Quick Reminder that if your respect for the bodily autonomy of others stops where your personal pleasure begins, then you have waay more work to do to practice what you preach. All sentient beings should have their bodily autonomy respected based on their sentience. This includes non human individuals.
Okay, but, reducing our meat intake by 30% really would help. While that’s not a lot, it would make a huge impact, and unlike a lot of other advice that CNN gave, it’s something each of us can do andshoulddo.
But you know what the public response was, just as it always is when folks are told eating less meat would help the environment? They balk and hem and haw. “Pass up that steak to reduce pollution? How dare you tell me what to do! It’s my personal choice!”
Hate to tell ya, buddy, but choosing meat over plant-based foods isn’t a personal choice - it’s an ethical choice. A personal choice is choosing what shirt you want to wear today. It isn’t the choice between paying a company to slit a chicken’s throat or paying a company to grow soybeans and lentils. The two choices are not of equal moral value. Unless you believe animals don’t feel pain or emotions, in which case, just stop reading now because you probably don’t give a shit about climate change to begin with.
But I digress.
People are so attached to eating meat, dairy, and eggs that even if told it would help save our planet to go vegan (or at least eat more veggies and less meat), they will absolutely refuse. And they hide it behind the framing of “corporations are the polluters, individuals shouldn’t be held responsible for climate change, so why should I eat less meat, etc. etc.” I don’t find that reasoning compelling in the least. And to be told that eating less meat to help stop climate change is “journalistic malpractice”?
Here’s the problem with that statement. It doesn’t absolve us of moral responsibility for our choices. We are at least partially responsible for our purchases on an individual basis as well. Because our collective individual impacts add up, especially when it comes to animal products.
Plus,we wouldn’t apply this same nihilistic “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” rhetoric to other areas of individual purchasing. Here’s an example:
If I said I no longer wanted to purchase child slavery-sourced chocolate, you wouldn’t say “Corporations are responsible for child slavery, not you, so why are you bothering.” Of course we’re responsible for what we purchase, especially if there is another option that is less harmful. Slavery-sourced chocolate vs. ethically-sourced chocolate. There is a difference, and no one would dispute that there isn’t. So why when presented a choice between animal- and plant-based foods, we suddenly act as if there’s no ethical or moralistic difference? Or if there is a difference, it doesn’t matter because the world is shit and we’re all fucked anyway so why bother caring?
We make the choice 3+ times a day on what we are going to eat. We are making that decision, not a corporation. The corporations are simply filling the demand of meat/dairy/eggs that we are providing. If we take away that demand for animal products, and everyone goes as vegan as they can, guess what? Animal agriculture goes out of business. Which is exactly what we need to happen if we have a hope of stopping climate change.
We could all go paperless/carless/phoneless/plastic-free tomorrow, and it wouldn’t eliminate climate change. Because animal agriculture is the #1 driver of climate change. We have to dismantle these industries if we want to get serious about having a livable future on this planet.
Animal agriculture is antithetical to human and animal survival. It’s responsible for oceanic dead zones, antibiotic resistance in the human population, zoonotic diseases, methane pollution, pollution of our waterways, chronic illnesses in communities near farms and slaughterhouses, etc. The human population’s total combined impact when it comes to eating meat and other animal products is *so* devastating that it blows all other polluting industries out of the water.
If we want a world that’s equitable, fair, clean, and peaceful, we have to end animal agriculture. And that does fall on all of us as individuals, because our US government sure as hell won’t put a stop to it. The USDA is responsible for both giving us our dietary recommendations and ensuring that agriculture is a thriving economy. It’s a blatant conflict of interest and has been since at least the 50’s. So there’s no help there. What meager reforms are made for animal welfare does nothing to comfort the animals crammed in cages and warehouses, and trucked for hundreds of miles in heat and snow just to end up in a slaughterhouse.
The bottom line is: corporations will not stop breeding, torturing, capturing, and killing animals until we stop paying them to. Climate change will continue to get worse until we stop supporting these industries. We need to let animal agriculture die so that we can live.
And yet we still have meat eaters making excuses in the notes.
So can y'all stop with the “nothing bad will happen in my lifetime so I don’t care” excuse now? Are you happy now?
Hell, I would love to say “please go vegan and help to fix this”, but what’s the point anymore? Humanity has clearly made its choice, and if you think that we’re going to somehow get our shit together in the next decade for the common good then you are out of your god damn mind.There is no hope left and now it’s been officially confirmed.
But it’s just soooo good to know that the reason that our entire planet is going to change as we know it within the extremely near future is because people would rather go down kicking and screaming eating their bacon cheeseburgers than be mildly inconvenienced in their daily lives ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There are a number of reasons why people choose to go vegan. Some are drawn to veganism because they love animals and want their actions to reflect their beliefs. Some choose a vegan lifestyle for the positive health benefits of eating a whole foods, plant based diet. Others gravitate towards veganism because of the positive impact that not eating meat has on the environment and the desire to reduce their carbon footprint on this planet, the only known planet to be inhabitable by human life.
When it comes to the latter, there are innumerable reasons why if you consider yourself to be an environmentalist, or at the very least someone who is mildly concerned with the way we treat the environment and worried about the future of our planet, you should examine the negative environmental effects of consuming and using animals.
“Most simply put, someone who regularly eats factory-farmed animal products cannot call himself an environmentalist without divorcing that word from it’s meaning.”
Animals like cows who are used in animal agriculture produce an incredible amount of the greenhouse gas methane and methane is approximately 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide, another destructive heat-trapping gas that causes negative effects to our environment.
Deforestation is a huge problem and rain forests around the globe are being depleted at an alarming rate to make room for things like cattle ranching. According to Scientific American, “we are losing upwards of 80,000 acres of tropical rain forest daily” and “losing some 135 plant, animal and insect species every day.”
