Watching Portugal play is always so frustrating. It doesn't matter how good you are if you can't score; all the other teams need is one good chance and we are immediately in hot water.

I was just thinking to myself "why would you shoot from there with so many teammates around", and then it just went in.

By just highlighting the experiences of women in the society we live in, and all the sexual violence they fall victims to, and how much violence is specifically directed at women - without resorting to cheap inflammatory "memes" (*). And as another way to a solution, we can also just try to be and create good role models for young men.

(*)And saying that has actually reminded me, that's usually exactly how the far right likes to act and spread their message too: inflammatory rhetoric that can make a catchy sound bite that will reach a lot of people, but which has no real depth to it. I'd rather not those tactics and actually try having real conversations.

I don't know about the situation, but from what you described that wasn't democratic socialism, it was social democracy; social democracy is a branch of capitalism. More specifically, social democracy emerged from a compromise made by capitalists to quell socialist and communist fervor.

In socialism, workers would be the owners of business and would distribute the profits among themselves. In social democracy, the states runs/manages some businesses with (in theory) the countries interests in mind, and creates several public support systems (i.e. public education and free healthcare) to improve overall quality of life for the average person; however the economy is still a capitalist one with free (but regulated) markets, where the only power workers have is voting on government elections.

Is it 100% optional? Are there no dietary conditions that require eating meat? Even if it is optional, I only said that expecting everyone to change is unrealistic, not that it’s impossible.

What point are you trying to make here? It's ok for people to support the meat industry because an incredibly small fraction of people need meat? How many people do you know that eat meat? And how many do you know actually need meat for medical reasons? And how many of those specifically require eating red meat, by far the worst offender, the most expensive, and still massively consumed?

How much do you expect people to sacrifice? If you give up eating meat can you fly to go on vacation? Or are people expected to give up everything in the name of the climate while billionaires jet around and corporations expell endless emissions?

"Guys, you don't get it! Doing 100% is hard, so why can't people just do 0%?!?" Also, you can criticize people for eating meat and still criticize billionaires on private jets; but nice whataboutism, I guess.

If military operations are required for survival (like eating)

You don't need to eat meat.

“yes we will only defend that military base and we will not kill everyone in the nearby school” and then they go and kill everyone in the school, why wouldn’t they be blamed for not following their orders?

Pray tell, what is the meat industry equivalent of this? You can't not worsen climate change with a meat industry. And before you argue "lab-meat", 1) that also takes a lot of resources currently, and it hasn't been massively adopted so ti's not what people are eating, 2) you know whether you're eating lab-meat. You can't support the meat industry, which you know is responsible for climate change, and then pretend you don't know the consequences. Stop.

But fine, you want another example, think of a hitman. "They only hired the hitman to kill people, they are not morally responsible for the hitman killing people". Except in this case, the hitman is also raising his victims from the ground up and worsening climate change.

You know eating meat, and thereby funding the meat industry, is bad; stop wasting time trying to justify it to yourself and other people and engaging in some kind of double think, and start actually making change for the best.

But anyway, blaming people for the depravity of companies is also not going to fix anything

Eating meat is 100% an optional and more expensive action that is demonstrably worse for the planet, even aside from ethical concerns, but which the majority of people keep consciously choosing to do even when made aware of the issues and presented with alternatives. Those people are just as responsible as the people actively doing the farming.

This wouldn’t even be considered a controversial statement if it wasn’t for the fact so many participate in it and want to keep making excuses. If a nation hired mercenaries to conduct military operations, you wouldn’t absolve that nation of guilt and say only the mercenaries are at fault, would you?

source 1 (2012 article, listing statista as source)

source 2 (2023 graph from statista)

In 2012 nuclear was by far the safest. Now, it's only beaten by solar, and only by 0.01 deaths per thousand terawatt hour.

It's also worth pondering the fact that governments have not been investing nearly as much into developing nuclear as renewables.

Well, the answer, and you imply towards the end, is that it's morally wrong.

If I said...

There are wars currently going on. Slavery, torture, some mass shootings, and every now and then even a genocide happens in the world. So until we stop all that, why shouldn't I go and punch some random person in the face, if it will make me feel better? After all, it's just a drop of water in an ocean of violance.

...you would probably call me an ass, maybe even a lunatic. You'd say I was just looking for excuses to keep being an ass. But that's the thought process you (not just you, more of a general you) are defending and making an excuse for.

The more "utilitarian" answer is that if we can't expect people to make changes in their lives by themselves when they have the choice to, why would we expect them to be okay being forced to make those changes by a government? And why wouldn't they just then go vote for someone who undoes it all?

Everyone would like a Tesla model geewiz with zero emissions

But that's exactly the problem! That right there is illustrative of the whole problem! Cars are not the solution, electrical or otherwise (electrical cars are still bad for the environment for a myriad of reasons)! And yet, instead of wanting more walkable and bikable cities, with more public transports, most people just want electrical vehicles; a "solution" that doesn't require them to change anything about their lives, or requires any actual systematic change.

And as for "supergreen organic carbon neutral groceries":

Anywhere I know of, most greens are cheaper than meat, and yet 2 things are true in a lot of the developed world:

• A very large (often more than half) percent of the population is overweight
• People eat a crap ton of meat

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that most people could eat less meat than they do - especially red meat, which is worse - but they don't. They actively chose to keep consuming, and overconsuming, even when they don't have to. If they can walk, they'll make excuses to take the car. If they can take public transport, they'll still make excuses to take the car. The philosophy of "I don't have to do anything, it's the corporations and government who have to act" just enables that behaviour, and also raises two questions:

• What will those people do when policy comes in to place that requires actual change from them? Will they be OK with it, or will they end up taking the system down and electing someone who undoes everything?

• If people truly care so much, why aren't all countries around the world electing more environmentally aware parties that enact more effective change?

I think convincing people pollution is morally wrong and to avoid it as much as possible in their own lives, will not only make the systematic change easier, it will also cause those people to actively fight for better and more effective changes when they realize they are being limited by the system itself. As opposed to now, where they just keep doing their thing, electing the same people, and just hope someone sorts it out without bothering them.

Of course, you're probably right. It just really irked to look through these comments, and I had to get that out.

I'm copy pasting something because it's easier than writing it all again:

Though experiment:

Tomorrow is election day in your country. The stout environmentalists win control of the government and proceed to make the following changes:

• Carbon tax, which increases the price of gas, which itself results in an increase in shipping anything. It also directly raises the price of anything that produces carbon in its manufacture process, such as anything made of plastic.

• An end to meat subsidies - maybe even a tax on it - and an increase to subsidizing other types of farming.

• A ban on single use plastics.

• And anything else you think might be necessary.

Now the questions: How long until they get kicked out? How long until the protests and riots? How long until a new government undoes it all?

I’m assuming you’re not naive and you don’t live in a bubble. You should know the majority of people will not be fans of any of that; and with the way it usually goes and the pendulum swings, the government that follows it will be a far right one.

Most people can definitely afford to eat less meat and consume less in general, even if they can't afford to buy the most environmentally friendly things. And if they can't even afford that, they won't be able to afford the environmental policies either; you would need much deeper change than you would get by voting for a major political party.

Who is consuming their products? I'm doing my damn best not too while striving for structural change, and I'd bet the other user is too. What about you? People taking your stance are usually the ones trying to make excuses to keep consuming mindlessly.