https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/23766056/deforestation-amazon-rainforest-palm-oil-cattle
Deforestation raged ahead again in 2022, even after scores of countries pledged to protect their forests.
The main reason why people cut down forests today is to raise cattle for beef or to plant crops like soybeans, oil palm, and coffee. The reality is that it’s often easier or cheaper to clear a chunk of virgin rainforest for farmland than to use land that’s already been cleared of trees.
In the Brazilian Amazon, as much as 90 percent of all deforestation is linked to cattle ranching. Often, ranchers or companies will first cut down high-value trees and sell them as timber. Then they’ll burn or clear the remaining vegetation before planting grass and bringing in cattle.
Seems like the solution is pretty obvious. Stop supporting the meat industry as a whole until it can prove it's stopped harming the of planet.
While individual change is important and needed. We really need the large societal / structural change. I wish it were as simple as just stop supporting the meat industry but how much difference do individual changes make? It feels hopeless.
I agree with this. In my country our primary industries are beef & dairy. Individual change may be happening slowly. But it does feel quite depressing seeing the expansion happening constantly all around you. And the amount of pushback government gets when they try to impose any sort of limitations or change on people's livelihoods is quite upsetting.
This division around the topic drives me nuts. And this is coming from a country where there's barely any native forest left in the first place.