If you believe in water conservation, then you definitely should not be ordering up a cheeseburger the next time you visit a restaurant. Tons of water is used when it comes to eating animals. The LA Times reported that just one 1/3 lb hamburger necessitates 660 gallons of water, and for comparisons’s sake, just one slice of bread necessitates 11 gallons of water.
Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations are part of the leading contributor (the agriculture sector) of pollutants to lakes, rivers, and reservoirs. According to the CDC, “It has been found that states with high concentrations of CAFOs experience on average 20 to 30 serious water quality problems per year as a result of manure management problems.”
Think emissions from cars, buses, trains, planes, etc. are bad for the environment? They are, but you should see how awful emissions are from farming animals for food. The UN & PEW Commission state that, “… greenhouse gas emissions from all livestock operations account for 18% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, exceeding those from the transportation sector.”
Climate change is real and when it comes to animal proteins vs. vegetable proteins, plant based proteins create less green house gas emissions. As voiced in a TIME story, “Many of the EWG’s findings are pretty eye-opening — like some revealing facts about beef, which produces twice the emissions of pork, four times as much as chicken, and 13 times that of vegetable protein such as beans, lentils, and tofu.”
Clean drinking water is a necessity to life, but runoff from factory farming infiltrates that water making it hazardous to humans, marine life and other animals. According to the EPA, “Animal agriculture manure is a primary source of nitrogen and phosphorus to surface and groundwater. Manure runoff from cropland and pastures or discharging animal feeding operations and concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) often reaches surface and groundwater systems through surface runoff or infiltration.”
Marine habitat destruction is caused by natural occurrences like hurricanes and tsunamis, but it’s the destructive activity of humans that is more impactful and incessant on these ecosystems. As stated in National Geographic, “Destructive fishing techniques like bottom trawling, dynamiting, and poisoning destroy habitats near shore as well as in the deep sea.”
Due to overfishing, many fishing communities are collapsing. The Marine Conservation Institute figures that, “About 25% of US fish stocks are overfished and 90% of global fish stocks are fully or overfished…”
Fishing nets function indiscriminately and are affecting the biodiversity of our oceans. Nets cannot tell the difference between a school of tuna, a dolphin, or turtle. “It is estimated that over 300,000 small whales, dolphins, and porpoises die from entanglement in fishing nets each year, making this the single largest cause of mortality for small cetaceans.” The World Wildlife Fund also found that, “Hundreds of thousands of endangered loggerhead turtles and critically endangered leatherback turtles drown annually on longlines set for tuna, swordfish, and other fish. Incidental capture of turtles by longlines, trawls and gillnets is the single greatest threat to the survival of most populations.”
Photo courtesy of USDA NRCS. Use of this photo does not infer or imply NRCS endorsement of any product, company, or position.
It’s 2015. ALMOST 2016. I can’t take ANY “activist” seriously if they aren’t vegan. I can’t take ANY “movement” seriously, if it’s not SIMULTANEOUSLY campaigning for veganism and animal rights. The lowest form of civility on this planet is that which we extend to animals; I mean, human rights are important and they DEFINITELY need improvement–but AT LEAST we don’t have to worry about being LITERALLY raised for slaughter and eaten by a species that’s sharing this planet with us. AT LEAST we don’t scoop up homeless humans and euthanize them if their owners don’t claim them after a few weeks. AT LEAST we don’t have our skins LITERALLY peeled from our screaming, bleeding bodies, where we’re then thrown into a pile of other, skinless, blood and shit-soaked humans, writhing and crying and begging for death. AT LEAST we aren’t killed JUST so someone can make an ash tray out of our hands, or cut off our noses to make piano keys or get an erection. AT LEAST we don’t have our arms sliced off and our bodies discarded, just so someone else can eat shitty soup.
I mean, this list goes on and on and, again: I UNDERSTAND THAT WE FACE AN EGREGIOUS AMOUNT OF HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS FROM CORPORATE GOVERNMENTS THAT KEEP US AS WAGE SLAVES AND KILL US IN THE STREETS WITHOUT RECOURSE…
But you can’t say that you’d rather trade places with a chicken. You can’t HONESTLY or INTELLIGENTLY say that you’d rather be a buffalo.
Because, when you can be LEGALLY slaughtered and eaten–served up at the table for celebrations ALL AROUND THE WORLD–there’s no greater SYSTEMIC threat to your existence and there’s NO HOPE for your survival.
So smack on whatever bumper stickers you want and scribble anything you’d like on your protest sign; but, if you aren’t ACTUALLY LIVING what you preach, about compassion and equality and fairness and justice, by living a VEGAN lifestyle and DEMANDING animal liberation alongside whatever your cause is, then YOU are JUST AS BAD as the oppressors you are trying to overthrow, because YOU–like your oppressors–haven’t dedicated yourself to being a voice and a champion for the MOST oppressed individuals on this planet, so YOU–like your oppressors–will continue to inflict the damage and terror and torture that you so desperately want to avoid, upon others who–despite their appearances–are not so different from you.
response to stimuli is very interesting, but it doesn’t equal sentience. It does not mean that they are able to feel stress, pain or wellbeing. It does not mean that they have the ability to suffer.
We know that most animals fell stress and pain, that they are able to suffer. This includes fish as well. X
We know that animals suffer in animal agriculture. If you are seriously concerned about plant suffering based on a few studies on plants responding to stimulation, then being vegan should be a no brainer, since the science on that is clear.
And are non vegans seriously trying to claim they don’t eat plants? Humans can be perfectly healthy without consuming animal products in general, being healthy without consuming any plants is difficult.
