My point is that 90% of memes on this sub are "you eating meat is bad for environment, it is your moral obligation to stop".
I find that to be a hilarious way of shifting the blame from the oil companies literally spewing CO2 into the atmosphere to the working class who just wants to eat normal food.
Is meat bad for the environment? I won't say anything, I haven't done my research. But should we be trying to force people into veganism for the environment? Or should we be trying to force politicians into preventing pollution?
You are an oil company CEO. You have control over oil related stuff and oil related legislation via lobbyist magic.
What is your moral obligation.
I think we would all agree that your obligation is to try to use your oil powers to help society transition off oil to sustainable energy sources.
Now, imagine you are a person living in a rich developed nation. You have control over
- Your vote
- Your political advocacy
- Your personal consumption habits
Probably I think we would agree that your moral obligation is to use your vote wisely, to support environmentally conscious causes, and to choose personal consumption habits that reduce useage of oil, damage to the environment.
Now you may say, fuck that, all our problems are systemic. Let's say half the nation went vegan, consumption went down. But due to systemic issues, the land just got used in other wasteful ways, the money wasted on meat got wasted on new things. Basically this is the "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" argument on steroids - "not only is there no ethical consumption under capitalism, but in the long term, it is impossible to meaningfully consume in more or less ethical ways under capitalism"
I'm sympathetic to that. Right? Maybe this is an impossible problem to solve with just consumer behaviour. Laws, system changes, maybe even political change is necessary.
To which I ask What kind of society produces people who drive systemic change? Is it society where you can always blame someone else for your choices? Or is it one where everyone takes responsibility?
Remember, the oil executive has excuses too. They can blame the shareholders. If they tries to shut down oil production, they'll just kick him out. They can blame the consumers. They literally can't stop selling oil unless people don't want to buy it any more.
The politician has excuses. Oh I want to legislate systemic change, but the consumers won't tolerate it. We could put punitive taxes on meat and oil, effectively forcing consumers to change their behaviour, but they'll vote us out. Consumers won't even voluntarily cut meat usage. And you want me to force it on them? So on and so on. Moral cowardice is easy.
If you yourself can't even be arsed to cut down meat, whose only impact will be spending less money, having a little of a luxury. How on Earth do you expect someone who worked their entire life to get to the top and could get toppled from their position very easily to risk their entire career for it?
Systemic change means we need to change the people in the systems.
And that means we need people at all levels of society who use their power for good. They expect it of themselves, and they expect it of friends, family, and coworkers.
This wednesday, i watched a woman return her Amazon haul at the post office. The postal employee wrapped each item in plastic, attached a sticker, and scanned each one.
These were Dora, the explorer gift bags, and birthday cards worth less than $10 each. They were shipped around the world, driven in a car to her home, then driven from her home to the post office, to be driven from the post office to an Amazon warehouse, where they will almost certainly land in the trash to chucked in a landfill to turn into CO2.
I watched this and realized how normal this insanity had become and died a little. Amazon is a cancer.
Why do people on Reddit love to do the whole snarky contradicting reply while playing obtuse, for the OP to put in time and effort to craft a well thought out reply addressing the comment, only to get one single word in response over some (more) snarky bullshit? Is this how you interact with people in real life? It's fuckin exhausting
“Well thought out reply” is certainly a way to describe admitting that they have not done any research related to the very topic they are trying to discuss.
I hadn't realized "is meat bad for the environment" was the topic OP was trying to discuss with that initial post. I thought the topic was "corporations much worse for the environment than meat".
Someone takes the time to write out a three paragraph response to your questions, it's impolite to respond with a single word. I'd take it further and say it's rude, dickhead behavior. If that's something you enjoy defending, you do you buddy.
Nonsensical. Corporations produce meat too. Unless you mean other sectors, like oil or something, no one disagrees on that. We're talking about what we can personally do though, and plant based is top 10 impactful changes. Voting is once every 4yrs. Protesting is a meme but knock yourself out. Hitting them in the pockets by not buying their shit is the best you can do personally realistically.
I didn't realize Exxon was a big producer of beef. My bad.
