What are the most important measures to make the world better? Three measures have large and multiple benefits: veganism, family planning and a green tax shift with a basic income. These three measures are positive in terms of a rights ethic, a welfare ethic and an environmental ethic. They also refer to three suppressed or disadvantaged groups: animals, women and workers.
Veganism (eating a plant-based, animal-free diet)
Consumers health: vegans have lower risk for chronic diseases (cardiovascular, cancer, diabetes) and foodborne illnesses
Producer health: fishermen, livestock farmers and slaughterhouse workers have the most dangerous jobs and slaughterhouse workers often suffer from post-traumatic stress
Public health: a vegan agriculture has lower risk for new infectious pandemic zoonotic diseases. A vegan agriculture can feed more people.
Environment: a vegan agriculture has a lower environmental footprint and lower impact in the biodiversity
Animals: there is a lot of animal suffering and rights violations in animal agriculture
Family planning (investing in cheap, high-quality contraceptives, correct information, education and services for reproductive health, in order to prevent unwanted pregnancies)
Environment: lower population growth means lower total footprint of the human population
Womens rights: family planning increases free choices of women.
Poverty reduction: family planning can increase health and education levels of children.
An investment of 1000 euro in family planning prevents about 100 tons of CO2 emissions (approximately equivalent to the annual emissions of five Belgians), 7 unplanned births, 2 miscarriages, 8 abortions (of which 5 unsafe), 2 complications from unsafe abortions, 0.3 infant deaths at birth, 0,02 maternal deaths and 0.03 children becoming orphaned. Those 1000 euro will save 12 healthy life years of mothers and newborn children. This makes contraception the most cost effective method to save healthy life years in the developing countries, after malaria prevention (primarily through mosquito nets), tuberculosis treatment and deworming.
A green tax shift (an increase in taxation of natural resources and pollution and a decrease in taxation of labor)
Less unemployment, higher net wages
More efficient economy
Less pollution, more efficient use of resources
A fair method to finance a universal basic income and decrease income inequality
Just looking at the putative benefits for animals: there are vast numbers of animals on the planet today that would not exist, had they not been bred to be harvested for human consumption. What is your plan for the disposition of these animals?
We can reduce their population without extinguishing them entirely. (Same for people!) I’m pretty sure there would still be room for 4-H society farm projects, as well as farming in developing regions.
Veganism wouldn’t have to be 100%, just a big amount more popular than it is now.
If eating beef were as rare as eating whale, we’d still have tens of thousands of beef cattle, just not the billion (!) cattle we have now.
I’m with the OP: this would pretty much be win/win. Like any change, there would be disruptive aspects. (A whole lot of ranchers need new jobs.)
Another magnificent win/win/win is educating women, worldwide. Every home is a school.
From a welfare perspective: most animals in current animal agriculture have lives not worth living because they have too much negative experiences. It is better to decrease their numbers, and not kill them or use them against their will. If we eat more vegan, there will be less breeding, less overpopulation of livestock animals and hence less suffering.
The case for veganism is stronger from a rights perspective. This can be seen by using a human analogy: “Just looking at the putative benefits for black people: there are vast numbers of black people on the planet today that would not exist, had they not been bred to be used as slaves for white people.” It doesn’t matter if the life of a slave is still worth living. We should not use someone against his/her will as merely a means to our ends.
Hooray for family planning, but I like eating meat and fish, and I like having resources and technology for reasons beyond consumerism. Nor, for that matter, do I want a zero-growth economy. There are a lot of promises in your blog post, but there are no concrete figures or predictions, discussion of economic models, counterarguments or even any indication that the very long of items you propose will be anything other than completely positive (in fact, win-win-win). To take one random example, you discuss severely limiting economic growth (for environmental reasons) and raising taxes on the use of land, natural resources, etc. while also implementing a guaranteed income. That would be very expensive and raise the unemployment rate. How would that affect the economy, and why would it be worth the cost?
Well, planet Earth does not care about your preference for an infinite growth economy. A zero growth in use of natural resources is inevitable. The question is: what economic measures can we take to distribute the natural resources as fair as possible and to use them as efficiently as possible. Hence the idea of the green tax shift and basic income.
This green tax shift doesn’t need to be expensive. In fact, we already pay for the economic rent of natural resources, but this burden of payment is distributed in a way that results in unfairness and inefficiencies. Take pollution without a tax: the external costs of pollution are not internalized in the price, so the polluter does not pay the cost, but eventually someone else will.
The basic income reflects the fair share of the economic rent of all natural resources and services. It is as expensive as nature is.
