Comment by codegladiator | Hacker News Reader

Comment by codegladiator | Hacker News Reader

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I see this down voted, and frankly not surprised, this is a really unpopular opinion somehow, but this is not wrong. As a community we do see the duty of protecting environment imposed on us, but as an individual I don't think many people see it as that.

I don't know how to put it in words exactly, but "future is doomed" is somehow "everyone knows" one way or another (at least I am going to die before doom happens and a single individual cannot be held responsible for the doom anyways).

And then we also have the factories polluting the environment where we can debate on how useful the end product is, but when it comes down to a person eating meat the discussion just never would convince meat eaters in my opinion. Meat eaters could say "who's ultimately benefiting from the factories polluting environment" and the answer would more or less be some corporation. Why should they have all the fun ?

Is it a really unpopular opinion? Pretty sure it's the most popular one since most people eat lots of meat.

Its unpopular in the sense that no one would say "i don't care about environment"

I'm inclined to agree. Framing environmentalism as a problem that individuals need to solve isn't going to get us anywhere. It's a problem with the rules of the game, it requires political willpower.

But to have any chance of getting out of this mess everyone will need to make sacrifices at massive and micro scales. The bit I was trying to draw attention to is whether, when faced with a very small piece of the puzzle, people are able to make a relatively small sacrifice or not, even something as trivial as cutting out beef. At the end of the day, it's only food and there's plenty of other things one could eat.

Because there's a lot worse coming in a few decades.

> something as trivial as cutting out beef. At the end of the day, it's only food and there's plenty of other things one could eat.

There's a lot of road left before this line of thought stops though. Why have any nice food instead of nutrient-rich tasteless slime? When you argue that it's about the most efficient resource usage, there's really no reason to stop at beef, or meat in general. So we could feed 15bn (or whatever number) if we quit meat? We could feed 30bn if we switch to soylent!

I don't believe that individual sacrifice is the answer, and in my experience, it's usually somebody who, for some reason or another doesn't eat meat who says that "we" don't need it. Much like somebody who is rich and earns their money via capital gains might argue that it's really not a problem if income tax gets increased.

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