Since the industrial revolution, fossil fuels were the only affordable energy sources that could meet the demand of industrialized countries. Until 5-10 years ago.

We’re now in a situation where most people can still pretend that climate change isn’t serious, and the fossil fuel lobby is stronger than ever. And yet over 90% of new electricity generation is already renewable, because it has simply become cheaper than coal and gas power in the last years.

As climate impacts worsen, the pressure to decarbonize will only get larger. The lobbies have been fighting tooth and nail against the energy transition for over 40 years, but they are rapidly loosing ground now in most countries.

It’s right to be alarmed about climate change, there will be serious long-term impacts, but it seems irrational to be completely fatalistic. Just comparing the battery prices and solar panel prices and ev market with 10 years ago reveals a truly massive shift. And this is just the beginning of the energy transition.

20 years ago you could have said “Well, solar panels might be great for sustainability in theory, but the fossil fuel industry is so overwhelmingly powerful and solar panels so bad and expensive, it’s absolutely futile.”

Now, over 90% of added power plants are renewable, because there was at least some pressure to implement alternatives, and now they have matured enough to become economically viable on their own.

I think there are certain parallels to factory farming and plant-based alternatives + cultivated meat. We know that factory farming is very unsustainable, especially in terms of climate impact, resource use and zoonotic diseases (like bird flu and swine flu). These issues become ever more pressing as factory farming continues. We just won’t have a choice at some point but to switch to alternatives that are more sustainable, or everything goes to shit.

Creating demand for the alternatives funds their R&D and furthers their availability, which in turn leads to better products for lower prices, which makes further adoption much easier. Advancing the alternatives might have a much bigger impact than the mere reduction in meat consumption.

The more early adopters, the faster new technologies can advance. That’s true for every sustainable industry like solar energy, wind energy, battery storage, electric cars, and also meat alternatives.

There’s always a supplier and a consumer. The pollution of these 100 corporations is caused on behalf of their customers who fund them in exchange for fossil fuels, directly or indirectly. They are both responsible, it’s 2 sides of the same coin.

Of course, much of this pollution isn’t really avoidable at this point. We can’t have 100% renewable power and electric cars tomorrow. Some really polluting industries will take decades to decarbonize, like steel and cement production. But this makes it even more urgent to adress the low hanging fruit asap, i.e. big sources of pollution that can easily be cut. Private jets are a prime example.

You could say just a few private jet flights or chopping down one single forest won’t make a dent in global carbon emissions, but that doesn’t mean that thousands around the world can keep on doing it indefinitely without consequences for all of us. Especially if they are idols for millions of people, normalizing harm to society that we can’t afford.

A land rover isn’t nearly as polluting and doesn’t drive nearly as far. More importantly, the heart surgeon isn’t a role model in terms of lifestyle aspirations for literally hundreds of millions of followers.

People shouldn’t be judged on a single data point.

It’s not like we’re talking about stealing some sweets from children or something. Climate change just gets worse and worse and worse until we reach net zero co2 emissions. As long as it’s culturally accepted to cause massive amounts of completely unnecessary emissions, we don’t have the slightest chance of fixing this.

The only way a decent person could be doing this is if they were completely uneducated about climate change and their impact as a role model.

Admittedly I don’t know much about her as a person, but how can someone who uses a private jet in 2024 be considered a decent person by any stretch?

Having such a ludicrously unsustainable lifestyle in a climate emergency that will kill millions and displace hundreds of millions in just a few decades is a crime against humanity, change my mind.

The original Facebook posts are included in this article:

https://m.faz.net/aktuell/politik/fluechtlingskrise/beatrix-von-storch-afd-vizechefin-will-polizei-sogar-auf-kinder-schiessen-lassen-14044186.html#:~:text=Die Berliner AfD-Chefin und,Frauen und Kinder schießen lassen.

AfD: “refugee children should be shot at the border”

Also AfD: “The problem is that Hitler is depicted as absolute evil”

AfD supporters: “just because they defend nazis, and talk like nazis, and use slogans from nazis, that doesn’t mean they are nazis. LOL”

Much worse for who?

My point is: if police were completely abolished, conservatives and the far right would feel very unsafe and immediately form militias that enforce their values. That would be much worse for everyone who doesn’t share their values, of course.

I get that in many countries, police is badly regulated and you might say that this wouldn’t actually change much, but I’d rather seek more accountability for police, compared to a complete abolishion, leaving a power vaccum that’ll be filled by right wing militias with zero accountability.

Divesting seems good to me though, much of the police is certainly overfunded (due to law and order populism) and does useless shit (like the war on drugs), while education, social workers and programs against poverty are severely underfunded. Changing this would surely help a lot with crime reduction and other issues.

Thanks for the links by the way, I will look more into them when I have more time to see if my concerns regarding abolishion are addressed.

So what’s the alternative to police? Just getting rid of them would just lead to militias taking their place which would be much worse.

We could tax greenhouse gas emissions to internalize the environmental cost.

If the beef burger would cost 2x more than the plant-based burger (which basically tastes the same but has 90% fewer emissions), most people would choose the plant-based one. That would massively reduce food related ghg emissions, and also create a huge incentive to develop better alternatives/lab meat.

Do you really need to tell everybody?? They’ll never give me the ring now…

I got really fucking tired of being called fucking stupid for buying meat free alternatives.

Sorry that you met condescending assholes. Some people just have the urge to feel superior over others for absolutely silly reasons. The rise of meat alternatives is one of the few things that make me optimistic for the future, along with renewable energy, electric cars and heat pumps. Factory farms are so much worse for the environment and animals, of course we should embrace alternatives to the worst option.

Prices also go down with more competition. There basically wasn’t any market for meat alternatives 10 years ago, now it’s growing quite fast. In 5 years, many of them will likely be cheaper than meat.

You wrote vegans, not peta. Most vegans have nothing to do with Peta.

Who kills a shitload of dogs? I think you replied to the wrong comment.

Would you also consider it preachy when people criticize other cases of animal harm, like bullfighting or dog beating, or is it just the financing of factory farming that can’t be criticized? If not, what’s the difference? It’s troublesome that people enforce a social stigma that you can’t talk about what we do to farm animals without suffering social consequences.

Congratulations

You’re really the personification of the word pedantic. I changed my poorly formulated sentence.

It’s your argument put in another way

soybeans are grown for nutrient fixation in rotation with corn. they’re more of a soil crop than an oil crop.

I’ve already addressed that argument above.

Among the cereals, the most prominent as a source of energy is corn. Between 70% and 80% of its production is used as a feed ingredient worldwide.

https://www.veterinariadigital.com/en/articulos/importance-of-corn-in-animal-production/

“We need animal agriculture because we need to grow the feed plants to grow more feed plants for animal agriculture”

We’ve come full circle.