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@Polydextrous @RvTV95XBeo

I was going to disagree with you but then I noticed that you put everything in capitals.

If you go to a FRIGGIN supermarket & have two choices, a Hamburger or a plant-based burger, & you choose the Hamburger, no amount of CAPITALS will make that the right choice.

If you choose to drive 5 miles in a big diesel truck to pick up a hamburger, regardless of what BP said, your direct carbon emissions & the indirect methane emisisons are a part of the problem.

I agree that we need regulation. But I think you also discount the effects of individual consumption.

In the long-ish term, the animal farming indistry has to go. It cannot be made sustainable, no matter how you regulate industry. It's just a waste of resources. So at some point you as an individual have to adapt to a vegan diet, either by choice or because there is no alternative. What will it be? Do you want to stop eating meat the moment it is outlawed?

People who cling to eating meat nowadays actively oppose regulation. Otherwise they couln't eat meat. There is still a demand. We need both regulation to end animal farming and convince individual consumers, that they have to become vegans. It's the masses who have the most power. If veganism came from the majority population, it would be far easier to regulate industry.

Idk what's going on but I can't reply to the people who replied to my comment so I'll do it here.

According to this data, approx 50 billion tCO2 per year are emitted worldwide by human action.

https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector

2t/CO2 per year per person X 6b people= ~12 billion tCO2/year.

Or about 25% is done by BILLIONS of people every year.

Regulations are the only way because corporations have a death grip on society. Even if we reduced individual emissions by 50% as people are saying that's only a 12% difference in emissions, versus 35% if corporations halved their emissions. Creating laws to reduce individual emissions would go over like a lead balloon, and a lot of the cause of individual emissions, if I had to guess, is due to the circumstances around their lives. Availability of public transportation, cost of goods and how their goods are produced, etc. However, corporations have a direct choice in doing these actions.

If you regulate corporations you have a much larger overall affect that if you were to make laws limiting consumption. It's simply more practical in many many ways to force corporations to hit emissions goals than it is to force people. What are you going to do if people emit too much? Fine them? Good luck they're already broke. Jail them? I think we can both agree how that would go. There are many multitudes fewer corporations than there are actual people, so managing and controlling their output is easier from a governmental standpoint.

It's companies making vehicles that emit high amounts of CO2, it's companies making ecological disasters on a global scale, it's companies who are being given tax cuts that could instead go towards fighting this issue. Planning for people to individually emit less isn't as feasible as controlling the source of emissions itself.

Why do you think the oil & gas industry exists? To satisfy the needs of consumer. The industry isn't just burning oil just to fuck the climate up. It all comes down to the consumer.

Now about carbon footprint. The Paris agreement aims to limit global warming to 1.5ºC. To do, we collectively have to emit less than 250 Gt (from the start of 2023). That means each of the 8 billion persons on the planet get a 1.16 t/year budget until 2050, and then zero.

You cannot reach this footprint while eating meat like the average American does. You cannot reach it by keeping driving, or even owning a car. You cannot just hope anymore to keep same lifestyle, which was only made affordable by an era of cheap fossil energy.

Of course you can keep blaming other in all caps text but that's not going to change anything, nor inspire change. Are the companies to blame? Sure. But companies are made by people, and are all eventually financed by the consumer. You. Me. Us.

Do you recommend we all give up and not try to do what we can with our own agency? Is that how you live your life, have you given up?

Stopping the climate crisis requires a greater reduction in carbon emissions than is physically possible if every individual were to give up their car and meat, and every mining, energy, and transport company were to be dissolved. The good ending requires 110% of EVERYONE working together.

So if we want to avoid the very worst ending, EVERYONE needs to put in their maximum effort. We need to end pollution at the governmental level, and we need to end pollution at the personal level on our way there. Everything we can possibly do isn't good enough, and that means we need to do everything we possibly can and cross our fingers. There are no more excuses left, for anyone, corporate or personal.

It's all 'whataboutism' without ever looking inward. I remember when Impossible and Beyond meat started becoming readily available and I read a news article that discussed how healthy they were. Their conclusion that was they were safe and healthy in moderation, but you shouldn't eat them every day....like, yeah, you shouldn't eat a fucking hamburger daily either, what's your point?

They just have to plant the tiniest seed of doubt for many consumers who will never compare the two and only want a reason to justify their consumption.