Most of the time when people say they have an unpopular opinion, it turns out it’s actually pretty popular.

Do you have some that’s really unpopular and most likely will get you downvoted?

  • Nonameuser678
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    1 year ago

    Everyone should try and reduce the amount of meat they eat as much as they can. Same goes for flying and driving.

    • ARg94@lemmy.packitsolutions.net
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      10 months ago

      Nah. John Kerry and Leo can stop flying everywhere in their private jets. That’ll make a bigger difference than anything I do.

    • toomanypancakes@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The amount they can reduce it by is “all”. Claims of any less is simply making excuses for bad behavior.

      • Nonameuser678
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        1 year ago

        It’s not really that simple and a lot of these things are out of people’s control. People who eat more meat than they need to just because they can are the ones who should be changing their behaviour. Not the people who have a constrained diet due to circumstances like poverty or medical conditions. But even then we should be targeting large scale polluters rather than just focusing on individual behaviour change.

        • richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one
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          1 year ago

          But even then we should be targeting large scale polluters rather than just focusing on individual behaviour change.

          This 1000%. The campains to put the responsability of recycling and not polluting in the common citizen, given the immensely greater damage companies do, is just a trick to distract, create guilt and not work actively to visibilize the main culprits.

          • r1veRRR@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            So tomorrow all politicians decide to do the right thing. Meat (just as one example) suddenly costs 5 times as much, because environmental and animal welfare regulations (ones with teeth, this time). In what universe do you think the population would accept that???

            ANY sustainable policy change absolutely REQUIRES the support of the voting population. And that’s a million times easier in a world with even just 10% vegans. Any collective action is comprised of INDIVIDUALS choosing to participate, and do their part.

          • Today@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Everytime i stand at the bins and try to decide if an item is trash or recycling, i think of the amount of single use packaging trash that every hospital creates and wonder what difference my once-a-day cat food can will make.

          • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            I think the taking point you’re sharing is actually the one pushed by corporations to curtail social movements that could end them.

            I always hear people talk about how ten companies are responsible for 90% of plastic use, one of those is Coca-Cola who create billions of tons of plastic bottles which the CEO swims in like Scrooge McDuck… oh no, they put drinks in them and everyone that’s too lazy to carry a water bottle buys them, drinks the liquid then maybe puts the bottle in the trash, many just throw them on the ground.

            You know what happened when we all stopped renting videos? Blockbuster died, also all those VHS cassette stopped being made… Try and imagine how it would look in the coke corporate office if everyone decided they weren’t going to buy drinks in plastic bottles. How long would it take for them to turn off the machines when all the outlets cancel their restock orders? How long could they sit paying rent on factories sitting idle and stacked with unsold product?

            Of course we need policy and regulation but ignoring our responsibility to make personal choices only benefits the corrupt and damaging corporations, we could crush them so easily but instead of trying it’s now popular to pretend our choices don’t matter

            • richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one
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              1 year ago

              We couldn’t make anything happen, because they bought the legislators and such necessary laws would never pass

              • r1veRRR@feddit.de
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                1 year ago

                Unless you think they could pass mandatory consumption laws, not eating meat would absolutely work. We’re at just 2% vegans, and we’ve got Beyond and a lot of vegan options in soo many places, compared to just 10 years ago. Imagine just 10% vegans.

                • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 year ago

                  When I was in school people didn’t even know what a vegetarian was, like my parents had to argue with the school to get them to belive it. Now McDonald’s has a whole vegan menu (UK only, look it up online) things have changed so fast.

                  It’s getting so much easier that I really think we’re only going to see it continue to grow in numbers.

              • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                Exactly, if we went to defeat them we first need to destoy their source of power, if we stop buying bottled drinks then they’ll be so tied up trying to pay rent on their factories they won’t be able to afford the legislators. This is why they’re scared of us collectively taking personal responsibility

        • r1veRRR@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          I agree that not everyone can go 0%, but the vast, vast majority can. Especially if we’re talking about people with access and time to chat on some internet platform, aka everyone reading this.

