Philosophical Vegan Forum

I'm currently reading William MacAskill's book Doing Good Better, and so far it's a great read, but I've read something that makes me question what he's saying.

Long story short, in one of his chapters, he discusses how we can offset our carbon footprint by donating to a charity like CoolEarth (which he believes to be an effective charity), and then asserts that if you can donate a few hundred bucks a year to it, it makes going vegan or vegetarian not very necessary in terms of climate change, and thus making the environmental argument comparatively weak. Is he correct in this assertion?

I would argue that you should STILL be vegan/vegetarian for environmental purposes for a couple reasons. Firstly, not everyone is going to be willing to shell out the money for charity, and living on a plant diet can be pretty cheap. Secondly, you should still minimize your footprint, so when you donate to CoolEarth, not only will you be able to easily negate ALL your emissions, you can pick up the slack for others too, rather than just getting yourself down to net zero. Also not to mention the pollution that can be caused by animal agriculture.

MacAskill himself is a vegetarian, so I don't think he has any particular bias.

And CoolEarth does nothing about antibiotic resistance? Is not that far more important than global warming?

Red wrote: ↑Sat Nov 28, 2020 1:32 am Long story short, in one of his chapters, he discusses how we can offset our carbon footprint by donating to a charity like CoolEarth (which he believes to be an effective charity), and then asserts that if you can donate a few hundred bucks a year to it, it makes going vegan or vegetarian not very necessary in terms of climate change, and thus making the environmental argument comparatively weak. Is he correct in this assertion?

I very much doubt that to be true. It makes you question the validity of the book.

I'm guessing he doesn't provide any numerical explanations?
You'd think such a claim would be backed up with evidence.

But that aside, it would be like saying 'donate a few hundred dollars a year to animal charities, and then that offsets being vegan, so being vegan isn't needed for the animals'.

Do you see the problem?
Not only you can do both, but as long as there's the same demand for animal products, the amount of farmed animals isn't going to change, even if you donate everything you have.

Similarly with his argument, not only can you both donate AND be vegan, but the amount of greenhouse gasses, deforestation and pollution caused by farmed animals is never going to go away if the issue isn't addressed by reducing or eliminating demand for them.
No matter how many trees you plant, or how many laws you try to pass, either animal products get reduced, or the biggest factor for environmental damage is unaffected.

His logic might be:

1. Being vegan helps reduce the demand of environmental damaging products by X amount.
2. Donating Y also helps, reducing environmental damage by an amount that would be equal with reducing environmental damaging products by X amount.

Therefore:
3. Donating does as much as veganism.

However, there is an important step missing, and it should be:

1. Environmental damage caused by demand won't be changed as long as the demand doesn't change.
2. Being vegan helps reduce the demand of environmental damaging products by X amount.
3. Donating Y also helps, reducing environmental damage by an amount that would be equal with reducing environmental damaging products by X amount, BUT it cannot do anything for the environmental damage caused by the demand if the demand itself isn't affected, therefore rendering the rest of the work that the charity does mostly useless, and less significant than demand reduction (as demand always outweighs in impact other methods).

Therefore:
4. Reducing demand is needed, donating without demand reduction/demand shift will do very little.

In fact, one of the purposes of charities is to reduce the demand of a certain product through awareness of its damage, or by giving alternatives - but by setting the demand in stone, damage can only be mitigated (like by planting trees, which won't be able to make up the difference considering that the land needed for the animal feed will still be the same, and if you take away X area here from agriculture, then X area there will have to be taken for agriculture, since the demand doesn't change).

Best outcome: be vegan and also donate.

If everybody followed his logic, everybody would end up donating measly amounts that would do very little, and very little would be changed because the demand would still be the same.

Red wrote: ↑Sat Nov 28, 2020 1:32 am living on a plant diet can be pretty cheap.

Not just cheap, but cheaper.
Even with heavy subsidies, animal products are still way more expensive than plant-based whole food basics - especially so when you consider that you're paying for those subsidies with your tax money.

To assess this, he would have to accurately estimate the average dietary carbon footprint for both vegans and non-vegans. This is obviously not easy to do. There is a big difference between a vegan who consumes locally produced wholefoods vs. a vegan who lives on imported packaged processed foods. Similarly, there are large differences within the non-vegan group.

If one can accurately assess the carbon footprint of the "average vegan" and the "average non-vegan" one should be able to arrive at a monetary value that surpasses the vegan advantage for any carbon offset program.

However, as @thebestofenergy pointed out it's not an either/or proposition, and the fact that there are so many other reasons to go vegan makes the whole postulation a mute point.