The unemployment rate will decrease if the tax on labour decreases.
If we can’t get people to vote for a higher minimum wage, which would result in them getting paid more, we’re sure not going to get them to vote for enforced veganism, which would result in them not eating hamburgers or bacon.
Regarding veganism in general, just because you can convert a Porsche to run on a coal-fired steam plant doesn’t mean you should.
This argument always comes up. It closely mirrors a favorite argument of slaveholders: “What do you propose to do when all theses slaves are released into society?” The implication being that we have to keep doing what we’re doing because we can’t think of a way to end the system without massive suffering.
The truth is, we’ve already converted away from horse-based transport somehow, despite there having been millions of horses involved.
Seriously, eating our vegetables are more important than ending war? You must be an American. Trust me when I say that The-Rest-of-the-World’s meat-eating habits are sustainable, it’s only the way we Americans chow-down on meat that’s horrible. Yeah, all the corn grown in Iowa (and they grow a shitload of corn there) is pretty much strictly for animal consumption. The ratio is something like 20 to 1. I might be wrong, but places like India, China, Germany … no way could they get by with that level of waste.
On the other hand, China and India are posed to hammer each other with nukes and Germany lost both World Wars … yet the USA hasn’t seen an invading army since, what, 1815?
I’m sorry, while war rages across the lands; veganism, family planning and a green tax shift does nothing to protect our children.
Veganism as a political issue is a pipe-dream – most people (and certainly most Americans) are very attached to eating meat and I believe it’s a fantasy that this will change in the short or medium term. What could be achievable, I think, is reducing the amount of meat consumed to roughly what the rest of the world eats per capita, which should be sustainable over time. Also achievable, perhaps, is some sort of vat-meat (lab-grown meat), assuming it tasted the same, with some smart marketing (but there will always be significant numbers that want “real” meat from slaughtered animals).
I don’t think the moral/ethical argument for veganism is convincing to most meat-eaters, but the moral/ethical argument for animal welfare (e.g. treating livestock in such a manner that they have some quality of life and do not experience cruelty) could be. I believe most people like animals and don’t want them to suffer, but still don’t believe they have anything close to the moral and ethical value of humans, and don’t have a moral problem with raising happy animals in a decent environment and then slaughtering them with minimal pain for meat. I certainly don’t.
As far as consumer health, my understanding is that vegan diets are no healthier than diets rich in fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, with small amounts of lean fish, poultry, and meat. Eating meat the way Americans do (on average) is probably unhealthy, but eating small amounts of lean fish and meat (with lots of fruits and vegetables) is probably very healthy, from my understanding.
ETA: Perhaps imposing veganism, family planning and a green tax shift in the USA alone could well end all war throughout the world … just might be possible …
In some cases, eating a vegetarian or vegan diet is more sustainable than a carnivorous diet. In some cases, a carnivorous or at least ovo-lacto diet is more sustainable than a vegetarian diet. Yes, it takes many Calories of fodder to make each Calorie of meat, but not all Calories are created equal. There are a lot of places in the world where the only plants which will grow are not directly edible to humans, but are edible to ruminants. The only way for people to get any benefit from that vegetation is to filter it through an animal.
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, having a plan is kind of pointless without knowing what it is you wish to accomplish. “Make the world better” is too vague to mean anything.
The second sentence does not necessarily support the first. It is possible to increase the per capita wealth of the human race while conserving exhaustible natural resources, converting to new resources, or re-using previous used resources, and in fact it’s probably inevitable we will end up doing it.
in terms of promoting healthy life years, investments like family planning are much more cost efficient than trying to prevent wars.
Besides: a lot of unwanted births generates a youth bulge with a lot of young people. Violence is usually caused by young people (mostly men and boys). A youth bulge (a large young population) is one of the demographic stress factors that increases the risk of violent conflicts. A decline in the annual birth rate of 5 births per 1000 corresponds with a 5% decrease in the probability of a civil conflict in the next 10 years. (R.P. Cincotta, R. Engelman and D. Anastasion (2003). The security demographic. Population and civil conflict after the cold war. Population Action International.)
Why is it too vague? Making the world better can mean: increase health and well-being, decrease rights violations and preserve biodiversity. That is what I try to accomplish
When the growth economy is criticized, it is clear that growth is understood as a growth in pollution and use of finite natural resources (resource throughput). Of course, a growth in wealth can be decoupled from a growth in resource use, and that means an infinite growth in wealth is possible. For example, if wealth consists of ideas and music: there is no upper bound on the generation of ideas and music.