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.
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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.
Which is why I think it's better to start with some kind of populist attack on the excesses of the super rich. How many beef burgers was Katy Perry's publicity stunt in low orbit?
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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.
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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.
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
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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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?
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.
Yes, Inuit for example have a diet largely based on fish and meat. Steppe herders like mongols are another example of a culture with regular meat consumption.
Medieval Barcelona had a higher meat consumption than today. The article also gives other examples of high meat consumption from medieval England and Vikings.
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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