this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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[–] SmolSweetBean 52 points 1 year ago (36 children)

OK, but what if instead of going vegan, I just don't have kids. Because adding more people to the world also creates more greenhouse gasses.

[–] Djennik 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The problem is not the amount of people but how much each individual consumes. Getting meat out of your diet is a simple and a small sacrifice. Besides the health benefits there is also the fact that you don't contribute to the culling of 70 billion animals per year (of which 40% is probably not eaten and thrown in the trash). Not only that but you don't contribute to the greatest cause of deforestation, antibiotics resistance, decline of biodiversity, water waste, ...

Besides the global population is steadily stagnating (Africa is still booming) as a lot of countries see population decline (less than 2 children per woman).

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble 15 points 1 year ago

You don't even need to cut it out entirely. Just not eat such a ridiculous amount of meat.

Stuff like this isn't helping. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH9VLihKm2g

[–] Cosmonauticus 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Couldn't we just stop food waste? Most food is discarded before even making it to the store. Seems to me being more efficient with how we distribute food is more realistic that trying to convince everyone to go vegan.

Because I'm not going to stop eating meat and the amount of ppl like me is larger than you think

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Many people will also not reduce food waste, for exactly same reasons you won't stop eating meat. Convenience, habit, cost, time investment.

[–] Cosmonauticus 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Except those two things are not the same. We already have regulatory organizations that determine how food is handled and distributed. We can't regulate veganism, we can regulate food waste

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We could absolutely regulate veganism. Hell, it's the other way around at the moment. For pretty much every animal rights law, there's an exception specifically for farm animals. Just removing those exceptions would make factory farming (and therefore like 90% of meat production) illegal.

And in a more general sense, we absolutely can regulate carnism (aka the opposite of veganism), exactly how we regulate a million other moral questions.

[–] Cosmonauticus 1 points 1 year ago

If only we had other examples of bans on certain goods and substances based on minority groups crys about morality. Im sure none of them resulted in billions of wasted dollars, mass incarceration, and the creation of a new black market

[–] Djennik 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Both are true: reducing waste and adopting a plant based diet are great ways of reducing your footprint.

The number of vegetarians/vegans is growing quickly. I'm not convincing you of going vegan. You are convincing yourself to keep on eating meat despite the scientific facts and moral consequences.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Right there with ya

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (15 children)

What if you don't have kids and just make an effort to reduce intake of animal products knowing it contributes to global collapse and also represents a modern holocaust.

Animal products don't have to be as all or nothing as having kids.

[–] kartonrealista 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (12 children)

That moment when your veganism goes so hard you commit a hate crime on the internet implicitly comparing Jews to cattle

Edit: I'm from Poland, the country where most of the Holocaust happened - this is where the Jewish population was the highest and where Germans build their death camps. We read about it extensively at school, including eyewitness accounts describing the atrocities involved in this horrific campaign of human extermination, from the home of the Jew, to the ghetto, to the transport train, to the camp, to the gas chamber and to the furnace. Many of us heard those stories from our grandparents, of their neighbors being humiliated and taken away, ghettos liquidated, and public executions. I don't know what kind of deplorable scumbag one has to be to equate factory farming with the Holocaust.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (7 children)

implicitly comparing Jews to cattle

Yes, it's a tasteless comparison. I'm a German. Hello neighbor, nice to live in peace.

The comparison also falls flat because while the Holocaust was a genocide, meant to eradicate, factory farming is the polar opposite.

The population size of factory farmed animals is usually way above natural levels, because we farm them. A philosopher even called it an evolutionary win for the farmed species (which does not justify any harm done to individuals).

There are more ways to express 'very bad' than comparing to the Holocaust, and many reasons not to, if you understand it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Here are some quotes for you. From holocaust survivors and their relatives.

“I totally embrace the comparison to the Holocaust. I feel that violence and suffering of innocents are unjust. I believe that the abuse of humans and animals and the earth come from the same need to dominate others. I feel that I could not save my family, my people, but each time I talk about cruelty to animals and being vegetarian I might be saving another life. After knowing what I know about the Holocaust and about animal exploitation I cannot be anything else but an animal rights advocate.

