As a principled vegan, presumably you place a premium on the welfare and lives of animals. How then do you tolerate the death of billions of insects in order to bring plants and vegetables to your table? Unless you grow everything you consume in a fully organic way, with no pesticides or insecticides, then every bite you take has a cost …
As a principled vegan, presumably you place a premium on the welfare and lives of animals. How then do you tolerate the death of billions of insects in order to bring plants and vegetables to your table? Unless you grow everything you consume in a fully organic way, with no pesticides or insecticides, then every bite you take has a cost of lives much higher than my carnivore way of eating. With one death of a cow, I can eat for roughly 8 months. Monocrop agriculture as a matter of course kills billions of insects, rodents, birds, and other small life forms. As a matter of principle, at what level of sophistication do you think it's acceptable to kill an animal? Presumably you're ok with killing aphids, weevils, locusts, and other pests. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to eat.
A bit of friendly advice: If you actually have a good-faith question, simply ask the question. Don't follow it with a gish gallop.
The answer to your question is that each of us has a right to do what we must to survive; none of us can survive without causing harm to others; and yet we have an obligation to reduce that harm as much as we reasonably can.
Humans eating animals that ate plants requires far more plant farming than humans eating plants directly. Whatever harm is done by plant farming, vegans are causing far less of it than those who eat other animals.
Which is why we could reclaim 75% of the world's farmland—"an area equivalent to the size of the US, China, Australia and the EU combined"—for wildlife, not to mention put an end to the greatest source of suffering ever devised, if we stopped eating animals and started doing the right thing:
I don't know why I'm in this rabbit hole, but to be fair I have to point out that not all animal husbandry entails huge monocrops for feed. The farmers I purchase animal products from rely almost solely on pasture, which isn't "farmed" the way a field of corn is - it's much closer to a wild ecology with some light management.
Additionally, I think that 75% reclamation idea is a bit optimistic, because humans will just grow to fill it eventually. We would end up just removing a layer from the current plants -> animals -> humans food chain and end up with a larger monocrop humans in a plants -> humans system.
Your situation, even if accurately conveyed—and I'm fairly confident it's not, starting with the understanding that pasture habitually grazed by farmed animals is anything but wild or natural—isn't really relevant, because it's anecdotal and individual. Industrial farming provides the vast majority of food production for the vast majority of people, and its share will only continue to rise.
As for the potential for rewilding 75% of current farmland, it's certainly conditional—starting with the condition that we stop being so infinitely selfish and arrogant in our conceptualization and treatment of other animals.
Your suggestion that human population would "grow to fill" the reclaimed land is highly unlikely. Land availability is a factor in population distribution depending on the desirability of the land, but it's not a serious factor driving total population growth. Moreover, under this hypothetical scenario, we'd have become the kind of people who do the right thing for the right reasons—the kind of people who could reliably preserve major stretches of land for the benefit of beings other than ourselves.
As for your prediction that we would end up with "a larger monocrop," we would not—for reasons pertaining to this hypothetical, but also for real-world economic and mathematical reasons. Human birth rate declines as economies advance, which is happening whether we like it or not. There's no reason to think human population would quadruple—which is what would have to happen for a world of vegans to need as much farmland as we're currently using to feed ourselves—just because we all went vegan and reduced our immediate farmland need by 75%.
Look, in practice, it's effectively impossible that every piece of reclaimed farmland would be rewilded. But even if just a relatively small fraction of that land were reclaimed for wildlife, it would mark enormous moral progress from the place we now inhabit, which has surely gotten even worse since a 2018 study found that, among other horrifying numbers, the world's mammalian biomass was 36% human, 60% livestock and only 4% wild:
I'm just saying that humans eating animal products does not imply industrial agriculture. Just ask any indigenous person from most places in the world. Industrial agriculture inflates the amount of animal products we consume, and we would consume less without it and be better off, no contest there. But the ethical issues surrounding animal consumption in the abstract are separate from the ethical issues surrounding industrial agriculture specifically - which I agree are numerous; I think that industrial agriculture in its current form is rife with atrocities.
I know exactly what you’re saying. But the ethical considerations of eating other animals under non-industrial conditions are sufficient to proscribe that, too, most of the time—all the time when you have other choices, as almost all of us do.
There is certainly something more fatuous, starting with your extremely foolish comment.
If you’re offended by a lifestyle that affords basic respect to other animals, it’s because you’re a petulant child who can’t handle even implicit criticism of your own behavior—even while you attack and dismiss others for theirs.
Are you a scientist, perhaps have a degree in Ag? Know much about sustaining the world as given to us by its Creator. How about how the exchanges between all life forms of CO2 maintains the proper balance.
You're engaging in meretricious gaslighting by not even addressing the topic being discussed, questioning the expertise of another commenter on a topic not being discussed, and providing a link to a piece that you misrepresent and which also does not address the topic being discussed.
But you get irony points for questioning another commenters' scientific bona fides, then introducing GOD as the ultimate expert on the topic at hand, and then, finally, the piece de resistance, linking to The American Spectator to buttress the argument you don't have addressing the subject that doesn't exist. Well played, madame. R. Emmett, wherever he may be, surely is smiling.
As a principled vegan, presumably you place a premium on the welfare and lives of animals. How then do you tolerate the death of billions of insects in order to bring plants and vegetables to your table? Unless you grow everything you consume in a fully organic way, with no pesticides or insecticides, then every bite you take has a cost of lives much higher than my carnivore way of eating. With one death of a cow, I can eat for roughly 8 months. Monocrop agriculture as a matter of course kills billions of insects, rodents, birds, and other small life forms. As a matter of principle, at what level of sophistication do you think it's acceptable to kill an animal? Presumably you're ok with killing aphids, weevils, locusts, and other pests. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to eat.
