To state the obvious, your diet is extremely personal (you are what you eat after all!) and unsurprisingly, people have strong opinions about their diet, so don't tell people what to eat! You ultimately decide what you put on your fork. Therefore, it's fantastic discussing how reducing your meat intake can make a difference, but the key discussion is how to make an individual change their diet habits. People reading tips on how to reduce their carbon footprint are probably those who want to actively change, so how do you reach those people whose priorities don't encase climate change mitigation? I.e. the people who don't actively search for tips on how to reduce their carbon footprint...
Importantly, the key idea to individual action is that it needs to be cumulative in order for it to make a difference; Western society as a whole needs to reduce its meat intake for the appropriate GHG levels to decrease and for resultant climate mitigation to occur. For meaningful change to happen, we need those people who may not prioritise the environment.
However, I believe there is a meat-eater non-meat-eater dualism within out society: meat-eaters versus vegetarians and vegans. All or nothing. And this dualism can prevent people from changing their dietary habits due to the stereotypes generated of people who don't eat meat. One of which is you're a plant-hugging narcissist, subtly evidenced by this video:
These stereotypes discourage people to adopt new dietary habits since they feel they don't conform or want to conform to these stereotypes. However, this is just one of the reasons people may not feel as if they want to become vegetarian; there are ultimately many tough barriers to reducing an omnivore's meat consumption, which in turns prevent this important cumulative action. Here's a good summary of these from a handy paper:
People may avoid information that evidences the negative consequences of meat consumption since it may not align with their behaviour. This is called cognitive dissonance: people may deny the negative impact of their behaviour, ultimately avoiding personal guilt and blame others instead (e.g. blame the political system in the inability to reduce meat intake). Additionally, we live in a society that values meat eating to be masculine, which generally makes men less reluctant to try meat-free products: if some 50 percent of the world's population feel as if they can't change their diet, we have a problem.
So how do we re-frame people's opinions on eating less meat? How do we break this dualism? Education and spreading awareness are considered to be vital in changing people's perceptions - for instance, by discussing how reducing your meat intake by even one day a week can be beneficial for the planet, people may opt for a more flexitarian diet. Ultimately, people's priorities need to change, with saving the planet becoming a major priority. Without the mass of people, individual action means nothing.
Importantly, the key idea to individual action is that it needs to be cumulative in order for it to make a difference; Western society as a whole needs to reduce its meat intake for the appropriate GHG levels to decrease and for resultant climate mitigation to occur. For meaningful change to happen, we need those people who may not prioritise the environment.
However, I believe there is a meat-eater non-meat-eater dualism within out society: meat-eaters versus vegetarians and vegans. All or nothing. And this dualism can prevent people from changing their dietary habits due to the stereotypes generated of people who don't eat meat. One of which is you're a plant-hugging narcissist, subtly evidenced by this video:
These stereotypes discourage people to adopt new dietary habits since they feel they don't conform or want to conform to these stereotypes. However, this is just one of the reasons people may not feel as if they want to become vegetarian; there are ultimately many tough barriers to reducing an omnivore's meat consumption, which in turns prevent this important cumulative action. Here's a good summary of these from a handy paper:
People may avoid information that evidences the negative consequences of meat consumption since it may not align with their behaviour. This is called cognitive dissonance: people may deny the negative impact of their behaviour, ultimately avoiding personal guilt and blame others instead (e.g. blame the political system in the inability to reduce meat intake). Additionally, we live in a society that values meat eating to be masculine, which generally makes men less reluctant to try meat-free products: if some 50 percent of the world's population feel as if they can't change their diet, we have a problem.
So how do we re-frame people's opinions on eating less meat? How do we break this dualism? Education and spreading awareness are considered to be vital in changing people's perceptions - for instance, by discussing how reducing your meat intake by even one day a week can be beneficial for the planet, people may opt for a more flexitarian diet. Ultimately, people's priorities need to change, with saving the planet becoming a major priority. Without the mass of people, individual action means nothing.
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