It's so despicable that society punishes kindness whilst rewarding greed. Common sense tells us that it should obviously be the other way around, yet it isn't.
DarthFrodo
joined 2 years ago
To me that's more ethical than killing of billions of animals, and the latter is considered ethical.
I think most people would actually consider factory farming unethical, they just put the blame on the producers for treating animals like shit. And the producers are locked into a race to the bottom for competitive prices, so they'd blame the customers/market conditions.
It's kind of funny, having the calves slaughtered to get the milk that is naturally meant for them is considered vegetarian (as long as you personally don't eat the veal).
If they're kept on abusive factory farms, that's still vegetarian.
When the dairy cows gets their throats slit because milk production drops below profitablity after ~5 years, the milk is still seen as vegetarian (as long as someone else buys the meat).
No matter how much death and suffering takes place at the farm, the milk is seen as vegetarian. But at rennet, that's where they draw the line.
I don't know if I misunderstood you, but "making millions of people suffer horribly and needlessly for no fault of their own might just be the most ethical thing there is, you never know, so let's not draw any conclusions about God allowing that to happen." just seems like a rather unconvincing line of thought to me. It's essentially just saying "God is always right, accept that"
I guess god just gave us the moral understanding that his (in)actions are insanely immoral to test our unquestioned loyalty to him, or he just likes a little trolling. Or maybe he just doesn't exist...
From the consumers point of view, you can only choose products that are in supply, so we think our choices don't really have an impact. People often see it as a systemic issue that's outside of our control.
From the corporations point of view, the consumer creates the demand and if they didn't provide the supply, another corporation would. They also see it as a systemic issue that's outside of their control.
The corporations love nothing more than the message "just consume our stuff and don't blame yourself for any environmental impact. You can't be perfect anyways, so might as well book a flight, buy a gas car, or buy our beef." It's so comfortable for both parties because they don't have to change anything and can just point the finger at each other for the negative consequences.
Of course it's sometimes necessary to do something polluting. People who need a car and can only afford a used car probably won't be able to buy an electric one. I don't even think that's unethical consumption. But those who can afford an electric car and choose a new gas car instead do something unethical. Ultimately many of these practical issues will be solved as green technology matures, there will be cheap-ish used electric cars in the future, for example.
For things like steak, I agree. Unfortunately it will take many years to become affordable for the average person, but when it happens, it will be awesome.
For many other categories, plant-based alternatives are already close enough for me. I recently tried the store brand plant based Schnitzel from Lidl (a supermarket/discounter chain here in Germany) and it was surprisingly tasty, given that it doesn't even cost more than factory farmed meat by now.
There are decent burgers, nuggets, kebab, chicken and salami alternatives around as well. It's crazy how much the taste, price and availability of these products have improved in the last 10 years alone. I don't miss real meat by now.
I heard about studies that successfully used algae to inhibit methane-producing microbes in the short term, but I couldn't find any studies that prove its long term efficacy yet. It'll be interesting to see whether the microbes can adapt to the algae in the long term or not.
The issue with using byproducts as animal fodder is that ruminants produce a lot of methane while digesting them. This enteric fermentation in their stomachs accounts for around 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions, while the entire aviation industry sits at just 2-3%. If we give them more food that is harder to digest, they'll emit even more methane per animal.
Biofuels make a lot of sense though. After extracting the fuel, the remaining digestate can be used to produce biochar or be put directly on fields as fertilizer, which is nice because synthetic fertilizers account for 1-2% of greenhouse gas emissions.
Another option is to burn the byproducts for heat or electricity in winter during short periods when there's not enough wind and solar power to cover energy demand.
Sea level rise takes a lot of time. The projections I saw were somewhere around 1 m by 2100 and 10 m by 2300, depending on the amount of warming of course. I think hurricanes will be a bigger issue for them in this century.
Damn it
- The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering
I don't know, life before the industrial revolution was pretty shit for regular people too.
I'd rather not have to worry about my family (and friends) starving to death during the next famine. 40-60% of children in medival europe died before adulthood. I can't even imagine the psychological suffering caused by this alone. Then there was frequent war and disease outbreaks, basically no healthcare, and so on...
I'm not saying that everything's great nowadays, we urgently need to fix many issues. But many things were way, way worse before modern civilization.
What makes you think that processing food through an animal is healthier than through a factory?
You have to compare the actual nutrients contained in the product to draw any conclusion about health effects, and the macros are fairly similar for the plant-based versions compared to a given meat product.
The average person (in developed countries) eats significantly more meat than the recommended upper limit by nutrition organizations.
If you just go by the naturalistic argument, you'd conclude that processed drinking water is worse than untreated water, and that vaccines are worse than "perfectly natural" diseases. It's a common logical fallacy.
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-nature