If Not Vegan, or Vegetarian, How About Chickentarian?
The same bit of wisdom gets repeated over and over and over again: If you want to reduce the carbon emissions of your diet, eat less meat. If you really care about climate change, cut out animal products, period.
It’s such simple guidance! And yet it has instigated so much hand-wringing and back-bending so that people can still eat what they like to eat—which, in most places with Western tastes, includes hefty quantities of animal products. Billions of dollars have been invested in start-ups engineering plant-based replications of the juice that drips from a hamburger, the creaminess of dairy, the crunch of shrimp. Some have argued for the ostensible ecological benefits of raising beef and lamb on grassland, where gains in soil health from fertilization could offset the carbon emissions produced by ruminant livestock. Many a vegetarian has rationalized their prodigious consumption of cheese because, well, vegetarianism is good for the climate, isn’t it?
Every piece of realistic climate advice—the kind that could actually be