-Susan Kalev, who lost her father and her sister in the Holocaust

“I believe in what Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote, ‘In their behavior towards creatures, all men are Nazis.’ Human beings see their own oppression vividly when they are the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought.” [tweet this]

-“Hacker,” Animal Liberation Front member & Holocaust survivor

“What do they know—all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them [the animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka.” [tweet this]

-Isaac Bashevis Singer, Yiddish author, Nobel Laureate, & Holocaust survivor

“I spent my childhood years in the Warsaw Ghetto where almost my entire family was murdered along with about 350,000 other Polish Jews. People sometimes will ask me whether that experience had anything to do with my work for animals. It didn’t have a little to do with my work for animals, it had everything to do with my work for animals.”

-Alex Hershaft, Farm Animal Rights Movement founder & Holocaust Survivor

“When I see cages crammed with chickens from battery farms thrown on trucks like bundles of trash, I see, with the eyes of my soul, the Umschlagplatz (where Jews were forced onto trains leaving for the death camps). When I go to a restaurant and see people devouring meat, I feel sick. I see a holocaust on their plates.” [tweet this]

-Georges Metanomski, a Holocaust survivor who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

“I dedicate my mother’s grave to geese. My mother doesn’t have a grave, but if she did I would dedicate it to the geese. I was a goose too.”

-Marc Berkowitz, Animal activist & survivor of Josef Mengele’s “twin experiments”

“In 1975, after I immigrated to the United States, I happened to visit a slaughterhouse, where I saw terrified animals subjected to horrendous crowding conditions while awaiting their deaths. Just as my family members were in the notorious Treblinka death camp. I saw the same efficient and emotionless killing routine as in Treblinka, I saw the neat piles of hearts, hooves, and other body parts. So reminiscent of the piles of Jewish hair, glasses and shoes in Treblinka.”

-Alex Hershaft, Farm Animal Rights Movement founder & Holocaust Survivor

"Jews have been, while animals still are, treated like nothing, as if their lives don’t matter. You can also compare the two holocausts this way. [...] Go to the nearest cow or pig slaughterhouse and remove the animals and replace them with humans. You have now re-created Birkenau."

-Gary Yourosky

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

*implicitly comparing the treatment of Jews during the holocaust to the treatment of cattle today

also, you can compare two things without equating them

I think if you actually cared about the words you wrote, you wouldn't have used them as the basis of a lazy strawman to win an argument on the internet against veganism

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The problem is agribusiness. They treat animals with no respect in a terrible a terrible manner, unlike most small-scale farms where the farmers often have a personal relationship with their livestock.

Factory farms whether it be chicken, hog or cattle often end up putting the animals on a feedlot or in a high density chicken farm with literally millions of birds under one roof. This leads to a slaughterhouse that is a horror show. It was a book written a hundred years ago called The jungle, look it up. It's been an issue for a long time and it is inhumane.

It's not to say that killing animals is pretty, but it can be done in a more humane fashion starting by respecting the lives of the animals while they are alive.

The flip side is that if we were to actually close down all of the farms and raise no livestock for me, there's a good chance that these species will functionally go extinct.

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[–] kartonrealista 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

I don't care about arguing about veganism. Just stop bringing up stuff like this. Also, do you think calling something a "modern holocaust" is not a comparison in terms of scale of harm? As opposed to every other time those words are used?

Edit: If you want to argue for veganism, stop bringing up Shoah. It's disgusting, downplaying the severity of the genocide, and earns you no favors with the general population. It has negative convincing power.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's 90 billion every year. If their suffering is 15000 less significant, that's one holocaust a year, every year, since many years. Why are you using Shoah, if holocaust is so obviously only one thing? And why are the voices of holocaust victims/survivors/relatives totally fine to silence? Many have made that comparison, shouldn't they know best whether it's comparable???

You are correct however that this argument is utterly stupid and useless to make, esp. online, where there is zero context.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Here are some quotes for you. From holocaust survivors and their relatives.

“I totally embrace the comparison to the Holocaust. I feel that violence and suffering of innocents are unjust. I believe that the abuse of humans and animals and the earth come from the same need to dominate others. I feel that I could not save my family, my people, but each time I talk about cruelty to animals and being vegetarian I might be saving another life. After knowing what I know about the Holocaust and about animal exploitation I cannot be anything else but an animal rights advocate.

