Advertisement

Plenty of people took issue with this. Replies range from “But what about ethically raised meat?” to “Well, what about all the emissions from airplanes?” to “Actually, just don’t have children.” After plenty of exasperating back and forth, Lopez-Alt tweeted a follow-up: Just eat less, period.

Advertisement

Without even debating the substance of what Lopez-Alt and Foer posit, we can acknowledge this marks a change in the way we’re talking about meat and climate change. The type of personal mandate they’re suggesting means that each meal we eat is a moral decision, a choice for or against helping our gravely ill planet. Watching a friend order a burger could be, to some people, the same as watching them throw a plastic bottle out the window. It suggests a future in which our choice to eat meat or not during a particular meal is as fraught as lighting up a cigarette in public.