Giving Up Meat Won’t Cure Climate Change

I’ve seen a lot of these headlines. The latest one is from FastCompany: “If these insanely good athletes can give up meat, so can you.” Is that enough to fix climate change? Nope.

The whole point of Markkanen’s campaign with Neste, called #DontChoke, is to ask people to pledge to take simple actions to decrease their personal carbon footprint.

While I don’t doubt that giving up meat would be better, we also need to take a good, hard look at our rich overlords. Example: This study found that 10% of rich people are responsible for 50% of carbon emissions, whereas 50% of poor people are responsible for 10%. Nice symmetry.

Check It Out: Giving Up Meat Won’t Cure Climate Change

6 thoughts on “Giving Up Meat Won’t Cure Climate Change

  • Where in the article does it say that giving up red meat will fix climate change?

    Please stick to Apple-related topics. These forays into editorial commentary on unrelated topics serve only to spread misinformation.

    “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”

    1. I agree that the article doesn’t directly claim that giving up meat will fix climate change. I think this is probably the relevant passage, which implicates animal agriculture as a contributor to carbon emissions:

      [quote] “Taking into account population growth and dietary trends, WRI found that in the next several decades, animal agriculture alone could account for most of the emissions budget needed to keep devastating climate change in check. According to WRI, one of the best individual actions to curb climate change people can do is to stop eating red meat.”[/quote]

      I also agree that it’s puzzling to see this on TMO – where is the Mac/Apple connection?

      1. Hi Archimedes, our Linked Teasers are basically short-form editorials. It’s sort of an experimental category we’re running. If one of us reads a piece of news we think is interesting or have an opinion on, we write it up as an LT. Because they are opinion-based, they don’t necessarily have to be Apple or tech-focused.

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