Jebus wrote: ↑Sat Nov 28, 2020 10:15 am To assess this, he would have to accurately estimate the average dietary carbon footprint for both vegans and non-vegans. This is obviously not easy to do. There is a big difference between a vegan who consumes locally produced wholefoods vs. a vegan who lives on imported packaged processed foods. Similarly, there are large differences within the non-vegan group.

I agree that there are other factors to consider since the term 'Vegan diet' is overall pretty vague in terms of what a person eats. I think even with comparing different vegan diets there can be some difficulties evaluating this stuff, since although whole plants yield (on average) pretty much no greenhouse gases (or even with freeganism which yields absolutely zero greenhouse gases), someone can make the argument that in the long run, buying mock meats, while requiring more energy and production, are better for the environment, since buying them is necessary to direct more market attention away from mock meats and towards these alternatives, which are more sustainable, to promote veganism and make companies pour more cash into that. It isn't clear. However, if they are a vegan who buys a lot of products with palm oil, that's probably almost as bad as a typical meat diet as far as the environment is concerned.

As you touched on with meat-eaters, A person who eats a lot of beef clearly has a huge footprint, but someone who eats no beef and predominately eats chicken has a lighter footprint. It's a spectrum, although one that needs these parameters more established. In the book, I'm assuming he goes with a vegetarian diet that involves mostly whole plants.

Jebus wrote: ↑Sat Nov 28, 2020 10:15 amIf one can accurately assess the carbon footprint of the "average vegan" and the "average non-vegan" one should be able to arrive at a monetary value that surpasses the vegan advantage for any carbon offset program.

If I remember correctly, he said that donating like 10 bucks to CoolEarth is easier to do than going vegan, but that number seems far too good to be true. In a nutshell, CoolEarth protects rainforests in Africa and Latin America to help absorb more CO2s, but there has to be some sort of diminishing return there; There are only so many forests.
I think this article gives a good breakdown of why CoolEarth probably isn't a very good charity:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/pos ... cool-earth

I think everyone here would agree that the best climate charities are the vegan charities. There may be some decent non-vegan-related charities related to climate change, but still we all know the vegan charities would provide the best bang for the buck. If I were to guess, MacGaskill's website Giving What We Can probably just wanted to find an effective charity related to climate change, and apparently they were under some contraints.

Jebus wrote: ↑Sat Nov 28, 2020 10:15 amHowever, as @thebestofenergy pointed out it's not an either/or proposition, and the fact that there are so many other reasons to go vegan makes the whole postulation a mute point.

This makes me want to add, even if donating to CoolEarth negated your environmental impact, I think it's quite irresponsible for MacGaskill to even say that the environmental argument is weak, since it's still one of the strongest arguments to use to get people to go vegan, especially in this day and age, and for people who are less concerned about animals (who are going to be screwed over since now less people are vegan).

Though @thebestofenergy pretty much has explained why his logic is faulty.

thebestofenergy wrote: ↑Sat Nov 28, 2020 2:16 am I very much doubt that to be true. It makes you question the validity of the book.

Honestly the rest of the book is great, this is just something that struck me as odd (although there are a few other minor things I have concerns about).

thebestofenergy wrote: ↑Sat Nov 28, 2020 2:16 amI'm guessing he doesn't provide any numerical explanations?
You'd think such a claim would be backed up with evidence.

He does (and it's too much to type), but I linked in my reply to Jebus an explanation as to why the charity in question (CoolEarth) likely isn't very effective. As I said, it's probably too good to be true. If anyone could donate a couple bucks to negate their emissions, climate change wouldn't be a problem.

thebestofenergy wrote: ↑Sat Nov 28, 2020 2:16 amBut that aside, it would be like saying 'donate a few hundred dollars a year to animal charities, and then that offsets being vegan, so being vegan isn't needed for the animals'.

Do you see the problem?

Well he can make the case that if you negate your footprint you won't have hurt anyone in the process whereas if you consume meat but donate enough to offset that that still required the death of animals. Like for example, let's say I have a room of 5 people and everytime I press the red button, poison enters the room. But if I were to press the blue button, all the poison is instantly sucked out. No one would die in the process.

Of course either way, it's still the same logic that since there's have no negative impact it's all alright. He should know better than this; One of the key points of effective altruism is to not only do no harm but also do good in the process; Negative utilitarianism isn't very useful.

thebestofenergy wrote: ↑Sat Nov 28, 2020 2:16 amNot only you can do both, but as long as there's the same demand for animal products, the amount of farmed animals isn't going to change, even if you donate everything you have.

In fact, it might be more since if people donate the self-licensing effect may take form and increase overall emissions. There are only so many trees to save.

Like, Remember TeamTrees? Kind of like that.