Until society reaches some other conclusion, it’s right. There are no absolutes.
marshmallow, how would you counter the argument that eating meat allows us to benefit from areas where crops cannot be grown?
I have no problem eating animals, we are animals ourselves after all. I do think we should try and curtail suffering as much as is practical and reasonable. A lot of those PETA videos from slaughterhouses are pretty disturbing, I don’t think the animals should have to suffer in a heinous fashion to feed us, but realistically they are going to suffer a certain amount regardless just due to the nature of what is happening and because of the need to maintain some degree of efficiency and low costs in such operations, but I believe there is a middle ground.
I rather wish there had been some more thorough response to Blake’s talk of how modern agriculture necessarily kills animals to produce grain and produce. It reminds me of something I’ve pondered before:
If I were really determined to avoid killing animals so I can eat, I could set up a (near-)hermetically sealed greenhouse where I could cultivate grain and produce without the need for pesticides or critter-killing machinery. It would be a laborious process, but it would keep animal deaths to an absolute minimum; possibly even zero. It might even be very environmentally friendly. It probably wouldn’t be great for my quality of life, though.
If I were to do that, I’d probably divide the methods of food production into three categories:
A) Genuine doesn’t-kill-animals greenhouse production.
B) Vegetarian/vegan production that inevitably kills animals.
C) Raising and slaughtering livestock directly for meat, in addition to B.
If I had to divide these into two groups, the line would be between A and B, not between B and C.
It’s an argument often put forth by people rationalizing the fact that they eat meat because they like it and no other reason. I seriously doubt Blake eats meat because he is concerned about the animals that would otherwise die if he switched to a vegetarian diet. Neither does anyone else.
Obviously all the grain that is fed to livestock, whatever amount you want to argue that is, is already being grown now anyway. All of it would be available for people to eat if it wasn’t fed to livestock. The livestock industry requires a huge agricultural industry just to support it.
The majority of meat eaten in the world isn’t eaten by people who would otherwise be hungry or malnourished without it anyway. Those who arguably need it the most rarely get to eat it and those who already have ample nutrition available through existing agricultural production choose to eat meat on top of that just because we like it.
I live in the jungle (subtropical rainforest to be precise) and as far as the eye can see in any direction every last centimeter of earth is teeming with life. And everything you see is just about to become lunch for something else. Something has to die in order for us to live. There’s no flaw in that natural order of things when nothing takes more than it needs. We are the only creatures on earth who take more than we need. And there are so damn many of us that has become a big problem.
Whatever number of animals die due to agriculture, it isn’t destroying the environment as quickly or severely as livestock. Climate change and water shortages may be the end of all life eventually. With that in mind it seems kind of silly to argue about how many mice might die if we significantly reduced livestock production.
I think you’re missing the point. The talk about incidentally killing animals for non-meat food production is in response to objections based on the direct suffering and death of animals, not environmental considerations.
The interesting thing about the environmental angle is how bound up in context it is. Yes, environmental impact is an important consideration for people in 2016 deciding what kind of diet they should adopt. Suppose, though, that a plague were to kill 99% of the humans on Earth. After the dust settles and the ~70 million survivors get back to more or less normal life, they’ll be able to reevaluate their concept of environmental stewardship. CO2 emissions will be so low that five or ten times the current per-capita carbon footprint will be sustainable; burning coal to generate electricity may become practical again. Tapping aquifers to irrigate fields won’t be a disaster waiting to happen (at least not on nearly the same time scale). And raising cattle for meat, even in inefficient ways, even if everyone eats more than they need to, will not pose the same danger to the global environment.
In other words, the environmental argument doesn’t argue that raising livestock and eating meat is intrinsically wrong; it just argues that it’s a bad idea now.
That is in no way true.
The change in climate hurts human comfort. The life on the planet is in no long danger itself, it is humans systems that is.
“Now” is sort of all we have to work with. A hypothetical near extinction of man certainly would be the cure for many man-made problems but it doesn’t seem prudent to make any solid plans around it. So contributing to the destruction of the environment in the world, as it is today, is an ethical concern.
But OK, forget the environment. Count the 1.3 billion tons of grain fed to livestock annually. Add the number of livestock butchered annually. Count whatever additional agriculture would be required to make up for any deficit (almost none - see my previous post) and how many animals that might affect (almost none - see my previous post.)
As far as non-environmental ethical considerations, add to that the fact that we aren’t going out with spears hunting our meat like some natural predators in the food chain, we are raising millions of animals in captivity, in unnatural circumstances, from birth to death devoid of the joys of being alive before we finally kill them.
Are you honestly arguing that it is less ethical to risk animals dying in nature while living their natural lives due to agriculture compared to raising them for food in those circumstances?
That is a huge overstatement. It is well established the trend of climate change could make the earth practically, if not completely uninhabitable for non-human life as well. Whether that is in 100 years or 10,000 depends on many unpredictable factors but there is no doubt if something doesn’t change that is where it’s going.
