Comment on "Being vegan is unnatural"

• a1tsca13@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

  We have vastly increased our ability to produce food.

  And it has been largely the (petro)chemical industry responsible for this. The Haber-Bosch process transformed agriculture, but accounts for percent-level quantities of global energy consumption and carbon emissions. And it requires raw materials that are typically produced from hydrocarbons (although admittedly there are renewable options). And other nutrients typically come from mining (even organic options) - which displaces many species of all sorts. And this does not account for pesticides, etc., that others have mentioned.

  Prior to the development of modern chemistry, our best sources of fertilizer were often animal manures - which require breeding, raising, and ultimately usually killing animals.

  Sure, there is a lot we can do to minimize harm, and generally we should, and I try to myself as much as possible. But I’m not fooling myself into thinking that eating vegan or growing my food organically means nothing or no one suffered. Until we all go back to pre-agrarian societies, we will continue to cause large-scale destruction in some way. But of course this in itself would cause massive population decline and resultant suffering in humans.

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• stickly@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I reject your argument that life is a zero-sum game

  Then you’re a fundamentally blind idealist or just lying to yourself. The absolute bare minimum, purely vegetarian footprint needed to support a human is about 0.2 acres (~800 m²). That’s 0.2 acres of precious arable land that could support dozens of species of plants, insects and animals purely dedicated to one human and their crops. A diverse and thriving array of life traded for one person and a handful of domesticated species.

  From there you’re now looking at displacement and damage from housing, water usage, soil degradation, waste disposal, pest control and every other basic necessity. God forbid you get into modern niceties like health care, transportation, education, arts, sciences, etc…

  Humans aren’t friendly little forest nymphs, we’re megafauna. Even the most benign and innocuous species of primates (such as lemurs and marmosets) peaked their populations in the high millions. Getting the human population down from 8.3 billion to a sustainable level is a 99%+ reduction. That’s a more complete eradication than any genocide in recorded history, let alone the sheer amount of death and scope of institutional collapse.

  That’s just a flat fact of our reality. Either 99% of humans have no right to exist or humans are inherently a higher class of animal. Choose one.

  We have vastly increased our ability to produce food. There are ample resources available on the planet for all of us to share and live in abundance.

  Uh ooooooh… someone isn’t familiar with how dependent our agriculture is on pesticides, petrochemicals and heavy industry 😬

  We (currently) have ample oil and topsoil. Not ample sustainable food. Don’t even get me started on out other niche limits, like our approach to peak mineral supply or pollinator collapse.

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  • ageedizzle@piefed.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Not everything is black and white. You are painting a picture where we have two options: (1) cause as much harm as we please and not worry about the consequences, or (2) cause no harm at all by eradicating our species from the face of the Earth (which would actually cause a lot of harm to members of our species but we’ll sidestep that for now).  

    But this is of course a false dichotomy. Because there are degrees to this. A vegan diet is undoubtably less harmful, both in its carbon footprint and in the direct harm in causes to other species. So if someone wants to reduce the amount of harm they are causing it’s the way to go. So why try to diminish that with this ridiculous dichotomy between death to all humans or unmitigated animal torture? If someone wants to decrease of amount of harm they are causing shouldn’t we be encouraging this sort of prosocial mindset? 

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    • stickly@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I’m not the one making the dichotomy! I’m fully in favor of all harm reduction possible (including a vegan/utilitarian vegan diet) for the obvious benefit of our own species. The commenter above is positing that there is no ethical direct/indirect violence toward any animals. It’s impossible to hold that position while simultaneously pretending billions of people can exist.

      I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. A simple rational examination of our limited resources is being discarded because “animals have human rights/you support slavery/you want animals to be raped”. No, I have a very obvious and consistent position:

      Humans are a higher class of animal and being good stewards of our only planet is crucial for our own well being. We thrive with nature and unnatural violence (like industrial animal farming) is bad for our psyche anyway. That doesn’t mean animals can’t or won’t die to support our existence.

      This stuff is so basic and fundamental; tradeoffs HAVE to be made. Pretending that the world can support life (let alone a good life) for billions of people without animal death/displacement/extinction is deranged. It’s on the commenter to pick up the shambles of that position and make anything that can fit in the real world.

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      • ageedizzle@piefed.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        You could argue that our way of life in wealthy countries is impossible without the exploitation of the third-world. Does that mean we are a higher class of humans? No.

        Let’s just strive to be as harmless as possible and leave our grand philosophical ideas about who is better than who aside.

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