More specifically, beef and lamb.

https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local

Replacing those with basically any other meat (pig, chicken, fish) would make a huge difference already. And it's far more realistic than no meat. Indirect demand destruction (from cost increase) through carbon credits or something like that in the future?

Even cutting back on meat can have an impact. Halving quantities in cooking etc. really is hardly noticeable.

Yeah I think this is a much better path. If you mix chicken with jackfruit 50/50 in tacos, for example, it’s barely noticeable.

We’re not going to convince Americans to give up meat, but if we can reduce consumption when they do eat it, we can make incremental change.

Even mildly advocating for veganism as a vegan would be infuriating if it wasn’t so comedic. The mental contortions that even intelligent people will put themselves into in order to either avoid the topic or keep their head in the sand are truly something to behold. And ultimately it often feels like arguing with a past version of yourself, who perhaps held some of the same views.

I just don't advocate, at least not without prompting; it's too maddening. That I'm vegan often becomes known naturally, and once it's established, people in the know tend to start bringing it up on their own. I hardly ever go into advocacy unprompted. I think this is more effective. Just by being present, you might spark the thoughts that lead someone to changing their mind... :)

Yeah, I have noticed this too. and I’m much the same now, over time my “advocacy” is mostly stating my reasons when asked. And sometimes bringing it up in online spaces.

it can be difficult, at least for me, to politely model in the face of what I see as a great injustice. But as you say, it can be maddening to do otherwise and still see no change.

So I do understand and support those who participate in a less passive advocacy as that can be effective for a different group. And keeps “our” voice in the mainstream, even if it is often vilified by popular culture.

People need cars... But not trucks for work :)

I've managed to avoid driving one for all but 1-2 years of my life, and I'm 42.

Your mileage, ironic phrase noted, may vary.

People need cars because we designed our environments to require them. It was a choice, not an inevitability.

And here we are. Needing cars. Unless you want to spend the big money of rebuilding cities.

To be clear, the money is already being spent, it’s just a question of what we make the priority. Even just keeping the current roads useable costs billions of dollars, let alone the amount of money spent on highway expansion (which, due to induced demand, causes even more traffic).

In 30 years, every road that exists currently will have been replaced. The question is if it should be replaced with another road, or should some of them have larger sidewalks, bike lanes, bus lanes. Amsterdam has been doing this for decades and it’s going very well. They spent money that would’ve been spent rebuilding a road on making it a better general transportation option.

Yeah people never haul anything with trucks for work

Uhh a lot of people need trucks for their work

Yeah? We need millions of personal, individual trucks? For work, of course, ignore all those white collar job parking lots full of extended cab pickups that get 10mpg.

Have you considered that sometimes people buy automobiles that can accommodate multiple use cases? Just because you don't need to haul hundreds of pounds of supplies every single day doesn't mean that you don't need to do it a couple times a month, or sometimes every day for short bursts of time.

With vehicles being as expensive as they are, some people prioritize the one vehicle that can suit their regular _as well as_ occasional needs.

To put it into terms this crowd might understand better, to a lot of regular people the wildly expensive and overpowered computing hardware we own seems like a ridiculous waste. And certainly, we don't need all that horsepower every minute of the day. But we need it from time to time.

I can see what you're about to say though: those people who buy trucks should just drive some crappy little three cylinder for day-to-day use and rent a truck when they need it. To which I'd ask, how would you react if someone told you that you should just buy a dinky little Chromebook and spin up a beefy EC2 instance every time you need some horsepower?

Maybe you don't understand people's needs and motivations as much as you think you do. And this is frankly where a lot of resentment to the climate action stuff comes from. A lot of know-it-alls lecturing people on how their lifestyle is completely idiotic based on very little understanding of how those people might actually be living their lives.

"I see a pickup truck with nothing in the back, therefore in my expert opinion you don't need it."

The current potus was directly elected because “know-it-alls” kept trying to jam ideologies down peoples throats. I have this awful feeling we’re going to swing back that way, and the escalation on “both sides” will be an absolute disaster.

Hauling "hundreds of pounds of supplies every single day" is a fringe use case, essentialy nobody does this, it's not relevant.

"Maybe you don't understand people's needs and motivations as much as you think you do."

It's the opposite. You're confusing "needs" with "wants" and extrapolating the needs of the very, very few people who genuinely need a truck onto the entire population.

The vast majority of people use their cars to transport only themselves to work each day, then maybe pick/drop off one more person, then maybe go buy groceries.

I don't think you quite understand just how ridiculously niche valid use cases for trucks are. It's literally just towing, or some very specific off-road hauling. Everything else is going to be handled way better by something else, starting with a regular car, ending with a van.

Hell, for most people even a car is way overkill, a bike works perfectly fine to go to work each day, I assure you. So does public transport. You don't need 2 tons of steel just to to move your 100 kg body around.

To your analogy, I can use my dinky little chromebook 99% of the time and only boot up my PC when I actually need the power.

That seems not to be the case in large parts of Europe. Why do you think that is?

Only if "a lot" means <0.1% of people, at most.

Yeah, good catch, thanks.

Why should I stop eating meat, just so that Taylor Swift can fly everywhere with two jets !?

Fuck that, we're on this boat together, and we'll all go to the bottom together.

Wow great thanks for the intelligent reply