He said from his privately chartered jet
feels a bit ironic to urge for making the conference vegetarian, if the critique is that animal agriculture is killing the planet and serving animal products sends the wrong message, then continuing to serve just some of them is like advocating for handing out smokeless tobacco products rather than cigarettes at a cancer conference…
yeah, it’s maybe better, but … not by much, right?
I guess vegetarian would be demonstrably better than including meat, but dairy and eggs are produced the same way with similar climate footprints as meat, no?
not to play purity politics, better is still better - just enjoying the irony I guess
Every public event should be vegan, yes. It’s the common denominator and it’s has the lowest footprint in terms of global warning potential gas.
For a environmental event, of course it should be vegan, but the least you can do is make it vegetarian. It is still quite a lot better. In any case, these big events ate much more about symbolism than consistency, and that would send a message.
I would imagine the flights people take to travel to these conferences also have a significant climate impact, probably more than from the food served at the conference
that said, I’m not sure a conference has to be a perfect representation of the values the conference might hold, especially if the burden in the current society creates restriction … the conference after all is trying to help find ways to alter society so we don’t destroy our world, and I would assume better and greener public transportation is one of those policy positions being advocated - you can’t take a train that isn’t there
though vegan food is more materially achievable than the transportation alternatives, it’s not an insignificant cultural problem as people are not generally on board with the changes to diet, and substitutes (like transportation infrastructure) are not to the point of eliminating that discomfort such that people don’t feel it’s a burden to eat vegan (though in a vegan community this sounds absurd, we all are people who very much decided it’s worth making that change and felt the burden was not too high, but we are not representative of the average person, let alone the average climate scientist or conference-goer, though they probably are more likely to be vegan than the average person off the street).
I went to that extinction rebellion protest a few years back. I saw people eating dead animals! WTF!
it’s a cultural problem, food culture is hard to change, even when you have reasons to change
it’s harder for some than others, but the people who find it easy to become vegan are a small minority
rather than being shocked at the hypocrisy (which is admittedly there and is upsetting), I wonder instead what could be done to win more people over to veganism, or what other kinds of actions would move society towards a better set of conditions … a hyper-individualist lens makes it hard to recognize these issues are on a collective and societal level, and it’s more important that we solve those than whether someone was eating meat at a climate protest
pushing for legislation might be more effective than converting more of the minority of people who would become and stay vegan to do so in a society that is effectively hostile and provides little means to do so. Making it easier to be vegan by default is a hard task, though … it’s basically like waiting for the revolution.
if the critique is that animal agriculture is killing the planet and serving animal products sends the wrong message, then continuing to serve just some of them is like advocating for handing out smokeless tobacco products rather than cigarettes at a cancer conference…
Where are you getting the “some of the them part”? It’s a prestigious event made to inspire not to have literal impact so it should lead by example and not serve any meat and do all of the inspirational memes (electric cars etc.) and whatnot no matter how actually effective they are.
from the article:
Paul McCartney has urged COP30 to go vegetarian, arguing that serving meat at a climate summit is “like handing out cigarettes at a cancer prevention conference”.
I’m criticizing Paul McCartney for arguing the conference should go vegetarian and not vegan. The cows that make the dairy are treated terribly, are slaughtered well before their natural lifespans, and most important to the context, contribute significantly to the climate problems with methane emissions (just like cows grown for meat do).
Here’s a good breakdown of differences between vegan & vegetarian diets in terms of climate impact: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-023-00795-w
Emissions:
Vegan:............. CO2: 2.16, CH4: 04.39, N2O: 0.71Vegetarian:........ CO2: 3.33, CH4: 20.21, N2O: 0.98medium meat-eaters: CO2: 5.34, CH4: 40.88, N20: 1.73high meat-eaters:.. CO2: 7.28, CH4: 65.40, N2O: 2.62
So vegans have 30% of the emissions as high-meat-eaters, and the differences between vegans and vegetarians are significant with regards to their emissions.
