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Clean coal all over again?
Peter Singer the "father of the animal rights movement" and really interesting philosopher, is I think a vegan but he argues for a disclosure number on eggs and chicken saying how many chickens there were per acre, because he argues that IF the chickens lived a happy life and were killed without distress, it's ethical to eat them, and at some really low density the evidence shows they are happy.
He also makes a claim that there are circumstances where it's ethical to eat meat like if the airplane serves you the wrong meal and if you reject it they will throw it away, because the animal is already dead and your decision doesn't incentivize more death, and demanding a new meal wastes food.
So, that's what living true values sounds like to me. Not picking a rule and sticking by it, but taking each decision and weighing it against your values.
Yeah. This is how I live life. I don't create demand for meat. But I'm not vegetarian.
but taking each decision and weighing it against your values.
He also claimed that kids with disabilities should be executed and infanticide should be legal up to the age of 30 days.
It sounds like he took a few plane trip, which my explain the second part of that statement.
Har har, I must admit it is rather difficult being on a seven hour flight next to a baby. Especially when you hit lots of turbulence.
That doesn't invalidate the above statement, it just illustrates that he also has abhorant opinions.
People like him make a point of having full consistent systems of thought. So at best his opinion happens to be correct which is not the same as being correct for the right reasons. Even a stopped clock etc.
Also fuck his ablism bullshit
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Personally, I find a lot of Peter Singer's arguments to be pretty questionable. As for some of the ones you've mentioned:
For one, killing humans, no matter how humanely the means, is seen by most to be an act of cruelty. I do not want to be killed in my sleep, so why is it okay to assume that animals would be okay with it? While he is a utilitarian and doesn't believe in rights, killing a sentient being seems to me to have much greater negative utility than the positive utility of the enjoyment of eating a chicken.
Also, farming animals for slaughter will always be destructive towards habitats and native species. Even if broiler chickens were kept alive for their natural lifespan of 3-7 years instead of 8 weeks to alleviate any kind of ethical issue with farming them, there is still an opportunity and environmental cost to farming chickens. We could use that land for to cultivate native species and wildlife, or for growing more nutritious and varied crops for people to eat, yet instead we continue to raze the amazon rainforest to make more land for raising farm animals and growing feed. De-densification of farms would only make the demand for farmland even greater than it already is.
Finally, the de-densification of farms would mean a significant increase in the costs of mear production. We'd be pricing lower income groups out of eating meat, while allowing middle- and upper-class folks to carry on consuming animal products as usual. We should not place the burdens of societal progress on the lower class.
But factory farming is completely separate from the scenario of throwing away the entree on the plane.
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Rich people's flesh is the most climate-friendly meat
Absolutely not! It takes a lot of pollution before someone becomes rich
Takes a lot less to remove them.
The 1% and the corporations are more at fault for climate change than individuals. I'm not going to stop eating beef while rich assholes fly around in their private jets fucking up the world just so I have to pay for their greed.
Corporations respond to consumer demand. Don’t buy beef and there won’t be massive deforestation and insane methane emissions. Every dollar you spend on beef is supporting the 1% and the corporations you claim to hate.
I wasn't even alive in the 1970's when Exxon knew about climate change and lied about it to the entire world. Those rich fucks have been exploiting the climate for their personal gain for many decades before either of us were likely even born. I won't be giving up the few small liberties I have so that the rich can continue doing whatever they want.
And good luck getting every single consumer to agree with you. I suspect you're going to be waiting a long time for your plan to work.
Instead, we should be punishing the individuals responsible for 40% of the climate change problem. Not punishing the rest of the world who did not profit from exploiting the climate problem.
As horrible as those people are, it's not like they're just belching carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for fun. They're fulfilling demand. That 40% wouldn't disappear just by spreading ownership of the factories to more people. That's not to say that individual action is the only thing that works. Regulations need to be put in place to curb emissions, incentives should reward producers for investing & transitioning to more sustainable practices, and yes, monopolies need to get split up.
But the fact remains that some products are just bad for the environment. As as long as people continue buying those products they'll keep being produced. And when animal agriculture accounts for about as many emissions as the entire transportation industry, this seems like one of the easier steps to make.
The "my actions won't end this problem so I don't need to do anything" mentality never comes up in any other field (politeness, crimes, social change, voting). Yeah, choosing to never hold open doors for others wouldn't noticeably affect the global rate, but I doubt you'd use that logic to justify being rude.
To say Exxon was just, "fulfilling demands" makes them seem like good people. They KNEW they were causing climate change 50 years ago. They suppressed the information. Many Americans are dependent on their oil. It's all part of the design of our roads, infrastructure, jobs, etc. These corporations only care about their revenue streams, not the streams of water and how clean they are. Hoping the majority of consumers band together to do the right thing simply will not work. The corporations and the executives need to be held accountable or we will continue to flounder on climate change.
Unfortunately it goes back further than that. We knew anthropogenic climate change was a thing in the late 1800s, and the oil companies started doing the research in the early 1900s. They knew by 1910 that they were flirting with disaster. Which just allows everyone to say, "nope, not changing anything personally, because those decisions were made before I was born."
I agree that it's unfair that we have to modify our consumption when it makes so little impact. Hopefully meat in vats is actually better for the environment, but I'm not counting on it for the first generation. It is finally being served in a couple restaurants so that's a first step
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Thats because we all have been raised to be polite and hold doors open. We have also been raised to consume anything and everything to satisfy our greed because it is our right as rulers of earth. It is the standard and noone criticizes you for it, so why not keep that privilege? It is apparently very hard and takes a long time to get rid of this mentality in the whole population, especially since the most influential ones fight for keeping it.
Do you really only do good things when you've been conditioned to do so? You don't ever try to grow past what society tells you? I'm not asking you to solve everything. I'm asking you not to be a part of the problem. Defending your behavior by pointing to that of others has not been a historically sound position.
Totally agree. I wasnt trying to defend that attitude, just setting some context.
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The reason why we will fail when it comes to the climate: we can’t even agree on who to blame and who to punish and how to change the situation to solve the problem.
We are f’d!
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I mean, we can both eat less meat and also demand change from the rich, they aren't mutually exclusive. "Because they do it too" isn't a great excuse
I never said they were mutually exclusive. The problem is that the majority of people have to make sacrifices because some rich assholes caused the lion's share of the problem. The funny thing about being a rich asshole is that they'll get away scot-free while the rest of us have to pay for their greed.
Hey not all of us! I plan to get a job working in whatever underground cyberpunk hell scape is our future. It's you surface people who are screwed.
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Bet you $10 they are going to jack those prices up so fucking high because marketing it as “sustainable” adds value or whatever.
Like they do with coffee or tried to do with clothing. Yeah buddy I am going to spend 110 dollars on your fucking hemp sweater that looks like I am off to go get high off gas in a bag later today. I want to spend my all too few dollars on that.
I bet WWF cant wait to put its label on the packaging.
They want you to think killing tuna is good for the environment
"This product helps protect coastlines and waterways."
How is this legal?
Didn't feeding them seaweed drastically reduce their methane burps?
Thanks for the heads up.
I'm still frustrated at the whole cage-free eggs/free range chickens and how it's super confusing.
The problem is that free range and grass fed methods take up more space and and produce more greenhouses gasses, even if they are more ethical.
Is it more expensive? They raise a ton of sheep around here, maybe I'll start buying local lamb. Mmmmm....
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this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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