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Comment by ok123456 | Hacker News Reader

Not in the least. Consumerism is not a substitute for real policy.

Imagine if instead of freeing the slaves, Abraham Lincoln just instead made "Freedom Credits" that were issued to businesses that didn't use slave labor, but it allowed companies that used slave labor to purchase surplus "Freedom Credits" as offsets so they could claim they're making progress towards their ESG goals. Maybe it would become part of these companies advertising like "Fairtrade" has. The net result is that we would still have some kind of chattel slavery.

As ridiculous as this sounds, this is what we are doing when we defer to market based solutions to help nibble away at real policy issues. Also, consumer choices are already highly constrained by what the market bares.

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I think you're mistaking me for Abraham Lincoln... I can't impose policy on the beef industry. Comparing the actions I took to the actions a historic US president took is not really appropriate commentary.

Millions voting with their pocket books can have the same impact; causing the industry to change because of reduced revenue. Especially if we can reach the tipping point where beyond/impossible becomes less expensive than beef.

In this analogy, Mark Rober would be your Abraham Lincoln, his video helped tip me towards eating more plant-based burgers, and has been seen 54M times.

Where I agree with you is that _policy_ is a much more direct and effective method of achieving similar ends. However I don't think eating less meat is comparable to carbon credits. The IPCC specifically lists it as a tried and true strategy for reducing greenhouse emissions.

The substitution of meat for other protein sources has real (albeit lagging) effects on the agricultural economy. Less people buying meat leads to less production of meat at scale, which in turn results in reduced deforestation (and potentially reforestation). Producing less meat leads to less greenhouse gas production at several points in the chain, most notably from reduced number of animals, but also during production and logistics. More forests contribute to carbon capture and biodiversity.

Probably the two biggest obstacles to consumer based solutions have been policy that subsidizes the cost of meat, and the cultural backlash to the idea of eating less meat (despite the many health + environmental incentives to reducing meat consumption overall).

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