Also should be noted that there is a big gap between biodiversity impact between vegans and vegetarians, with vegetarian diets causing nearly double the number of species extinctions per day than vegan diets.
Arguing they should serve cheese, eggs, etc. but just not meat is like arguing they should offer smokeless tobacco but not cigarettes at a cancer conference - meat has similar climate issues as dairy, and McCartney seems to either lack knowledge of this, or is aware of his hypocrisy but chooses it as a more moderate position because he’s hoping it will be more persuasive or likely to succeed.
To your point, the conference should probably go vegan just because they should be advocating for that kind of thing even if it won’t solve the fact that 80% of emissions came from just 57 companies. Even if like electric cars, veganism won’t save us from the climate disaster, you would think it would at least be part of their gimmick to show people what actions they can take (short of the guillotine, for the 57 company heads, as a part of a larger revolution that successfully replaces our economic and political system with something more egalitarian and less death-cult-y, though good luck on that; people don’t tend to get stabby until they’ve missed meals, and once they’ve missed meals the basis of a good future civics goes out the window and it’s more about the killing and retribution than about setting up a stable, but better, government).
Like I initially said, despite my criticism, I’m all for McCartney supporting vegetarianism, even if veganism would be better. Vegetarianism is still a massive improvement, especially when you are primarily looking at climate impacts, and it might be more likely to be implemented and supported socially.
Nowhere did he say that shey should go vegatarian over vegan just that vegetarian would be a minimum first requirement. You can always optimized from there to ad infinitum.
Paul and Linda McCartney are famously vegetarian, they are not vegan themselves and they don’t promote veganism … they only promote vegetarianism. Paul McCartney only suggested the conference go vegetarian, which of course doesn’t mean he wouldn’t support them going vegan, but my point was always that his own vegetarianism and advocacy only for vegetarianism is hypocritical.
Don’t make perfect the enemy of good. You can dig almost ad infinitum into food ethics and levels of veganism to the point where you lost the plot and everyone left the room.
yeah, that’s my takeaway as well
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When I was young John was my favorite Beatle. But now that I’ve learned about the actual men, Paul was the only Beatle that had always been a decent person.
George Harrison was a decent dude, no?
He cheated on his wife with Ringo’s wife. He could have (and did) have any woman he wanted but he slept with his friend’s wife.
To be fair, there was a lot of wife swapping going down at that time. Harrison pretty much gave Patty Boyd to Eric Clapton, which is also pretty weird.
That was after and probably Patty trying to get back at George. It’s only ok if its consensual. She wasn’t ok with it.
Wow, I just looked into it, and McCartney hasn’t really had any controversies. I was under the impression that they were all rather awful people. Any idea wny?
Well, he’s rich (probably close to a billionaire), and IIRC he’s a rabid copyright supporter (mostly because it benefits him). But now that I’ve tried to look up the source for that second claim, I can’t find it easily - maybe I’m confusing him with another Beatle.
I mean are we really gonna drag this guy down with all the others because he is a proponent for copyright laws. That’s not even bad it’s the most luke warm take ever.
When your work has influence the course of pretty much all music that came after it I can absolutely understand wanting to at least maintain a semblance of control of your actual work.
I think there are a lot of problems with copyright law but I don’t have issue with an artist maintaining control over their own work while they’re alive.
Corporations in the other hand…
control over your own work
He can still control his hands, can’t he? He can still decide whether he goes on stage?
How is it his work if someone else learns to perform a song he wrote? How is it controlling his work to say someone can’t copy a recording of someone else playing that song?
You realize that those rules also protect a lesser known artist getting their work stolen from a far more influential artist too right? It’s generally a good thing that a super successful artist can’t just copy a lesser known song and reap the benefits for it.
except those lesser knowns dont copyright shit and the influential ones do it constantly and get away with it
At the very least, him supporting copyright is as shitty as serving meat at a climate conference.
I think given that he is a creator he does have a right to the work he makes.
It seems he is a proponent of copyright laws in the way that benefits artists over record studios and keeping AI away from his albums.
