Red meat has a huge carbon footprint because cattle requires a large amount of land and water.
https://sph.tulane.edu/climate-and-food-environmental-impact-beef-consumption
Demand for steaks and burgers is the primary driver of Deforestation:
https://e360.yale.edu/features/marcel-gomes-interview
If you don’t have a car and rarely eat red meat, you are doing GREAT 🙌🙌 🙌
Sure, you can drink tap water instead of plastic water. You can switch to Tea. You can travel by train. You can use Linux instead of Windows AI’s crap. Those are great ideas. But, don’t drive yourself crazy. If you are only an ordinary citizen, remember that perfect is the enemy of good.
Sure. Vote with your wallet.
But 52.4 million tonnes of edible meat are wasted globally each year. Roughly 18 billion animals (including chickens, turkeys, pigs, sheep, goats, and cows) are slaughtered annually without even making it to a consumer market.
This is a systematic problem that can only practically be addressed at the state level. Meatless Monday isn’t actually reducing your carbon footprint because you’re not actually the one emitting the carbon.
This isn’t like saying “I’m going to burn less fuel by driving less” it’s like saying “I’m going to burn less fuel by not taking the bus”.
They aren’t producing that meat for the fun of it, despite so much going to waste. Its still true that less meat would be produced if less people purchased it long term.