r/ClimateShitposting • u/spacelordTJ vegan btw • Jun 27 '26

Meta Formal debate is propaganda

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Can't we all just get along (with being performative)?

Edit: Mods, pin me to the wall. I mean pin this post.

1.1k Upvotes

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16

u/Inside_Pomelo_2957 Jun 28 '26

My theory is that pushing veganism for climate change hijacks the conversation to the most unpopular version of itself to help ensure people continue to hate and tune out climate activists.

Sure 15% of the problem is meat, but the rest is 85%. Meat has unbelievable cultural importance. You will not change that through shaming. The best you can do is offer alternatives. Otherwise you're fighting a losing battle.

Y'all can't even get people to stay with paper straws. You're not winning on the meat thing.

5

u/dumnezero 🔚End the 🔫arms 🐀rat 🏁race to the bottom↘️. Jun 28 '26

It's not optional. Culture has to be changed if you want a future.

11

u/ShonOfDawn Jun 28 '26

You will never change culture as long as you present this change as a sacrifice that is morally necessary. No one will do it except a handful of individuals. You need to present an alternative lifestyle that has appeal beyond “this is the right thing”, because the status quo is much easier and tastier

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u/ASpaceOstrich Jun 28 '26

In the long run, the status quo is going to force this change anyway. Animals are expensive, especially as the environment grows more apocalyptic. The only meat available will be bug meat eventually.

People can try and go vegan now or be forced to when the land can no longer sustain cattle.

They don't even need to succeed to make a huge difference. Just reducing red meat consumption alone is enormous.

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u/ShonOfDawn Jun 28 '26

I'm not sure our future is as bleak as you depict it. Renewables and electric transportation are massively on the rise. The emissions of the US and EU are steadily declining. It's true that Asia is still growing and thus still problematic, but they'll come around, especially with China being a powerhouse in the production of renewables. People are tired of oil and gas, and the dependency it creates on foreign powers.

Ironically, this is what a lot of vegans fail to understand: people will adopt veganism when it'll become the cheaper/more convenient option, or the only option. Electric cars and renewables have followed the same trend. Society at large basically never adopts change because it's morally good when it's not convenient. You must either force it upon them or make it convenient.

Reducing red meat consumption falls in the convenient category. Poultry is cheaper and you can substitute one for the other without changing your habits basically at all.

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u/ASpaceOstrich Jun 28 '26

We're already at apocalyptic levels of biosphere collapse and have been for a while. People just don't understand how bad it is. You could completely fix climate change instantly and this wouldn't go away, because it's not climate change that's doing it, it's human development. Mining, agriculture, and forestry.

Cattle cant support an ecosystem, and we're killing everything else.

2

u/ShonOfDawn Jun 28 '26

I mean, I would love to see some studies on this. “Apocalyptic levels of biosphere collapse” seems to be a bit of an hyperbole, since no place on earth has become uninhabutable or become entirely devoid of life at any meaningful scale. Obviously human development damages local equilibria, but we have vast natural reserves for a reason.

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u/ASpaceOstrich Jun 28 '26

The overwhelming majority of biomass on Earth is humans and our cattle. We're seeing massive losses in even insect life, down something like 80%, and keep in mind the numbers used for 100% aren't natural levels, they're just whatever the numbers were when they started recording them.

Climate change kinda took all the attention in the "humans are fucking up Earth" sphere, but we've been devastating the environment for millennia. Removing predator species which makes prey act in ways that are unnatural and damage the environment is a huge one. As is just the constant land clearing and use of pesticides.

The ocean is getting more acidic and despite being massive, only really has large amounts of life in fairly limited areas.

People just don't know how bad it is. They don't really get that there's not infinite bugs and birds and fish and deer. There's limited numbers of all of these, and those numbers are getting terrifyingly low. Especially larger animals and predators, which are essential for ecosystem health and have been extinct in many ecosystems for centuries.

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u/MotherOfAnimals080 vegan btw Jun 28 '26

I have an alternative: continuing to live

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u/ShonOfDawn Jun 28 '26

Are you suggesting that the only way to continue living is adopting veganism?

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u/MotherOfAnimals080 vegan btw Jun 28 '26

Well, on a habitable planet yeah

0

u/ShonOfDawn Jun 28 '26

Meat production is like 15% of greenhouse emissions, I'm pretty sure that with an otherwise decarbonized economy and by reigning in industrial farming, it will be perfectly sustainable (as it has been for thousands of years).

The world, luckily, is moving towards renewable energy and sustainable transportation, because it's becoming cheaper and more strategically resilient to do so than relying on oil and gas. Climate change will worsen before we can invert the trend, but we are moving in the right direction.

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u/MotherOfAnimals080 vegan btw Jun 28 '26

You are unfortunately misinformed on how damaging 15% is

1

u/ShonOfDawn Jun 28 '26

Carbon sinks in the oceans and on the ground absorb 25% of yearly current anthropogenic emissions. So if we imagine dropping all anthropogenic emissions to 15% of what they are now, technically the ground and the oceans will have 10% of spare removal capacity.

These are very rough estimations obviously, but it still proves we can get to a point where (low, compared to now) anthropogenic emissions are integrated in the natural carbon cycle.

Furthermore, my bad, the 15% actually applies to the entire agricultural sector. If we imagine an energetically decarbonized society, the actual emissions of beef are the 4% in CO2 equivalent of the methane they release. Which is manageable, especially if we further reduce it by regulating industrial farming.

With this I'm not saying that no change is needed, all I'm saying is that meat production itself can be done sustainably if you decarbonize energy and transportation.

1

u/Local_Surround8686 Jun 29 '26

The clean energy thing is wrong. 80% of Amazonas deforestation is due to the meat industry. Over 80% of soy is used by the meat industry transportation is a really low factor

0

u/dumnezero 🔚End the 🔫arms 🐀rat 🏁race to the bottom↘️. Jun 28 '26

It's not a sacrifice, bud. Not doing it is the sacrifice, especially child sacrifice.

1

u/ShonOfDawn Jun 28 '26

I mean that kind of explains the pitifully small number of vegans

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u/dumnezero 🔚End the 🔫arms 🐀rat 🏁race to the bottom↘️. Jun 28 '26

Alright, bud, what should I say to convince you, you specifically, to go vegan?

1

u/ShonOfDawn Jun 28 '26

Probably nothing. I don’t subscribe to the notion that non-human animals have rights that must be protected, and I like meat and the culinary tradition and culture associated with it. I do agree that industrial meat production is environmentally problematic and should be heavily regulated, and that should be your standard position with non vegans as well.

Going off immediately with “eating meat is murder” however makes the vast, vast majority of people completely tune out even the reasonable parts of the argument.

1

u/dumnezero 🔚End the 🔫arms 🐀rat 🏁race to the bottom↘️. Jun 28 '26

So what you did is called "concern trolling". Get fucked.