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://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-beef-industry-fueling-amazon-rainforest-destruction-deforestation/

https://e360.yale.edu/features/marcel-gomes-interview

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2023-06-02/almost-a-billion-trees-felled-to-feed-appetite-for-brazilian-beef

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. Also, don’t drive yourself crazy. If you are only an ordinary citizen, remember that perfect is the enemy of good.

    • kadup
      13•1 day ago

      You’re delusional if you believe most of the meat you consume comes from cows eating naturally growing grass in areas no other crops can grow.

        • kadup
          9•1 day ago

          The only way this is a strawman is if your statement is a non sequitur. Otherwise, my reply very much holds.

          You can’t counter “raising enough cows to supply our current meat demand takes a lot of resources we could be eating instead” with “its okay for them to eat grass :D” unless the implication is that eating grass is sufficient to meet that demand.

          Otherwise, you’re just commenting that cows eat grass. Which congrats, I guess? I think I know some middle school students who might be surprised by the information?

          • @commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            2•1 day ago

            You can’t counter “raising enough cows to supply our current meat demand takes a lot of resources we could be eating instead” with “its okay for them to eat grass :D”

            this conversation didn’t happen.

            • kadup
              6•1 day ago

              In that case, thanks for informing us that cows can eat grass. We are very proud of you. We absolutely had that knowledge already, but still, thanks for your effort.

              • @Lemmee@sh.itjust.works
                6•20 hours ago

                Don’t bother with this fucking guy. They’re in every thread about eating less meat arguing that eating meat is best. I’ve already gotten tricked into replying several times in the past.

                Don’t feed the trolls.

    • @usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml
      7•1 day ago

      Good news is that overall arable farmland usage goes down the less meat you eat. Don’t need to use all the same land, you have flexibility to move around production

      we show that plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss.

      https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1713820115