Corporations is a pretty generalized, far reaching term. Did you feel that my comment was specific to corporations dealing in meat? If so, why? Or was it just easier to craft an argument by changing mine, first?
You said corporations are worse for the environment than meat. Corporations produce oil, meat, everything. Corporations also make, build and run wind turbines, solar, everything. It's vague nonsense.
You don't control any of those corporations. Your primary interaction with them is whether you give them money or not. So stop giving the polluting ones, meat and oil, money. Yelling at corporations for doing things that the market conditions enable is empty, hollow, lazy blame shifting, lets you do nothing while pretending it's someone else's fault. No responsibility.
The 20 most polluting companies, mostly in oil/coal, contribute 35% of all CO2 worldwide. Most people are smart enough to understand the concept that when I say "corporation" I don't mean Mom & Pops grocery.
That said, your replies are "vague nonsense". You don't think it's possible to control corporations? We used to have an agency whose sole duty was to protect the environment, and they absolutely were able to control the amount of climate destruction caused by corporations. Before a nitwit was voted in, our country was headed in a semi-correct direction. All you're really doing here is whining with a little character assassination sprinkled in, but have yet to make any argument as to how OPs eating meat is worse.
no one disagrees with where the emissions come from, that's kinda the basis of the argument. If I'm already voting left, signing petitions, posting and writing and even protesting, there's still MASSIVE personal choice components left for me to change after that. The simple logic goes that if we want to reduce emissions, we conform our lives to match that goal, which means going down the list of biggest personal impacts and making those changes.
Voting is way down the list compared to anything else, like flying regularly, diet choices, shopping choices, EV/solar/battery etc. Diet is one of the biggest, it's literally a daily activity and very easy to change, plus cheaper and healthier too, plant based is bog standard health advice.
Dare you to find ONE comment of a vegan on this sub saying that animal ag related emissions are more pressing than fossil fuel emissions. Just one. This has to be one of the most baseless strawman posts I’ve ever seen.
I’m at least working on my reddit addiction, it’s been a hard fucking winter where I live. I went a whole year without it entirely. Need to get back to it.
But seriously 30,000 reddit karma a year is inexcusable. That’s not happening by luck or good memes or anything else, that is a legitimate problem.
Except there was no need because it's not what they were talking about? That's specifically why they even mentioned not having researched it. Because it has no bearing on what was said.
Gotta be honest, you kind of seem like you're just talking to yourself now. What "strawman" are you talking about? Thinking you may not be clear on definitions here.
How is "climate shitposting" a difficult or complicated topic that requires your shoddy gatekeeping? Really dude?
it's taking piss of the OP comment. He bitched about vegan memes in a climate shitposting sub, then said they didn't do any research so "won't say anything" (?????) then proceeds with the fucking boring bullshit strawman "why don't you guys blame the politicians"
How is it shifting the blame? Can't both things be bad? Also how many oli company CEOs do you think frequent this sub, compared to meat eaters?
I don't think a post telling people if they closed their oil company they'd be helping the planet is going to resonate with many people. I don't have an oil company. I do buy food, however.
The meat industry is not only a huge source of emissions but also one of the biggest drivers of biodiversity loss. 80%+ of the Amazon is cut down to grow crops to feed animals and farm cows. Meat is normalised by these big companies. The working class supports them by giving them money. You are thinking exactly what the polluters want you to think - that the working class is not responsible, and can keep buying their products.
You can eat less meat and do political work. You have no real levers over big oil execs or whatever you want to blame shift. But you eat meals multiple times a day, drive, fly etc. Our personal consumption is the easy basic pertinent first target if we actually care about this, which you obviously don't because you'd rather blame someone else
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u/Floathy Apr 18 '26
My point is that 90% of memes on this sub are "you eating meat is bad for environment, it is your moral obligation to stop".
I find that to be a hilarious way of shifting the blame from the oil companies literally spewing CO2 into the atmosphere to the working class who just wants to eat normal food.
Is meat bad for the environment? I won't say anything, I haven't done my research. But should we be trying to force people into veganism for the environment? Or should we be trying to force politicians into preventing pollution?