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My text was originally posted in Brazilian Portuguese on my LinkedIn.
I’ve been dedicating myself to writing for the Effective Article Prize, from Effective Altruism Brazil, and it’s been taking up quite a bit of my time as I try to polish my texts to make them worthy of an award. I write best when I’m inspired—usually in a moment of frustration when someone presents me with false information as if it were the absolute truth. In those cases, everything just flows in less than a day, driven by the urge to break down the barriers created by misinformation. But when I have to meet a character limit, a theme, and a deadline, I freeze: the text stalls, stagnates, and takes much longer than if it were a spontaneous outburst, like this one now.
This time, the trigger was a message full of “Read more” and marked as “frequently forwarded.” That label might as well be called “Certified Fake News” because, in all my years using WhatsApp, I’ve never seen accurate information go viral as much as rumors invented just to spread panic.
So, I read the whole text, which began with a dramatic “𝐈𝐌𝐏𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐓 𝐍𝐄𝐖𝐒!” It talked about a so-called APHELION PHENOMENON that, between June and August, would move us 152 million kilometers away from the Sun—“66% more than the Earth’s normal distance of 5 light-minutes (90 million km).” According to the author, “our bodies wouldn’t be prepared for such a drastic temperature change,” and so the message ended with an appeal: “Please share this with all your family and friends so they can also take precautions.”
When I started reading, I thought: Wow, they’ve discovered what we call WINTER—the temperatures are finally going to drop. Then, I got annoyed by the effort of the idle person who created that text full of visual appeals (emojis, paragraph structures, bold fonts) just to spread alarmism. What does this person gain from so many shares? And why not use that reach—and clear talent—to spread real information that could actually help someone?
Aphelion is, in fact, a real astronomical event: it happens every year when the Earth reaches the farthest point from the Sun in its elliptical orbit. But the difference in the Earth-Sun distance at that moment is only 3.4% compared to perihelion (the closest point)—nothing like the 66% hyped in that chain message. Aphelion doesn’t cause “global cooling” or respiratory epidemics; the seasons result from the 23.5° axial tilt, not the distance from the Sun. After all, the Sun’s distance isn’t what determines seasonal temperatures.
Either way, I understand that the person who shared the message with me meant to inform and, in a way, express concern and care, since the message repeatedly asked people to take better care of themselves during this phenomenon. It’s scary how summers have more and more storms that destroy thousands of homes and keep getting hotter, killing people from heat even inside their own houses—especially those homes designed exclusively for the cold and to retain heat inside. And, in the same way, it’s frightening to feel so cold, to cover ourselves with so many blankets and end up as wide as a snowman after so many layers of clothing, and to see cities in Brazil covered in snow—something we’ve never had before in these millennia of human life.
And here I want to highlight that I’m speaking from the point of view of someone with the immense privilege of having a home and the means to buy and donate clothes and blankets. I won’t go into, at this moment, the pain of those who sleep on the street hugging their own dog, without the same chances. My questions are directed at those who share my position—before anyone labels this text as elitist. Bigger problems don’t erase smaller ones; both deserve reflection.
I want to talk about my outrage at those who write these texts just to shock: is spreading false information a joke to these people? That’s a serious question because I really would like to understand.
I also want to talk about those who share anything they see on the internet without checking (preferably in more than one source) whether it’s real or not. This goes for everything: from the supposed “Aphelion phenomenon” to “maternity leave for reborn dolls” or the rumor that “Lula was involved in the INSS scam.” What do you call this phenomenon where someone reads something that matches what they THINK or BELIEVE is true and, instead of confirming and looking for more data, just passes it on to everyone—spreading useless and, most of the time, false information?
Why do these same people devour huge chains of fake news without blinking, but freeze in front of a paragraph based on concrete data—and are even less likely to like or share something that actually does good? It seems like a sacrifice.
As I’ve said, I have NEVER received, with the “frequently forwarded” label, a useful message; it’s always a rumor. How does this misinformation spread so much and so easily?
