How is it possible that you believe that one is true but not think about the other? Meat consumption and its effects need to be made much more clear to the public, it seems.

I watched a video by Vox today where they said that the overwhelming majority of the water usage in very dry areas of the USA is used to irrigate feeding material for cows: Who's really using up the water in the American West?

[–] Gaywallet 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I think there's a good chance for some sampling bias. At the very least there's some selection bias, in that it's representative of Australian Gen Z individuals who opted into some 'willingness to participate in surveys' on an online website (or seemingly so, it's possible they may have signed up in person? its unclear in the methodology section exactly how they were recruited, but it does give some high level ideas).

In 2021, an online survey was conducted across Australia’s major cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Canberra and Adelaide. The actual study participants were recruited using simple random sampling (based on computer-generated random numbers) from a database of 35,000 people who have previously indicated willingness to participate in surveys.

Out of 698 randomly invited participants, 478 responded by completing the survey, generating a response rate of 68.5%.

I also don't think the question was designed all that well

When asked about the main contributors to climate change and presented with a long list of factors allowing multiple choices and an open-ended “Other” option to include another opinion

How many should I select if I'm talking about main contributors? I'm sure many participants asked themselves this question when clicking boxes. If I click every box, is that reflective of the "main contributors"? When I hit 5 boxes, is that enough? If I'm trying to disambiguate between the options of "livestock and agriculture" and "big corporations and industry", I'd definitely side with the latter as more important because you can have sustainable livestock and agriculture but large corporations typically do not. Also the latter is a larger box which holds most of the problems of the former. Do I select both when we're talking about "main contributors"? I'm not certain how I might have answered, had I been presented the same survey.

In the end, I think the author jumps to more conclusions than is supported by the limits of the methodology employed.

[–] vord 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I recall reading that fast-food places are one of the hardest drivers of industrialized, cheap, unsustainable meat. Banning them from selling it would probably solve a solid chunk of the 'meat is insanely unsustainable' problem.

There's small-scale farms near me that sell whole chickens raised in their fields for $15, which is not that much more than a big-brand whole chicken at a grocer. They eat bugs (reducing pesticide need) and taste better.

[–] gyrfalcon 6 points 2 years ago

This is wild to me because my SO and I, who are both Gen Z by some definitions, think about how much meat we are eating very frequently. On top of that, we think about what kind of meat it is, since it is my understanding that of the huge amount of environmental damage caused by meat production, the bulk of that is caused by beef in particular.