It is when it was totally peripheral to the larger point being made. I concede it was a poor choice of words and not correct. The intended message of the hyperbole remains unchanged.
I will reword my argument:
The damage that climate change will definitely cause if it isn’t controlled is of greater ethical concern than that of imagined hypothetical animal deaths due to agriculture. Livestock production has one of the largest, if not the largest, impact on climate change of all human activity.
That was all I was saying. We’re back in sync now.
As we learn more about plants, the cruelty of eating them or their fruit becomes apparent.
“Trees have friends, feel loneliness, scream with pain and communicate underground via the “woodwide web”. Some act as parents and good neighbors.”
Now that research applies to trees - but what do we really know about (for example) interplant communications and emotions in a field of corn or a tomato patch? Can we tolerate inflicting severe emotional and/or physical pain on plants when we harvest them for our own selfish purposes?
Truly, the only ethical option left is breatharianism. 
Then I don’t think we were ever out of synch.
I didn’t say “all life” anyway, that is how some posters interpreted it and I can see how it could be interpreted that way. Earlier in the thread I did add the hyperbolic statement that if all life were destroyed it wouldn’t really matter how many field mice were killed by agriculture. It’s also worth noting in that case, that field mice are very possibly not one of the life forms that would survive.
But what I said was: “climate change could make the earth practically, if not completely uninhabitable for non-human life as well.”
I didn’t say “all non-human life” but I can see how it could be interpreted either way.
I think I can correct any objections to that statement by adding just one clarifying word:
“climate change could make the earth practically, if not completely uninhabitable for [much] non-human life as well.”
The important point was never that all life on the entire planet would be destroyed, but that enough life would be destroyed that it exponentially outweighs the incorrect argument that ‘less meat equals more agriculture and agriculture kills mice!’ which is really just nonsense all the way around. It is a very common rationalization offered by people who like to eat meat because they like it and no other reason.
No your correction only shows you do not understand the actual science or even the climate history, it continues to show you have no analytical credibility on this.
The flourishing of the pre-mammelian mega faunas occured at global climate average temperatures well above anything that human forcing is predicted to generate.
The problem of the human climate forcing is only the speed and that speed is really the principal problem for the human civilization, as it can end it for all practical purposes.
Life, it does not care much about what the humans can do in this short term, it is a human concern, this change.
It is not nit picking the correction, it is noting you have fundamental incorrect and non scientific understandings.
Why? Can you be specific? Do you argue that “Much non-human life” could be in danger due to climate change?
What does that have to do with anything that we’re discussing in this thread? Who cares if mega faunas occurred at high temperatures? Again, are you insisting that climate change presents no danger to many species and ecosystems on Earth? If so, I’m afraid it is you whose statements are nonsense. (not to mention totally unrelated to the subject of this debate)
Right back at ya, professor. You clearly not only do not understand the dangers climate change presents but apparently also don’t understand what it means when someone says they concede that their point was hyperbolic but that it isn’t relevant to the larger discussion.
https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/impacts/ecosystems.html
What am I misunderstanding about this very simple statement?
Really? What do you answer to Colibri, who agreed with you that my point was presented in a hyperbolic manner but also confirmed exactly the spirit of what I was saying and directly contradicts your ignorant statements?
You use the term “uninhabitable.”
to be precise: ““climate change could make the earth practically, if not completely uninhabitable for non-human life as well.””
Now you are being demogagically slippery to try to slip in “in danger”- a vague phrase - to substitute for the clearly non equivalent idea, indeed an idea so broad to justify almost any statement.
this is sad political posturing rhetoric.
you seem unable to understand threat to current ecosystem organization and a minority of species extinctions is not in any way a synonyme to the rendering of the planet uninhabital to much of life.
It is a transition event. It is very bad for humanity. For overall life, it is nothing more than yet another stress event like a meteor or a mega volcanic eruption or the similar sudden system shock.