Even if some species survive, are you saying you think it’s ethical to doom the rest of the inhabitants of earth to tens of thousands of years of near extinction and forced adaptation to almost unlivable circumstances so that we can enjoy more meat than we need right now?
No it is not, not at all. You have not understood your own reading.
the ecoystems humanity depends on can be damaged to real danger to humanity. The idea of rendering the earth uninhabitable for most life is not supported at all and is a ridiculous assertion.
I refer you to my post above and wish you well in your disbelief of the well-established point it makes.
It wasn’t a good point, really. “All life” is not imperiled. That was just an absurd exaggeration.
The actual dangers are bad enough! You don’t need to resort to hyperbole! The threat is to our way of life, and to millions of species that are totally dependent on their habitat. Global climate change could threaten (and is threatening, and killing!) species world-wide. It’s an awful, nasty, ugly, bad thing, and we (humanity) are the cause. And we can do things to stop and even reverse it.
So, yes, this is bad, and we need to act. But no, “all life” is not at risk. Just a lot of the life we really care about.
Yes, we agree on this. But the ethical concern isn’t about the animals per se, only that it can be a major part of one’s overall environmental footprint. It should be possible to keep one’s environmental impact acceptably low while regularly eating meat, even more than one “needs to”.
Imagine two married couples. The first couple has one child, they take public transit rather than drive, they recycle, and so on… and they eat meat regularly. The second couple are vegans, and are raising their seven children to be vegans. They live out in the suburbs. The breadwinner has a long commute, by car. The homemaker drives around all day in a big SUV running errands. They water their huge lawn frequently. They have three dogs. Every year they take a plane to an exotic vacation destination. Wouldn’t it be kind of weird for the second couple to condemn the first couple for eating meat on the basis that it’s bad for the environment?
This is another manifestation of the naturalistic fallacy.
Nobody is saying that. What I’m curious about is, referring to post #124, why draw a starker line between B and C than between A and B?
I don’t know if you and Ramira are arguing that something like amoebas and cockroaches might survive therefore the claim “all life on earth is in danger” is hyperbole. If so, I concede.
The quote from the cite I gave above isn’t some clickbait headline or hyper-exaggerated environmentalist drivel.
Whether we say “all life will be extinct” or “immeasurable loss of animal species” is irrelevant to the point. It’s a nitpicky argument that completely overlooks the big picture. It’s not unethical to cut down on livestock production, with all the environmental benefits that would have, because someone incorrectly claims that it would require more agriculture which might kill some animals.
I think field mice were the original victims named as a result of agriculture. How well would they adapt to the situation described above? But wait, it doesn’t matter because as has already been explained cutting down on livestock production would require little if any additional agriculture.
It is not a well established point, the contrary it is a grotesque exaggeration - it seems because you do not understand your reading very much.
All life is not threatened by the human driven climate change, the range of the earth temperature over the geologic time which life has flourished has been much higher than anything humanity may produce. The speed of the change and the size is a huge danger to the humanity, but it is not a threat to “all life”. It is a threat to the human civilization. But it is a small, trivial thing for the planet and the life over the geological time spans.
No, generally for all classes of life.
The global history of the planet temperature has seen the flourishing large life forms at global temperatures well above anything that is forecast for the human forced climate change.
Your hyperbole is evidently based on a poor understanding of the document you read.
Whether agriculture or livestock, if it could be done on a microfarm type situation with the utmost protection for environmental concerns and/or animal comfort and welfare, it would pretty much eliminate the need for any discussion of the ethics of either. It would be great. If everyone ran their own farm as you describe and limited their consumption to what was needed as opposed to what was wanted, IMO all ethical concerns would be resolved whichever side of the problem you’re looking at.
The problem is there are too many of us. Whether it is agriculture or livestock, to do it on the scale that we need to in order to support our current appetites requires that they be done in less conscientious and ethical ways than you describe.
Once again I’ll refer you to my previous post. It is a nitpicky point you’re making that is irrelevant to the larger discussion.
I understand “nit-picking” to be the phrase that means that “I can not admit I was completely wrong and the philosophsing ethics post that was the cite to actually does not support me”
Since you make very large errors of fact, it is difficult to give the credit to the remainder.
No, that’s nonsense. Not even the most extreme scenarios of climate change based on current trends predict that the Earth would become “practically uninhabitable” for non-human life. Certainly many species will become extinct, but there are also many species capable of living at the predicted elevated temperatures.
As others have said, the situation is bad enough without such hyperbole. It’s not hyperbole to say that, under not implausible assumptions, we may be looking at the largest mass extinction since the end of the Cretaceous. But exaggerating in such an extreme way as you have undermines your credibility.
Conceded.
I maintain:
“Whether we say “all life will be extinct” or “immeasurable loss of animal species” is irrelevant to the point. It’s a nitpicky argument that completely overlooks the big picture. It’s not unethical to cut down on livestock production, with all the environmental benefits that would have, because someone incorrectly claims that it would require more agriculture which might kill some animals.”
An enormous factual error is not “nitpicky” in any way.