-Susan Kalev, who lost her father and her sister in the Holocaust

“I believe in what Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote, ‘In their behavior towards creatures, all men are Nazis.’ Human beings see their own oppression vividly when they are the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought.” [tweet this]

-“Hacker,” Animal Liberation Front member & Holocaust survivor

“What do they know—all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them [the animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka.” [tweet this]

-Isaac Bashevis Singer, Yiddish author, Nobel Laureate, & Holocaust survivor

“I spent my childhood years in the Warsaw Ghetto where almost my entire family was murdered along with about 350,000 other Polish Jews. People sometimes will ask me whether that experience had anything to do with my work for animals. It didn’t have a little to do with my work for animals, it had everything to do with my work for animals.”

-Alex Hershaft, Farm Animal Rights Movement founder & Holocaust Survivor

“When I see cages crammed with chickens from battery farms thrown on trucks like bundles of trash, I see, with the eyes of my soul, the Umschlagplatz (where Jews were forced onto trains leaving for the death camps). When I go to a restaurant and see people devouring meat, I feel sick. I see a holocaust on their plates.” [tweet this]

-Georges Metanomski, a Holocaust survivor who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

“I dedicate my mother’s grave to geese. My mother doesn’t have a grave, but if she did I would dedicate it to the geese. I was a goose too.”

-Marc Berkowitz, Animal activist & survivor of Josef Mengele’s “twin experiments”

“In 1975, after I immigrated to the United States, I happened to visit a slaughterhouse, where I saw terrified animals subjected to horrendous crowding conditions while awaiting their deaths. Just as my family members were in the notorious Treblinka death camp. I saw the same efficient and emotionless killing routine as in Treblinka, I saw the neat piles of hearts, hooves, and other body parts. So reminiscent of the piles of Jewish hair, glasses and shoes in Treblinka.”

-Alex Hershaft, Farm Animal Rights Movement founder & Holocaust Survivor

"Jews have been, while animals still are, treated like nothing, as if their lives don’t matter. You can also compare the two holocausts this way. [...] Go to the nearest cow or pig slaughterhouse and remove the animals and replace them with humans. You have now re-created Birkenau."

-Gary Yourosky

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] Screwthehole 6 points 1 year ago (4 children)

100 corporations contribute 71% of all emissions, and I'm supposed to stop eating the pork I bought from a local farmer? Fuck that noise!

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Those 100 corporations make materials that everyone else uses (mostly O&G) and the consumption and use of those materials (by we the consumers) is responsible for 71% of GHG emissions.It's not just 100 companies burning coal for funsies

[–] assassin_aragorn 1 points 1 year ago

I've argued both angles before, and I think reality is somewhere in the middle. Companies produce things because people want those things. But that doesn't mean companies are producing them in the most sustainable way possible. Electricity from coal has a significant difference in emissions if you scrub the flue gas vs if you don't change it at all. We can force companies to be more sustainable while providing their product.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

How bout both? :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Were you totally going to have children before you found out how bad they are for the climate? If not, you're resting on literally fictional laurels. For example, maybe you planned a genocide of all black people, but then chose not to do it when you heard racism is bad. Therefore, by your logic, you prevented millions of deaths. You're basically an anti-racist hero!

But finally, as a childfree, carfree vegan myself, I don't understand why you can't just do your best

Here's a list of things I didn't do, just to save the planet:

  • Have 200 children
  • Eat an entire cow every day
  • Drive 10 gas-guzzling, coal-rolling cars SIMULTANIOUSLY via remote control 24/7, 365 days a year
  • Invent the Globarzinator, a device that produces 5 BAJILLION MEGATONNES of CO2 every Planck time unit
[–] art 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The environmental impact was not the ONLY reason I'm child free but it was definitely a factor in that decision. Same with being carfree. In fact I do a lot of things for not than one reason.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The point is that even without that reason you wouldn't have any kids. It's not the cornerstone of your childfree-ness. Neither is it for me, which is why I recognize that it's morally lazy to rest on the imaginary laurels of not birthing children.

By that logic, every parent could ALSO claim they are doing their part for the earth. Simply by not having EVEN MORE children. Hell, maybe they are better than you because you only didn't have 2 kids, but they didn't have 4 additional kids. Thats twice the savings, twice the reason to not make the world a better place and blame everyone else!

[–] art 1 points 1 year ago

The average family has 1.6 to 2.4 children depending on the region. The "even more" argument doesn't really hold up because that's not the societal norm.

I also don't own a car and cycle/bus everywhere. My girlfriend and I made the choice not to have kids, and we try not to be wasteful. It's not about sacrifice, it's about being aware of what you do.

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