Today, what most impacts climate change is our diet. The methane gases produced by dairy cows, the deforestation for soybean monoculture—only 6% goes to human food; all the rest becomes feed for animals raised for consumption—and “marine deforestation,” that is, the destruction of benthic habitats and the release of stored carbon resulting from bottom trawling, which, every day, with kilometer-long nets, devastates the planet’s true lung: the ocean. It’s clear that changing our diet and taking animals off our plates is much more effective—in the long run and considering the entire production chain—than switching from a gasoline car to an electric one, cutting all air travel during vacations, or limiting yourself to a single shower of, at most, ten minutes a day, for example. The solution, of course, is a combination of all these measures.
To rephrase with some nice data: the global food system—from production to consumption—accounts for 34% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, surpassing sectors like transportation (13.7%) and industry (24%) when analyzed separately. This figure includes activities like livestock (14.5% of global emissions), deforestation for agriculture (43% in the Brazilian Amazon), and post-production processes (transport, packaging, waste). Livestock emits 32% of anthropogenic methane, a gas 28–34 times more potent than CO₂, while bottom trawling releases 370 million tons of CO₂ per year, equivalent to 40% of global aviation emissions. Deforestation for animal feed is central: 76% of the world’s soy feeds cattle, pigs, and chickens, expanding the loss of biomes like the Cerrado, which stores 13.7 billion tons of CO₂.
But the agribusiness lobby is huge, billionaire, and too influential to let this kind of information reach you. Of course, MANY factors affect the environment and climate change—oil, the textile industry, paper, coal, etc. We should act, as much as possible, so that our actions are well-directed. None of this, however, erases the fact that our plates have the most influence on climate change; so I ask:
Why do people prefer to create an alternate reality where the Aphelion phenomenon causes more cold and, as a consequence, makes everyone sick, instead of taking a simple action—changing their diet, taking animals off their plates—to drastically reduce their individual impact on climate change, which is responsible for hotter summers and colder winters? Why do they insist on complaining about the weather and, even so, hesitate to take such a simple step as replacing animal meat with plant-based alternatives? Money can’t be an excuse anymore: first, because a kilo of meat costs much more than a kilo of vegetables or legumes; second, because products that mimic animal-based foods are already much more affordable and similar in price, like cream cheese, yogurt, burgers, and so many other options that live in our food memories. Taste isn’t a justification either; we’ve advanced so much that, sometimes, when I try something vegan, I have to check the label to make sure there’s nothing of animal origin, to see if the snack or feijoada is really vegan. Health isn’t an excuse either: animal products have already been identified by the World Health Organization as related to diseases like cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, and high cholesterol, and there are countless studies proving that a plant-based diet is much healthier—in the short and long term—than an omnivorous diet. And if you ask, “What about protein, what about B12?” I answer that the only people I know who are deficient in vitamin B12 are precisely those who, believe it or not, eat meat every day, have barbecues on weekends, etc., and still need to supplement more vitamins than I do. As for protein, that argument is so old that I’m amazed to see people who spend hours on social media but refuse to do a little research to understand plant-based protein sources.
The truth is that today there’s no excuse not to adopt a 100% plant-based diet. It’s easier than ever: we have information at our fingertips, and we need to redirect the time we spend spreading fake news—and filling our brains with nonsense—toward something that actually makes a difference.
I agree with many longtermist philosophers when they say that all of us are responsible for the planet’s future. All our actions impact future generations, and we’re not just talking about our children or grandchildren: we’re talking about 150, 200, 500 years—and even more. William MacAskill, one of the leading names in longtermism and co-founder of Effective Altruism, made an analogy that deeply marked me about the age of humanity compared to a human life:
“We are at the beginning of what could be a very long future for humanity, and if we think of all human history as a single life, we are only a few months old on that scale. This means that our actions today have consequences that go far beyond our immediate future, affecting generations hundreds or even thousands of years ahead.”
In other words, humanity could still live much longer than we imagine, but if we keep worrying only about today and put the future in the hands of imaginary beings that don’t even exist, how will this planet be worthy—or even exist—so that future generations can live?
Isn’t it time to go beyond complaints about the cold and heat and actually change our individual attitudes? Isn’t it time to abandon the narrative of “I work for it, the money is mine, and I do what I want with it,” precisely because your purchases, your actions, your choices—even what, or who, you eat—directly impact not only the people around you but also those in other countries (far from you) and even those who haven’t been born yet?