And by the facts, the temperature range is a temperature range that does not pose large scale life problems.
The only problem is for us, the humans and our civilization. Which is very important to us. but is a silly stupid thing to talk about from life on the planet.
yes really.
I would say you are engaging in more of the hyperbolic political and emotional rhetoric and that in fact what I have written is in no way contradicted in any way by what he wrote, in fact the contrary.
You can feel free to throw the hyperbolic insults, but my statements have not been ignorant, while you continue to make the clearly non factual and unscientific ones.
So that I can try to frame any of this drivel as it relates to the conversation we are having, is your argument that 30% of all plant and animal species, or “the largest mass extinction since the end of the Cretaceous”, are less important ethical considerations than the animals that might be affected by an increase in agriculture if livestock production were dramatically reduced?
That is not the case. I realize that English isn’t your primary language and will try to clarify what is obvious to a native speaker:
“In danger” as it applies in the context of the conversation we’re having automatically means “in danger of extinction”. It was not an attempt to water down my previous statement.
Yes I did use the term “uninhabitable” and it was used correctly.
Taken as a whole here is the sentence:
“climate change could make the earth practically, if not completely uninhabitable for [much] non-human life as well.”
With the addition of the word [much] there is no longer any ambiguity in what that sentence means. It means that in addition to humans, the earth would be uninhabitable for a non-trival amount of other life forms as well. That is a very well established opinion expressed not only by all the cites provided in this thread but by Colibri and whether you realize it or not, by you as well. If you agree that any one species would go extinct, then you also agree that the earth had become uninhabitable for that species.
No, it’s not. It is the plain fact of the matter. Climate change, to which the livestock industry is one of the greatest contributors, endangers not only human life but many other forms of life, entire ecosystems, plants, animals and microorganisms. And all that life is of more ethical concern than the lives of whatever animals might be affected by agriculture if livestock production is reduced.
You seem unable to understand that it is. I have explained the correct English interpretation of my sentence above. The earth is necessarily uninhabitable to any species you agree could go extinct as a result.
Whatever it is you believe about the meaning of my words. I have never had, nor expressed in this thread, any doubt that the Earth would somehow persevere beyond human habitation and the damage we’re able to do. All I have argued in this thread is:
a) Livestock production is among the biggest contributors to climate change.
b) Climate change and its resulting effects are a major ethical consideration in a debate about the ethics of eating meat.
If you have an argument with either of those points please provide it. If you don’t you are in agreement with me, but for whatever reason choosing this thread as a venue to inject your ridiculous denials about the possible effects of climate change.
One area of animal rights that segments of the Western public seems to be moving towards in the last generation or so is to oppose animal training and tricks as seen in circuses and marine parks, as well as their living conditions in cramped environments. “But a tight rope walking goat is so entertaining” is not seen as a serious argument. “But bacon is tasty” is a similar type of argument. Interestingly, the idea of bacon and eggs as the standard American breakfast is largely the result of a PR campaign by Edward Bernays. Before that most Americans had a light breakfast such as cereal and fruit, maybe a roll, and coffee or juice.
I’m not sure what the argument is. If you think eating meat is ethical then this is a pragmatic approach. If you think eating meat is unethical then more efficient use of natural resources doesn’t make it ethical. There’s all sorts of ways we could be more efficient if we engaged in unethical behavior.
Vote Giant Meteor 2016. It’ll wipe out the debt and bring world peace.
As for global warming doom and gloom, the most common historical reference I see is the PETM. Something like the Permian mass extinction, with widespread ocean acidification or hypoxia would be the worst case scenario, but that’s highly speculative and controversial especially since the cause(s) of the Permian extinction aren’t fully understood.
You could go even further and argue for hylozoism or panpsychism, the latter of which is taken seriously by a number of modern day philosophers of mind. Maybe skipping a rock across a pond is in some sense cruel. Probably not as cruel as skipping a person across a pond, though.
