Browsing social media, it’s apparent that people are quick to point out problems in the world, but what I see less often are suggestions for how to solve them. At best, I see vague ideas that might solve one issue but introduce new ones, which are rarely addressed.

Simply stopping the bad behaviour rarely is a solution in itself. The world is not that simple. Take something like drug addiction. Telling someone to just stop taking drugs is not a solution.

  • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
    131·
    1 month ago

    But my point is that we are keeping meat artificially cheap with lots of subsidies. Meat would be a luxury food if people paid the real cost of it, let alone if we paid the long term costs on the environment. I think maybe your analogy would be better with bicycles than electric cars. Bikes are more versatile and convenient than cars in short distances (10km), but most cities have been and continue being developed as car centric. If we used taxes to improve bike infrastructure, people would feel safer to ride bikes more often.

    • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      1 month ago

      This exactly. I would say one of the main reasons a lot of people don’t currently drink plant milk is that per unit volume, it tends to be more expensive. This is seemingly starting to even out as the plant milk industry expands, but the most dirt-cheap dairy milk and the most dirty-cheap plant milk are still nowhere near each other on price. I’m willing to bet that if all subsidies were taken away altogether, plant milk would be cheaper, and moreover, if it were flipped in such a way that existing dairy subsidies went to plant milk, it would be game over for dairy milk. Plant milk prices would be through the floor, and dairy milk would be seen as a luxury product. There are a ton of good reasons for this:

      • Dairy milk is far worse for the environment than every kind of plant milk by every conceivable metric.
      • The dairy industry is one of the most absurdly cruel institutions in the world. (NSFL)
      • Plant milk is generally better for you than dairy milk. The downsides to plant milk health-wise are lack of protein (this is only 8g per serving, though, out of the 0.8g/kg/day that you need, and some plant milks are beginning to add protein) and the fortification with D2 instead of fortification with D3. It makes up for this however by generally having more calcium and Vitamin D, the potential to not have any sugar (compare ~8g of the sugar lactose), mono- and polyunsaturated fats without saturated fat and LDL cholesterol, and substantially fewer calories.
      • Plant milk takes months to go bad, whereas dairy milk that’s not ultrapasteurized (and therefore dramatically more expensive) takes maybe a couple weeks at most from the date of purchase.
      • Plant milk has an enormous amount of variety compared to dairy milk – there are so many types that enumerating them becomes exhausting, and for the most part (not you, rice milk) they’re all good. You can get essentially whatever you want, compared to dairy milk, where you’re basically stuck with that (subjective) weird, slightly sour aftertaste.