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The necessary technologies
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this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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The memes of the climate
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Veganism isn't better for the environment than significantly reducing the total amount of consumed meat. Animals play an important, difficult-to-replace role in making agriculture sustainable. Animals can be herded on land that's difficult to farm on, animals can consume parts of farmed plants that humans cannot, and animals produce products that humans cannot replicate without significantly more work.
Edit: I see a bunch of vegans who aren't really engaging with the argument. To be clear, anyone who makes statements about how things are right now to try to disprove this is probably arguing in bad faith. I'm not responding to comments anymore because, while it's entirely possible that I'm wrong, y'all aren't making any good points.
Furthermore, I'm not anti-vegan, but now I'm tempted to be. So many people I've engaged with have displayed all of the worst vegan stereotypes I've heard about. I've always assumed it was chuds making shit up, but no I just hadn't met any of the terminally online creeps in the vegan community yet OMFG.
Yes, we need to significantly reduce the amount of consumed meat (maybe not insects, if we consider them meat). A step towards more vegan and vegetarian food would definitely be necessary. Yes, not everyone needs to be vegan. But we need to consume way more vegan and vegetarian food.
Veganism is good for climate, biodiversity, health and animal welfare. We really don't need to eat animals or animal products to have good meal and live a happy life. The good thing is that humans are omnivores, with a free choice of what to eat. Please choose wisely, not only for your own mental and physical health, but also for others, living now as well as in years to come.
I don't really care. Abusing (using) animals for food and work is cruel anyway, if me not doing that because I think it's wrong is good for the environment, great! If it's not, fine, but it's not why I do it.
That's the thing. Ethics and impact on the environment can be two different things. If you decide to go that way, you're fine. Do it. However we need animals for stated reasons. We have to eat less meat/generally consume less animal products.
We also need to stop overproducing everything. America makes far too much corn, because/and the industry is heavily subsidized.
The amount of food waste in North America is astounding. Completely unnecessary.
True. That's the same with everything. As long as it is worth to produce stuff just to throw it away we will damage our planet more and more.
Yup.. I want those subsidies to shift to hemp production. So many far more useful products that will be able to be produced rather than food processors playing hide the corn. It is a drop in replacement for the ethanol in gas since the seeds are 30% oil.
But we don't produce hemp, and megacorps go.. Here's another ethane cracker plant.
No, animal captivity, exploitation, rape, slaughter, and consumption are all things that are very much unnecessary, and are detrimental in many ways.
We don't need animals to consume plants we can't, because plant food is soooo goddamn more efficient on every metric. We can drastically reduce land, water and energy usage AND still feed way more people with plant foods. We simply do not need to eat animals.
Any form of "sustainable" animal farming I've read up on end up being still less resource efficient than plant foods, AND obviously massively reduced output. So we're truly talking about vegan vs. an ounce of meat a week. That's not a difference worth defending, considering the other obvious ethical issues.
Finally, why do you feel that it's important to argue for "99%" veganism? Do you genuinely believe people don't understand that less is better, but none is best? Do you apply the same argument to other ethical issues, like feminism? Being 99% feminist is a big improvement, but constantly arguing for it in favor of feminism (aka 100%) would obviously look ridiculous. Finally, don't you realize the humongous difference between "we should abuse animals for our pleasure less" vs. "we shouldn't do that"? A whole class of racism disappears if we get rid of the association between "animal" and "lesser moral consideration".
This argument relies on false assumptions about my ethics and an incorrect representation of my position. First: I don't want to reduce meat consumption/production by any specific ammount; I am currently unconvinced that removing domestic animals from food production entirely is maximally efficient, but think it's clear that the current ammount of meat is unsustainable and thus must be reduced by some ammount that is currently unknown to me. Furthermore, I don't believe that all living things qualify as "people" for moral considerations. Since I do not believe all living things are people unless proven otherwise, why should I consider all animals as people unless proven otherwise? There are certain animals that I consider to be people and thus give moral consideration equal to humans such as certain species of corvid, dolphins, elephants, and octopi which have demonstrated traits that make me believe they should qualify. In order to convince me, you need to either provide me an alternative definition of a person and demonstrate why it's superior or to show me that all animals fit into my definition of person.
Edit: forgot to mention your other argument, but simply put it's also off the mark. While I agree that eating plants directly is more efficient, that doesn't address the thesis of my argument. So long as there exists circumstances such that we produce plant matter (as a waste product) that an animal can consume and humans do not in quantities sufficient to feed a stock of animals of some size including those animals in food production and feeding them the plant matter is more efficient than throwing away that plant matter. Your argument needs to be more robust.
Lookup veganic farming, and veganic permaculture. The idea that animal ag has any place in combating global warming is demonstrably false, and was nothing more than a greenwashed hijacking of the other various regenerative agricultural movements. There is no room in neither a just world, or a sustainable one, for the exploitation and consumption of animals.
https://www.surgeactivism.org/allansavory
Sir you forget that in China there are pig condos
Most of the vegan food we grow is fed to animals, so we can eat them. Feeding and housing animals for food consumption purposes requires 83% of our total farmland, but produces only 18% of our calorific intake.
If the world went vegan, we'd only use 25% of the farm land we currently do, meaning we don't need to use that "difficult to farm" land.
Unfortunately there is literally no valid argument against veganism. If there were, I wouldn't be vegan.