One interesting outcome of this sort of ranked order of moral creatures is the possibility of encountering alien life that is as intelligent or self aware compared to us as we are to, say, cattle, or beavers, or whatever animal you’d feel comfortable slaughtering en masse in a trolley tracks thought experiment (to save a single human). We wouldn’t really have any good arguments for why they shouldn’t slaughter us en masse to save one of their own, or why we shouldn’t be their slaves. “But we have a minimum amount of self awareness to be different than other animals!” Except they would probably draw the line closer to them, just as we do for us.
Too late to edit (and it’s a silly point), but fruit is a means of reproduction. In animals, or at least mammals, the reproductive act is associated with pleasure. So if plants feel anything about having their ripe fruit plucked it might be a rather positive experience.
Here is my take from a biologist/botanist point of view:
Humans cannot make their own food. Only organisms with chlorophyll can fix the basic elements of all carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins from atmospheric and terrestrial non organic sources.
All animals must either eat other animals, or eat plants. We animals depend on the initial producers to derive all food from sunlight and non organic sources (minor exceptions are some primitive life forms that can use mineral sources.)
This means that agriculture depends on clearing entire ecosystems of all of the organisms that will use up the natural plant resources, and replacing the original vegetation with the sort of plants that we as humans have grown to use…rice, wheat, corn…somewhere in the order of 20 species of cultivated plants provide the vast majority of food for humans and for our domesticated animals that we eat.
So…the shocking truth is that we depend on wiping out all of the creatures great and small in order to eat veggies, and pretend that we are being ethical for not killing animals for food.
Do you see the problem here?
I think it would be best to admit our reliance on the fact that humans must kill to live, and therefore that we should feed ourselves in the best way possible with the best care for all creatures - but we cannot avoid our biological role.
I see the problem. We already have an agriculture industry going on that provides ample nutrition alongside the gigantic livestock industry we created.
Cutting down much of the livestock production in the world doesn’t require any additional agriculture. It’s just excess food production feeding the appetites of a continent nearing 40% obesity.
If we had to cut way back on one or the other in the interest of the ‘best care for all creatures’ which do you recommend?
The three that I find most convincing:
You weren’t answering me but I’m compelled to point out that the 1.3 billion tons of grain fed to livestock annually could then already be considered mass genocide of rats before you even begin killing the livestock that it feeds.
I’ll repeat again; that is one of the first and most common rationalizations people make in arguments against vegetarian or vegan diets and it’s BS. When you consider the amount of agriculture needed to support the livestock and the fact that there is already more agriculture than we need with or without livestock that rationalization fails.
How do you get to that conclusion? How does feeding grain to cattle cause the death of large numbers of rats?
Based on the claim quoted in my post: that growing crops kills rodents.
I don’t know the numbers either but agriculture is certainly not good for the environment or wildlife. I don’t think anyone would dispute that.
But it doesn’t make that argument valid. We grow crops to feed livestock, so without any more information than that the rationalization already fails.
Beyond that we grow more crop than we need to feed the entire world (if we didn’t waste 1/3 of it and distributed it evenly) and that would still be the case with or without livestock. Choosing not to eat meat, or eat less meat, doesn’t increase the demand for agriculture if you live in all but the poorest parts of the world so that entire premise is moot.
But, how, exactly? Are you talking about field mice crushed under the wheels and grain-catchers of the big combines? Or…what? I don’t get how you get “genocide of rats” out of fields of wheat.
I didn’t make the claim, but it seems in this case they are basing the flawed logic on the idea that rodents need to be poisoned to keep them from eating the crops.
Growing crops kills rodents, so eating less meat encourages the killing of rodents, so why is that any more ethical than just eating meat?
Grain is grown to feed livestock so if growing crops is mass murder of rodents then buying meat contributes to that mass murder anyway. And we already grow enough crops to feed everyone without any livestock at all, so cutting back on meat consumption doesn’t increase the demand for more crop production or endanger any additional mice.