I don't like these kinds of articles because they always have an undertone of making it a matter of personal consumer choice as opposed to systemic change.
this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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WRI published an interesting article on this subject a week or so ago:
https://www.wri.org/insights/climate-impact-behavior-shifts
Systemic pressure [e.g. voting / collective action] creates enabling conditions, but individuals need to complete the loop with our daily choices. It's a two-way street — bike lanes need cyclists, plant-based options need people to consume them. When we adopt these behaviors, we send critical market signals that businesses and governments respond to with more investment.
WRI's research quantifies the individual actions that matter most. While people worldwide tend to vastly overestimate the impact of some highly visible activities, such as recycling, our analysis reveals four significant changes that deliver meaningful emissions reductions.
I like the bikelane analogy, actually.
It shows clearly that (a) yes you do need activism (like Critical Mass) and a few crazy ones that will bike regardless of the adverse conditions, (b) political will to shift towards bikelanes, (c ) wider adoption but also sustained activism to build better bikelanes (not painted gutters on the side of stroads, but protected lanes, connected with transit).
We definitely do not lack (a), but (c ) FOLLOWS (b). If you want to go from "just the crazies" to "everyone and their 5 year old", systemic change needs to be backed by very concrete top-down action.
Without very meaningful (b), telling people to change their eating habits while stuff is otherwise the same is like telling people to take their kids to school on bikes next to crazy SUV traffic: it's not happening.
Except it is happening. And its not fucking dangerous to cook a pot of beans instead of dead birds lol
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If we simply stopped subsidizing meat consumption entirely the rising cost would shift more people to plant based diets.
Nope, the government would get replaced at the next election, though.
Systemic change doesn’t happen without political will. Political will depends on personal opinions. Try to bring in systemic change with an election win but not overwhelming support then you get reactionary backlash like we’re seeing right now.
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But it has to be both if only because somebody has to show the way. Governments are not going to clamp down on meat ag when the whole electorate is cheerfully eating meat.
Personally I see the argument "I can't do anything, it's about the system!" as a extremely convenient cop-out. Any system is made up of individuals.
And all ills in the current world are the result of a very small set of people. A small group of people has been pushing meat eating like crazy.a small set of people placed tiny taxes on meat.
A tiny percent of people are the reason why shipping is so big and so polluting. I can't change that, nobody can change that, except a tiny amount of people.
A tiny percentage of people are the reason why we have such differences in wealth in society.
It's a tiny amount of people that are the push behind all wars
I could go on for a while but blaming the common people for the world's ills is disingenuous from my perspective.
You want everyone to eat less meat? Start taxing meat properly. That requires politicians to do their jobs: make decisions that will make the world better for everyone, instead of making decisions that will make him or her get elected again.
Most politicians are lazy and or think people are stupid. People would understand meat being more expensive if explanations of why would be clearly posted everywhere and alternatives would become cheaper and more abundant.
Then again, we now live in a world where all idiots have a bigger megaphone than any scientist ever had. That too should change. I'm aorry, fuck your free speech, not everybody should be allowed to have a megaphone and talk about stuff, but that is a slightly different subject. Either way, that too could be solved by a tibt sliver of people
The gulf between your worldview and mine is so wide as to make a productive discussion impossible. Unfortunately.
That says more about you than me.
Personally I see the argument "I can't do anything, it's about the system!" as a extremely convenient cop-out. Any system is made up of individuals.
I think it's a bit more nuanced than that. If you look at the history of regulating substances or practices deemed harmful to the public, it's almost always led by governmental oversight. We knew asbestos was harmful way before it was regulated, but that didn't stop corporations from utilizing it in everything.
The whole point of federal governments is to moderate corporations at the systemic level. Corporations know they can win the fight against individual responsibility, but they're terrified of regulation.
We've already done this with the environment once before. The creation of the EPA popularized the push for clean air and water at a national level. Prior to the regulatory action there were of course people worried about pollution, but nothing really came of it until there was a regulatory body put in place.
Yes yes, I understand all that. It remains that people are using the systems argument as an excuse not to change their own lives. I've seen this in action and so have you. No democratic system is going to change when citizens are not lifting a finger individually.
There's a legitimate argument to be had about the hypothesis where voters continue not to lift a finger but vote for green parties that promise to force them to. But that scenario seems to me too absurdly hypocritical and schizophrenic to be worth considering.
Of course it's necessary to change the system, but that's never going to happen until a critical mass of individuals put their actions where their mouths are.
remains that people are using the systems argument as an excuse not to change their own lives
I mean everyone including you does that to some level, otherwise we'd all be eco-terrorists. The small sacrifices you or I make are virtually meaningless, and are really just ways to make ourselves feel better. If you or I really put all our eggs in the basket of individual impact then we'd be blowing up oil wells. But we don't, because we want to be comfortable just like the people "not lifting a finger".
No democratic system is going to change when citizens are not lifting a finger individually.
I would say that we don't really live in a democratic society..... More systemic change in America is driven by the will of a few powerful individuals than the voting majority.
There's a legitimate argument to be had about the hypothesis where voters continue not to lift a finger
How do you quantify lifting a finger? To reach a "critical mass" we'd still have to enact systemic change for items like education and economic safety nets. People aren't going to "lift a finger" for something like meat consumption when they are living paycheck to paycheck in a food desert where most of their calories are coming from premade food from convenient stores.
The article barely touches on fish. It suggests fish, eggs, and dairy are mostly fine, but doesn't explicitly say that.
Dairy has the same problems as beef. Remember, you also have to grow food to feed the food, so it's inherently a net loss of calories.
And on the animal ethics side dairy is often considered worse - forced endless cycle of birth and separation of mothers from their calves, most calves slaughtered. It's not all sunshine and rainbows just because you aren't eating the corpses.
Dry ass nasty chicken breast. I'd rather some veggies, but it this allows BP to keep pumping oil into the Gulf then I guess it's fine.
This has been my rule of thumb for a while. It should be clear as day that 9 billion people cannot all chow on hefty ruminant mammals. We would run out of land even before it cooked the climate.
The problem with chicken farming is the cruelty.
No, its also the environmental impact. We passed 350 ppm.
The article is nonsense because it must be zero. We're already in a positive feedback loop. We have to reduce all emissions to zero to mitigate as much as possible. There is no amount of emissions that are acceptable.
Yes but that logic changes the goalposts a bit. The question of how to undo existing damage, or what we should do ethically, is not the same as the question of what is theoretically sustainable.
If you’re only eating two breasts a week, people can spring for the free range stuff
The most important part: what went into the calculation? There are plenty of things besides food that impact environmental sustainability, is diet alone sufficient to achieve it? Or did they just throw the rest out?
Oh boy, the red meaters are going to downvote the shit out of this.
Meh. I wouldn’t eat chicken these days either. You should see how it’s made. Corporate farming is abhorrent.
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Those of us in the USA should be asking if we think meat will be safe now that many regulations have been removed.
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Has any society in human history been able to afford eating meat regularly? My great great great great grandfather’s journals talk about a lot of stew and veggies and he was wealthy enough that he founded a small city. We never ate that much meat.
Subsidies and very, very cruel industrialization (torturous conditions).
If laws were just and corporate socialism was just, it wouldn't be possible for most people.
Typically we don't need to eat meat when we are wealthy; we eat unsustainable meat when there is a famine because we must.
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