My single greatest contribution for the climate is not having children.

Here's the perspective that helped me the most with this:

You don't have to quit meat (sorry for the pun) cold turkey.

Even cutting your meat consumption by half can have a significant impact. Start by ordering a vegetarian option instead of meat every once in a while. Experiment and find veggie alternatives you actually like, there are tons of options now. I heard someone refer to this as "microdosing veganism", and it can really help make the change less exhausting.

Over time, you might even notice your tastes start to shift and vegan options become actually enjoyable instead of a "sacrifice".

Operative word you. Individual action was a deliberate red herring constructed by the FF industry propaganda machines half a fucking century ago, because they knew who the actual significant contributors to the problem were.

Not having a kid eclipses all of these by orders of magnitude.

YSK you should stop guilting us peasants.
Everyone knows who's to blame.
Tired of this shit.

I could devote all my time to recycling, reducing carbon emissions, not driving, voting, not eating red meat, including forcing everyone i know to do the same - and the net result would be an iota of a drop in the ocean of change. i.e. nothing.

As others have said, until there is a global shift on how the world operates and the major oil companies, cruise lines, and airlines all shut down, nothing you or i can do will matter.

Edit: folks still don't get it. It's not a matter of apathy, it's pragmatism. You will never, ever convince enough people to make a significant change relative to the big consumers. You will be dealing with the people who literally pollute and consume out of spite, and/or principle, or ignorance. For every thing you do, someone's doing the opposite. We failed the planet a long time ago though lack of education and giving too many greedy people power. The world is too large and the snowball is over the hill.

The amount of fuel used by the cruise industry in about 1 minute, on average, is more fuel than you or I or any normal person would consume in their entire lifetime, by a lot. That's on the low end. They consume 500,000 to 1.5 mil gallons an hour. The average person uses maybe 20 to 50k gallons their entire lives. You'd have to convince millions and millions of people to stop driving completely for 40 years to offset that. Tens of millions probably.

Not gonna happen. That's just one industry.

Everyone's not gonna just stop flying. Or stop driving. Or stop eating meat. It's idealistic and impossible and frankly imaginary, no matter how much it may be necessary.

Why waste your time and energy doing things that will do nothing? Focus your efforts elsewhere. Policy change probably has the best chance of helping. But then I point back to the people actively and purposely thwarting any attempts at curbing consumption, and these people are billionaires etc. And at least in the USA, running the country.

perfect is the enemy of good.

I wish vegans and vegetarians would be a bit more willing to promote this viewpoint. It’s insane how many otherwise normal people will refuse a single meat-free meal for no reason other than identity politics.

the graphic you posted comes from this article, which shows it is based on poore-nemecek 2018. i've detailed teh problems with this study in another top-level comment here, but, basically, it's not good science. i feel you're spreading misinformation.

People will look at an image like this, read that 80% of deforestation in the Amazon happens for cattle, and go “I’m powerless, Exxon is bad” and continue to not only eat meat 5x a day but also actively try to convince other people that reducing their meat consumption is silly and they might as well keep eating it as much as they want because grocery stores will stock it anyway and Elon Musk rides a jet.

You forgot number one: By far, the best thing you can do for the climate is not have children.

That's almost certainly the biggest dietary change you can make.

But for overall impact, there's one winner and it's bigger than everything else put together.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children

Capitalism hates this one weird trick.

Ontop of that, factory farming is a lovecraftian horror that floods the universe with terrible agony. And there's very good reason to believe that the suffering of animals is as real and awful as yours or mine.

What bother's me about these sorts of posts is they don't give people a consumption goal. Blindly telling everyone to consume less isn't exactly fair. Say, for example, there's person A who consumes 1 unit of red meat per month, and person B who consumes 100 units of red meat per month. If you say to everyone "consume 1 unit of red meat less per month", well, now person A consumes 0 units of red meat per month, and person B consumes 99 units of red meat per month. Is that fair? Say, you tell everyone "halve your consumption of red meat per month", well, now person A consumes 0.5 units of red meat per month, and person B consumes 50 units of red meat per month. Is that fair? Now, say, you tell everyone "you should try to eat at most 2 units of meat per month", well now person A may happily stay at 1 unit knowing that they're already below the target maximum, they may choose to decrease of their own accord, or they may feel validated to increase to 2 units of red meat per month, and person B will feel pressured to dramatically, and (importantly, imo) proportionally, reduce their consumption. Blindly saying that everyone should reduce their consumption in such an even manner disproportionately imparts blame, as there are likely those who are much more in need of reduction than others. It may even be that a very small minority of very large consumers are responsible for the majority of the overall consumption, so the "average" person may not even need to change their diet much, if at all, in order to meet a target maximum.

How much less red meat to offset all the private jet that flew to Venice for bezos’ wedding?

Do billionaires count as red meat? I am asking for a friend.

What about not having children?

Not loving that the exact source of the data in this graph is not clearly linked in the description.

Yeah let us do the microscopic differences while some industry totally ignores it...

The prevalence of people telling everyone not to have kids in the context of our current culture is weird.

Alt-right: "Hey we're trying to have as many kids as possible so there's more of us, and less of you. Do us a favor and don't have kids."

Evidently a lot of people on the left: "Sounds good dude."

May I propose a reasonable alternative? If you don't want to have kids, cool, don't have kids. If you want to have kids, have the financial and social security to do so responsibly, and a partner who wants the same thing, then have kids (but also go vegan, ride a bike, and raise them to do the same).

Aka, you do you.

Not disagreeing that meat is bad for the environment, but I think not having kids is probably way above cutting out meat.

or eat the wealthy is a better start

Veganism is good, necessary even, but more than voting we need to actually overthrow capitalism and replace it with socialism. Profit will destroy the planet unless we take control of the reigns from capital.

True. Though maybe also activism until manufacturers are held accountable for their production methods and clean up costs. I do my share but I'm tired of being told it's on me. It's on corporate greed. Instead of spending on lobbying to avoid any changes to the status quo, they could spend much less coming up with different cleaner methods of production.

I get that individuals aren't the problem impact wise but couldn't it be the case that if the majority of people life a more sustainable life it will be easier to create laws that put stop the real poluters bc people are in support of such regulations?! If the majority of people think the existence of billionaires is immoral, it will be easier to tax the rich...

Cute.
I'd be more interested in adding private and commercial airliners, long-haul trucks and tanker ships to the list for comparison.