          Not every man can stand up for womens rights either. For example, his sexist boss might constantly make sexist jokes about his coworkers. He needs the job, though. He can’t afford to do the right thing. Do you think, therefore, it’s a good thing to ALWAYS BRING THIS HYPOTHETICAL UP, whenever the topic is that men should stop supporting the patriarchy, feminism is good, etc.? If non-feminists were the ones always bringing up the exceptions, would you believe they actually cared?

      • CookieJarObserver@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Actually a non meat diet in many places is way more expensive and way less Filling than just eating meat or fish.

        You can down vote me all you want, but consider bringing a argument against it if possible.

        • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          That’s entirely down to economies of scale and cultural bias, you’re talking about weird rural towns where the local shop almost caused a riot by accidentally stocking a type of bean no one was familiar with.

          The cost to produce vegan food is well below that of meat equivalents, it takes a lot less resources at every stage of the process

            • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              Because in some areas it’s rare so anyone choosing it is forced to pay a premium, where it’s more common it’s the cheaper alternative because there’s more competition.

                • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 year ago

                  That’s not even close to true, I’ve eaten cheap in every country in Western Europe, I can’t speak for the rest but I know Slovakian and Polish vegans who post great looking meals on their social media.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            it takes the same resources. like THE EXACT same resources. because we feed animals the parts of plants we can’t or don’t want to eat. any given acre of soy beans has an 85% chance it will all be used to make soy bean oil, and the industrial waste from that process is fed to livestock.

        • Moghul@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Walk, bike, scooter, train, tram, metro, trolley, bus. Plenty of countries can swing public transportation and plenty of people don’t need to drive but still choose to.

          Edit: It occurs to me now this person may have been sarcastic.

          • Today@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            I drive among 12 different locations for work. Can’t really give up the car.

              • Today@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                It’s good. I drive from school to school seeing kids with disabilities.

                  • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
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                    1 year ago

                    It’s more dishonest to pretend such cases don’t exist, it annoys me so much when people act like public transport is a magical solution to everything because I’ve relied on it a lot and there are so many issues to fix - for a start you have to address how dangerous it is, I don’t like getting a night bus and I’m a scruffy male manual labourer - which cities would you want your 18yo daughter travelling across on bus and light rail at 11pm? Or you elderly mother?

                    Then there’s the logistics, if I was going to visit eight people at home and had to get the bus between them then travel to and from the bus stop, waiting, changing bus and waiting again… Most of my day would be on the bus compared to a small percentage of it in a car if that was used instead. And yes you can say jobs like that shouldn’t exist if you don’t care about other people, just chuck the elderly, disabled and vulnerable people into a home and forget about them, who cares if women can’t live normal lives let them stay at home if they want to be safe! All that matters is it’s now cool to hate cars

                  • Today@lemm.ee
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                    1 year ago

                    I wasn’t complaining about driving - just saying that carless isn’t always an option.

            • Moghul@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              Then you don’t fall within the ‘don’t need to drive but choose to’ segment. I don’t fully agree with the root comment of this thread, there are definitely some jobs that require a personal vehicle, and yours sounds like one of them. But for most people who are commuting twice daily, more environmentally sound options can replace their personal car.

          • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            For the last time, putting your bed in conference room 6 did not make it your bedroom.

            Also please remove your clothing from the filing cabinets.

            • Teon@kbin.social
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              10 months ago

              Rude! That’s not a ‘filing cabinet’, it’s a chest of drawers.
              And who is wearing my ball gown again?
              ERIC! Take that gown off now you little bitch!
              [walks off in a huff]

          • octobob@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            That’s cool and all but I’m an industrial electrician. I have to drive to the shop every day, and travel all over the country. Can’t exactly just walk over to a coal mine in bumfuck nowhere Kentucky

              • octobob@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                Can’t tell if this is sarcasm but just to put my city’s transit into context, it’d be a 2 hour bus ride to get to the shop via bus from my house. And that’s:

                12 minute walk -> ride a bus -> 6 minute walk -> transfer and take a different bus -> 14 minute walk

                Or a 22 minute drive

                • ErwinLottemann@feddit.de
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                  1 year ago

                  It was sarcasm.

                  But you could ride a bike! Which is really fun! In the winter, when there is heavy snow, or even on rainy summer days.

                  I don’t get that some people just don’t understand that it’s sometimes just really inconvenient to not use a car, at least for some people. Please let them use cars without blaming them for doing so…? 🥺