Your passion is no different than that of the antiabortionists.
You won’t accept nuance, you don’t want to have a discussion, you want your agenda to be heard and the world to bend to your view of how things ought to be.
I do accept discussion, and rely heavily on source based discussion. I cite nearly everything I say. See how I cited two sources earlier when I made a claim about meat industry funded astroturfing
When people have critiques based on their own sources, or methodological/other critiques of the sources I provide, there is a good back and forth.
Even when other people never provide a single source, I still converse and provide sources for my claims
I qualify my claims to reflect what the data and research actually says. That’s what nuance looks like. When people argue for a specific claim that makes things more complicated, I respond to their claim about that specific issue. That’s also what nuance looks like
Antiabortionists cite sources too. The passion and certainty are the same.
Vegans aren’t trying to clean up the food industry, they want to end it. Raising the issues with it just a means to that end. There are few if any vegans arguing for a cleaner animal husbandry practices.
Many vegans recognize it as a choice, like the abortion issue, they aren’t against any abortions they only choose not to themselves have an abortion. They aren’t discussing the horrors of the abortion industry on the internet.
> Vegans aren’t trying to clean up the food industry, they want to end it
If we’re going to talk about ignoring nuance, making statements like that isn’t doing any favors. Animal agriculture =/= the entire food industry. Plant agriculture exists as well
> Many vegans recognize it as a choice, like the abortion issue, they aren’t against any abortions they only choose not to themselves have an abortion
The problem with that characterization is that things can really only be a personal choice with no effects on any one else when we’re talking about non-sentient beings. Without that presumption the assertion makes less sense. For instance, most in the west generally don’t conceptualize killing a random healthy dog as a personal choice.
Even if we set aside the creatures themselves, the environmental factors alone make it difficult to conceptualize as a pure 100% personal choice. Is it a personal choice to let an industry keep us from climate targets on their own?
To have any hope of meeting the central goal of the Paris Agreement, which is to limit global warming to 2°C or less, our carbon emissions must be reduced considerably, including those coming from agriculture. Clark et al. show that even if fossil fuel emissions were eliminated immediately, emissions from the global food system alone would make it impossible to limit warming to 1.5°C and difficult even to realize the 2°C target. Thus, major changes in how food is produced are needed if we want to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.
And the issue on that end is quite fundamental. It takes a lot of feed to raise non-human animals. They lose most of the energy using it to perform body functions, move around, etc. Even best case production just comes out worse than worst case plant production for humans
Plant-based foods have a significantly smaller footprint on the environment than animal-based foods. Even the least sustainable vegetables and cereals cause less environmental harm than the lowest impact meat and dairy products [9].
If you tried to use something like grass-fed production instead, you’d find it generally does not scale and ends up with increased methane production
We model a nationwide transition [in the US] from grain- to grass-finishing systems using demographics of present-day beef cattle. In order to produce the same quantity of beef as the present-day system, we find that a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%. We also find that the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle), an amount 30% smaller than prior estimates
[…]
If beef consumption is not reduced and is instead satisfied by greater imports of grass-fed beef, a switch to purely grass-fed systems would likely result in higher environmental costs, including higher overall
methane emissions. Thus, only reductions in beef consumption can guarantee reductions in the environmental impact of US food systems.
Look at it another way - do we REALLY need that much meat production? Probably not. Vegans have been living just fine this whole tome, and meat is very resource intensive to produce anyway, so one could argue you’d get even more food from stopping.
Is it causing massive issues even aside from the suffering of animals? Yeah, agriculture plays quite a significant part in CO2 emissions. Not to mention the polluting of rivers.
Also, I don’t really see your point of ‘they don’t want to have a discussion’. You’re literally having a discussion with them right now.
Your idea of nuance would have us all sitting on our hands while unsustainable industries make the world we live in uninhabitable and put an end to humanity as we know it.
Your passion is no different than that of the antiabortionists.
You won’t accept nuance, you don’t want to have a discussion, you want your agenda to be heard and the world to bend to your view of how things ought to be.
I do accept discussion, and rely heavily on source based discussion. I cite nearly everything I say. See how I cited two sources earlier when I made a claim about meat industry funded astroturfing
When people have critiques based on their own sources, or methodological/other critiques of the sources I provide, there is a good back and forth.
Even when other people never provide a single source, I still converse and provide sources for my claims
I qualify my claims to reflect what the data and research actually says. That’s what nuance looks like. When people argue for a specific claim that makes things more complicated, I respond to their claim about that specific issue. That’s also what nuance looks like
Antiabortionists cite sources too. The passion and certainty are the same.
Vegans aren’t trying to clean up the food industry, they want to end it. Raising the issues with it just a means to that end. There are few if any vegans arguing for a cleaner animal husbandry practices.
Many vegans recognize it as a choice, like the abortion issue, they aren’t against any abortions they only choose not to themselves have an abortion. They aren’t discussing the horrors of the abortion industry on the internet.
> Vegans aren’t trying to clean up the food industry, they want to end it
If we’re going to talk about ignoring nuance, making statements like that isn’t doing any favors. Animal agriculture =/= the entire food industry. Plant agriculture exists as well
> Many vegans recognize it as a choice, like the abortion issue, they aren’t against any abortions they only choose not to themselves have an abortion
The problem with that characterization is that things can really only be a personal choice with no effects on any one else when we’re talking about non-sentient beings. Without that presumption the assertion makes less sense. For instance, most in the west generally don’t conceptualize killing a random healthy dog as a personal choice.
Even if we set aside the creatures themselves, the environmental factors alone make it difficult to conceptualize as a pure 100% personal choice. Is it a personal choice to let an industry keep us from climate targets on their own?
(emphasis mine)
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357
And the issue on that end is quite fundamental. It takes a lot of feed to raise non-human animals. They lose most of the energy using it to perform body functions, move around, etc. Even best case production just comes out worse than worst case plant production for humans
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/html
If you tried to use something like grass-fed production instead, you’d find it generally does not scale and ends up with increased methane production
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401
These two statements juxtaposed just took 7 years off my life
Look at it another way - do we REALLY need that much meat production? Probably not. Vegans have been living just fine this whole tome, and meat is very resource intensive to produce anyway, so one could argue you’d get even more food from stopping.
Is it causing massive issues even aside from the suffering of animals? Yeah, agriculture plays quite a significant part in CO2 emissions. Not to mention the polluting of rivers.
Also, I don’t really see your point of ‘they don’t want to have a discussion’. You’re literally having a discussion with them right now.
Your idea of nuance would have us all sitting on our hands while unsustainable industries make the world we live in uninhabitable and put an end to humanity as we know it.