Do the members of the Beatles and Apple Corps have anything to do with each other today?
Was Ringo a dick too?
He said in an interview that he beat his 1st wife so much that he understood why she cheated on him with George.
…that will do it.
John was a fucking bully
This is obvious, but if he was serious he would have contacted them more than a few days before the conference
Linda McCartney vegetarian sausages, pies etc remain some of the tastiest alternatives available in the supermarket.
One of my favourite memories from university was going around like 4 different supermarkets late at night to find Linda McCartney sausages etc. for a big student barbecue the next day. My friend had made an online order that had been blocked by his bank due to the abnormally large value, and he didn’t learn of this until the day the delivery was meant to arrive.
At the barbecue, I said “well, I best try one of these bloody sausages after all we went through to get them”. My friend quipped “no, they’re not bloody — they’re vegetarian, that’s the point”. They were indeed quite tasty
Yoko Ono tracks also remain some of the
bestalternatives to Beatles music.
I don’t care what virtues they’re playing at. The real question is are they doing anything substantive? Also no.
It’s only as substantive as people who follow and take action
The summit isn’t even finished and you’re already doomer
They literally tore down kilometers of rainforest just for this summit. It was over before it started.
Glad we can all agree choosing to meet up and be productive is counter productive
It’s too bad it’s impossible to meet other people in person without clear-cutting rainforest.
Ikr, my homies and I have deforested a couple hectares at this point. Not very sustainable imo
Sorry, sometimes I forget that other people have a hard time parsing sarcasm.
You don’t say
Why do they have to meet in person at all?
How about they discuss how damaging so much pointless business travel has come back in the era of technology that works very well to host meetings virtually.
It’s important to show up for things that matter. This is one of the most important issues of the 21st century and you are asking why our leaders aren’t literally phoning it in.
This is exactly why we have greenwashing and clean coal. Idiots are buying this bullshit.
The point is maybe if these singers, actors, various celebriites and B-list politicians had a virtual conference they could provide an example to end the vast waste of energy used for pointless in person meetings.
Because it’s effective.
Because these summits have any kind of track record of accomplishing anything? Talk, talk, fly, talk, fly …
Why exactly do you think progress is being made? Just total coincidence? No people met up, discussed the problem, discussed solutions and implemented them.
Why exactly do you think progress is being made?
Exactly what progress is being made? C02 emissions are higher every year, US shut down the EPA, Canada ended carbon taxes.
Some will. Some won’t.
L take
^L take
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Meat has been shown to have a much larger (negative) impact on the climate and the environment (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/adb7f2 ). The meat industry has suppressed these with their own disinformation campaigns (for example https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/11/pr-campaign-may-fuelled-food-study-backlash-leaked-document-eat-lancet , https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14693062.2025.2460603 )
So it’s actually big meats accomplishment that meat eaters rage against vegans.
Veganism is about not exploiting animals. The fact that it’s better for the environment is just a bonus.
The pros just keep on piling up.
Despite meat being a relatively small factor in what exactly? It’s upwards of 15-20% of global GHGs.
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But they don’t have to eat meat. And given that one of the big challenges of tackling climate change is foregoing convenience for sustainability, I think it would have been an appropriate choice.
Sorry, I missed the part that I was in Vegan. Makes the hole “eating meat” more in focus here… :-)
People also have to breathe. They just don’t have to breathe cigarette smoke.
You don’t need meat for protein.
Wasn’t there a cow pill/enzyme that stopped them farting so much?
How would that stop deforestation?
COP 30 is in Brazil, where one of the biggest issues is deforestation of the amazon rainforest.
One of the bigges causes of deforestation in Brazil is animal agriculture, namely for cows.
Yeah, although they mostly burp the methane: https://www.nature.com/articles/d42473-024-00084-5
How does that fix the fact of water waste and pollution?
Throw in the looming antibiotics collapse because of their overuse in insane feedlots too.
I was just asking because I couldn’t remember. But apparently everything here is some big declaration of politics, worldviews, and beliefs.