A bit of friendly advice: If you actually have a good-faith question, simply ask the question. Don't follow it with a gish gallop.
The answer to your question is that each of us has a right to do what we must to survive; none of us can survive without causing harm to others; and yet we have an obligation to reduce that harm as much as we reasonably can.
Humans eating animals that ate plants requires far more plant farming than humans eating plants directly. Whatever harm is done by plant farming, vegans are causing far less of it than those who eat other animals.
Which is why we could reclaim 75% of the world's farmland—"an area equivalent to the size of the US, China, Australia and the EU combined"—for wildlife, not to mention put an end to the greatest source of suffering ever devised, if we stopped eating animals and started doing the right thing:
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/veganism-environmental-impact-planet-reduced-plant-based-diet-humans-study-a8378631.html
I don't know why I'm in this rabbit hole, but to be fair I have to point out that not all animal husbandry entails huge monocrops for feed. The farmers I purchase animal products from rely almost solely on pasture, which isn't "farmed" the way a field of corn is - it's much closer to a wild ecology with some light management.
I grew up on a cattle ranch in an ag family, and the amount of ignorance about our food supply is, I'm afraid, an impenetrable barrier.
And I say this not yet having read the rest of these comments.
Additionally, I think that 75% reclamation idea is a bit optimistic, because humans will just grow to fill it eventually. We would end up just removing a layer from the current plants -> animals -> humans food chain and end up with a larger monocrop humans in a plants -> humans system.
Your situation, even if accurately conveyed—and I'm fairly confident it's not, starting with the understanding that pasture habitually grazed by farmed animals is anything but wild or natural—isn't really relevant, because it's anecdotal and individual. Industrial farming provides the vast majority of food production for the vast majority of people, and its share will only continue to rise.
As for the potential for rewilding 75% of current farmland, it's certainly conditional—starting with the condition that we stop being so infinitely selfish and arrogant in our conceptualization and treatment of other animals.
Your suggestion that human population would "grow to fill" the reclaimed land is highly unlikely. Land availability is a factor in population distribution depending on the desirability of the land, but it's not a serious factor driving total population growth. Moreover, under this hypothetical scenario, we'd have become the kind of people who do the right thing for the right reasons—the kind of people who could reliably preserve major stretches of land for the benefit of beings other than ourselves.
As for your prediction that we would end up with "a larger monocrop," we would not—for reasons pertaining to this hypothetical, but also for real-world economic and mathematical reasons. Human birth rate declines as economies advance, which is happening whether we like it or not. There's no reason to think human population would quadruple—which is what would have to happen for a world of vegans to need as much farmland as we're currently using to feed ourselves—just because we all went vegan and reduced our immediate farmland need by 75%.
Look, in practice, it's effectively impossible that every piece of reclaimed farmland would be rewilded. But even if just a relatively small fraction of that land were reclaimed for wildlife, it would mark enormous moral progress from the place we now inhabit, which has surely gotten even worse since a 2018 study found that, among other horrifying numbers, the world's mammalian biomass was 36% human, 60% livestock and only 4% wild:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-race-just-001-of-all-life-but-has-destroyed-over-80-of-wild-mammals-study
I'm just saying that humans eating animal products does not imply industrial agriculture. Just ask any indigenous person from most places in the world. Industrial agriculture inflates the amount of animal products we consume, and we would consume less without it and be better off, no contest there. But the ethical issues surrounding animal consumption in the abstract are separate from the ethical issues surrounding industrial agriculture specifically - which I agree are numerous; I think that industrial agriculture in its current form is rife with atrocities.
I know exactly what you’re saying. But the ethical considerations of eating other animals under non-industrial conditions are sufficient to proscribe that, too, most of the time—all the time when you have other choices, as almost all of us do.
Jesus. Shut up, eat your kale and leave us out of your food fetish.
Is there anything quite so fatuous as a statement opening with "as a principled vegan"?
There is certainly something more fatuous, starting with your extremely foolish comment.
If you’re offended by a lifestyle that affords basic respect to other animals, it’s because you’re a petulant child who can’t handle even implicit criticism of your own behavior—even while you attack and dismiss others for theirs.
Q: How do you tell if someone is Vegan?
A: You don’t. They tell you.
Thanks for the mindless cliche, Bob.
A grown man showing up to work with a foldable bicycle and wearing a padded helmet is damn close.
Grazing happens.
Are you a scientist, perhaps have a degree in Ag? Know much about sustaining the world as given to us by its Creator. How about how the exchanges between all life forms of CO2 maintains the proper balance.
https://spectator.org/more-cows-needed-to-reverse-climate-change-experts-say/
You're engaging in meretricious gaslighting by not even addressing the topic being discussed, questioning the expertise of another commenter on a topic not being discussed, and providing a link to a piece that you misrepresent and which also does not address the topic being discussed.
But you get irony points for questioning another commenters' scientific bona fides, then introducing GOD as the ultimate expert on the topic at hand, and then, finally, the piece de resistance, linking to The American Spectator to buttress the argument you don't have addressing the subject that doesn't exist. Well played, madame. R. Emmett, wherever he may be, surely is smiling.
Thank you. The compliment is appreciated. Always fun chatting with you feldspar!