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.
For a brief moment reading this, I couldn’t remember the last time I ate beef – but then I remembered the summer sausage in the fridge… which probably has beef in it, so… yesterday. Other than that purchase, I don’t know if I’ve had any other beef this year.
So if we got that particular 1/8th to cut down, we’d be half way there! Just like if we could get the 1% to cut down on [so many things], we’d be in the clear!
I had beef last weekend in the form of my partner’s leftover canned Italian wedding soup. I think the prior time was a few months earlier when a takeout order was screwed up and my fish sandwich turned into a cheeseburger.
I try and avoid beef because of the environment and because of cute cow videos. But, if it would go to waste otherwise, I’ll go ahead and eat it.
So even this instance of personal responsibility is significantly offset by the actions of a few. I’m all for doing what each of us can, but that’s fucking hilarious.