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conseil wrote

When someone chooses to not e.g. eat cows, that directly creates less demand for cow meat.

This feels like a weak point; the march of capital continues regardless, and industries like coal and meat are artificially upheld to keep profits flowing.

Overall, I hate the 'no ethical consumption' argument, but I don't sincerely believe it will change things so much as be a good step in self-control and shit for the future.

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[deleted] wrote

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ziq OP wrote

It's not that they didn't see it, it's that the cattle cartels were stronger than the veg cartels.

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edmund_the_destroyer wrote (edited )

I'm coming to understand that these cartels are self-defeating because of how they work. The Exxons of the world could have used their money to invest in being the leaders in renewable energy, in theory. But they never did, and they probably didn't do it because the investment would have caused friction with the contractors and equipment suppliers and other items related to the petroleum business.

Likewise there is nothing financially stopping the cattle cartels from also being the veg cartels. But the ranchers and factory farmers and slaughterhouse partners would have raised hell if Tyson started selling meatless burgers.

And I just learned something that might be obvious to a lot of people but was news to me. The real reason the US automakers ignored electric cars wasn't any secret partnership with the petroleum industry. It was the fact that car dealerships make most of their profits in vehicle maintenance and electric cars have lower maintenance requirements. (Edit: so in other words, shifting to electric cars would have put the automakers in a fight with their own dealerships).

In all three cases the enormous size brought on by their success makes it harder for them to adapt. And if we didn't care about the environment or human suffering that would be fine, but since we do it makes their resistance to change deepen their terrible impact.

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Waken wrote

But the ranchers and factory farmers and slaughterhouse partners would have raised hell if Tyson started selling meatless burgers.

For sure, I've seen this first hand. The company I work for tried to start selling a new product that one of our customer's also sold and he flipped out and we had to pull the product from the market to keep him as a customer.

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ziq OP wrote

https://www.plantbasednews.org/post/biggest-drop-in-swedens-meat-consumption-since-1990

Sweden showed a significant decrease in meat consumption in 2017 - a shift which has been accredited in part to the vegan movement. Statistics from the The Swedish Board of Agriculture showed the nation's largest annual decrease in animal consumption since 1990 - a drop of 2.2kg per capita.

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/trump-cant-save-coal

Trump Can’t Save Coal: More Capacity Closed in 2018 Than First Three Years of Obama Administration

The United Kingdom announced in January that it would close all its remaining coal plants by 2025, with most already headed for shutdown. Germany followed suit this month. China is also working to wean itself off its cornerstone fuel.

These are all clearly quantifiable metrics.

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