Philosophical Vegan Forum

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XovjS1zObi0

Had to reupload, music was too loud last time. Let us know what you think.

I undertstand you wanted to focus on what we eat but in such a complex topic as climate change you should also emphasize that a lot of the emissions are directly related to our standard of living. Stuff like having a nice spacious home which you have to heat and cool, a widescreen TV, groceries delivered to our doorstep, etc. All this represents a huge energy cost and thus more emissions.

foliveira4042 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 16, 2021 11:15 am I undertstand you wanted to focus on what we eat but in such a complex topic as climate change you should also emphasize that a lot of the emissions are directly related to our standard of living. Stuff like having a nice spacious home which you have to heat and cool, a widescreen TV, groceries delivered to our doorstep, etc. All this represents a huge energy cost and thus more emissions.

In terms of personal reduction, veganism would do more than reducing your other energy consumption to the point of basically never using it, and it's much easier and cost-effective. You'd have to eschew climate control, entertainment, a modest vehicle, and doing your laundry to make a similar impact.

I'm not convinced that all other emissions do THAT much more harm than eating animal products (unless you're driving a hummer and a constantly heated swimming pool, but that isn't most people), and even if it were, it's still the biggest bang for your buck for just doing one action.

That having been said, I do agree that people shouldn't get high energy-intensive things they don't need; Veganism is just the bare minimum people ought to be doing in terms of caring about the environment, and it's the biggest thing we can do that doesn't sacrifice our quality of life.

I invite you to take a look at this article then (data is from 2016): https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector

Livestock is indeed a sizeable portion of emissions (about 5%) but by far not enough to offset climate change. Energy consumption linked to our homes is at least 3 times that and then if we add up transportation and industry related consumption we see that 3/4 of green house emissions are from energy consumption, still mainly fossil fuels.

But true, I agree that reducing meat consumption would bring benefits to the environment but by far not enough.

I know that 5% figure is coming from the EPA, but it's some serious low-balling; Once you factor in things such as deforestation due to animal agriculture (which is THE leading cause of it), which makes it a huge accelerator, as well as Fallow's land, it's much higher.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... t-on-earth

It's closer to the emissions from transportation.

Also, look at the breakdown of the graph in closer detail. That ~5.8% figure they have isn't including the feed used for the animals, cropland, and of course deforestation.

I would even add that effective animal charities are the best climate charities out there. About $20 to them can offset driving about 5000 miles, if 5000 miles is about 1.5 tons of GHG.
https://animalcharityevaluators.org/blo ... te-change/
(I think the article fear-mongers on climate change, I don't think there's any reason to believe climate change will have a 10% chance to bring extinction to humanity, nor will it cause the extinction of THAT many animals).

I'm not sure how much I trust OurWorldInData on these issues though, they once had an article defending Palm Oil.

This is also a good read:
https://twitter.com/matthewhayek/status ... 1373371396