now that developing nations have started to get richer, western nations cannot say that they ought to now make a sacrifice and stop consuming meat, because doing so _is_ hypocrisy.
This is mostly already happened with solar / wind power, though we need some improvements on battery tech to get grid-scale adoption. The levelized cost of wind is lower than any alternative, and solar is getting close. I’m sure the situation has improved in the last two years, but here is a report from 2018:
https://www.lazard.com/media/450784/lazards-levelized-cost-o...
True, but if people who otherwise realize the necessity of the change are unwilling to subject themselves to any inconvenience, what hope do we have of ever making the kinds of organized societal changes that are necessary? If you are unwilling to make a tiny change like reducing your meat consumption, you're probably the kind of person who would never vote for a government that forces you to.
The argument is simply way to excuse your own behavior.
We don't need self-imposed austerity measures. Just end the meat & dairy subsidies.
Reducing methane from cattle is important, finger wagging at consumers is a red herring that will deepen partisan divides.
Correct.
> going in with the mindset that "this isn't useful unless innovation and policy changes come about"
Curbing methane emissions by including seaweed in the feed is useful and proactive. Blaming consumers is not.
But there's empirical evidence that not many people want to stop eating meat. Look at how few vegetarians there are, compared to non-vegetarians. Do you really think those people don't know it's possible to live healthily as vegetarians?
Humans evolved eating meat - just a whole lot less of it than we do today. It was a luxury, something you got once in a while, when an animal could be caught. I believe if we all went back to this intake level (90% vegetarian) we, and the planet, would be better off.
Worth noting that being vegetarian does not necessarily equal healthy. There are plenty of vegetarians who are just eating mac and cheese. My sister, when in high school, became iron anemic due to poor food choices while being vegetarian.
So how do you explain that many people become vegetarians even though they checked all the boxes of "knowing it is possible but yet not willing to change"?
I was in that category until I was not. Why?
I knew it was possible (like almost everyone) and I didn't want to stop eating meat. But it isn't just an information, it's a belief (how the knowledge affects you, exactly).
What makes people believe they can't or don't want is mostly a product of culture/habits. It's really easy to change that, especially as it's become a hot topic. Not everyone changes at once, but it's quite viral (when people stop eating meat around you, the possibility of change doesn't seem abstract anymore). Idem when restaurant start offering good options in their menus (not a mere salad).
The issue is not of "knowing" but of "realizing". You can't distinguish people who are in one camp or the other as if those who change their eating habits become whole different persons, all the sudden.
For those of us who are active athletes, there are a lot of anecdotes about people who tried vegetarian or vegan diets and found they had trouble recovering from workouts or healing from injuries. I suspect many vegetarians suffer from subtle, sub-clinical nutritional deficiencies and that makes me hesitant to give up meat.
I gave up meat 6 years ago. All of my non subtle clinically diagnosed health problems went away.
I did it because I couldn't think of killing animals anymore and the wonderful side effects of obesity, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure all went away.
I'm never touching meat again.
Assuming equal caloric intake there is no reliable evidence that eating meat increases obesity, blood sugar, or blood pressure. Rather the opposite.
Plenty of people lose weight, drop blood sugar and drop blood pressure by going keto. And some with a more extreme carnivore diet.
The real comparison here would be to have "2 people like you" 6 years ago and have two interventions. One going vegetarian and another going keto or carnivore, and see where there are now.
Yes! I actually do think that! Anecdotally, almost every time someone, especially the 50+ crowd, finds out I eat a vegan diet they ask "are you getting enough protein?!". My answer is usually "do you think about how much protein you're eating right now?" and the answer is always no, people don't think about their diets period, even the easy tracking stuff like macronutrient intake. Given the obesity epidemic going on in the US right now, many people don't know how to live healthily as omnivores.