Brief Introduction

[DaBankasDaBonuses]

Incorrect. Rearing one sheep does make a difference to the planet and eating a teaspoon of sugar is bad for your health. Just because you are not personally able to detect the impact doesn't mean the impact doesn't exist.

That's what I said. But considering I don't care about a teaspoon's worth a sugar for my health, the same goes for one sheep as it relates to the environment.

Why are you even partaking in a debate about morality if you have no personal compass of what is wrong and right (other than how other people have behaved historically).

This whole environmental argument is a side-show. I wanted to get away from it but I was accused of ignoring another user when I did.
My intention was to discuss whether there are moral facts about how we should treat animals. I should have made this more clear in my intro.

Two questions here:
Are you promoting subjective morality.

I'm not 'promoting' anything but as it stands I haven't seen a successfully argued moral theory so I choose to follow the traditional ethical path of my community.

Do you understand the continuum between "very bad" and "very good"? I'm not claiming that every action I take is "very good" but I understand when I have chosen an action that was in my personal self interest at the cost of general utility. Can you at least admit that this is the case when you eat meat?

I don't know. I can't weigh up the ecstasy of eating a traditional dish with good people vs the ecological effect of consuming a fraction of a lamb. Analysis of the consequences becomes easier when we consider meat eating in its entirety. This is the scale we would need to be thinking of.
I will admit, if I was a utilitarian, I would consider global consumption of meat at this moment in time as 'too high'.
As I am not a utilitarian, as I don't eat as much meat as others, as the meat I buy does not have the same carbon footprint as other peoples' purchases I can't say how I affect the equation.

[teo123]

I am quite sure the expansion of government is evil in itself.

Please stop hijacking posts with unrelated topics you are eager to discuss. You do it all the time and it is annoying as hell. You are welcome to start a new topic if you so wish.

If somebody says government will make the lives of animals significantly better, they are just wrong. FDA is mandating animal testing of drugs, which harms both animals and humans (by providing us with very misleading information - aspirin and penicilin subjected to modern standards of testing would probably end up banned). Maybe FDA mandating animal testing made some sense at the beginning of the 20th century, when we did not know much about physiology. But the low-hanging fruit, drugs which will work in wide range of animal species, has already been discovered. These days, results of animal testing are no better at predicting side-effects than guessing is. As well, many countries have laws which require certain types of animals to be gassed at slaughterhouses using some mixture of CO2 and some other gasses, claiming it is humane, in spite of all the evidence that it is not humane. I guess it is similar in logic to anti-nuclear movement: nuclear energy can do a lot of damage if some incredibly unlikely event happens, but other forms of energy will destroy the Earth even if everything goes right. Similarly, killing animals with electricity is painful in some unlikely cases, but killing them with gas is painful no matter what. Governments are, in a sense, very pessimistic, and do a ton of harm by looking at the worst possible scenarios instead of expected scenarios. Also, while it may at first be tempting to think banning meat would lead to significantly fewer pandemics, paradoxically, it may even put us into a greater danger. If meat is legal, animals grown for meat receive at least basic veterinary care. If meat is illegal, people still eat it, but they eat it illegally. It is illegal to eat bats in China, and, thanks to that, bats which are eaten do not receive basic veterinary care. Veterinary medicine was at its infancy in 1918 and was greatly stifled by the war, which led to people in Kansas eating infected chickens and getting Spanish Flu.

[DaBankasDaBonuses]

It's only true if there is actually 1 sheep being raised in total, but in the current state of things every little bit helps, and it's still a net negative for humans to do (check my Y > X explanation).

I'm not a utilitarian. I don't consider events in this way. When I do, I don't consider them morally binding in the same way I would murder.
The discussion at hand is whether I am *compelled* to be vegan for ethical reasons. This is why I want to get back to the topic of animal ethics

And how would you even arrive at a fair conclusion between what's best for humans in terms of severely diminishing animal products consumption, vs. how much people want to eat animal products?
Does improving the quality of lives of the workers in slaughterhouses and reducing global warming and the chances of global pandemics justify depriving humans of their favorite food?'

So, you can't answer.
Or you don't want to.
Which is it?

That I can't draw a hard line is no issue. Neither is the fact that everybody's line is different. This is why politics is so important in these questions.
I personally hope to see a reduction in the global consumption of animals for environmental reasons. That's all I can say for sure. How my country or I affect the environment is another question though.

What is not feasible is for governments to impose limitations on what people consume and love consuming once it has already been consumed for a long time. That was my point.
Didn't work with alcohol, and would work even less with animal products.

The world was/still is reliant on fossil fuels. Price coercion alone has been used to alter people's consumption of oil/gas. Don't be so naïve in assuming this is akin to prohibition. For instance, how could someone secretly set up a factory farm in their basement?

I'm not overly concerned with personally owning slaves in the same way I'm not particularly interested in voting against slavery.
...

These are bad analogies. The fossil fuel example was used because very few people think we are morally obligated to buy eco products - despite the fact they would accept the fact that eco products have a positive effect on the environment.
This differs from slavery where the majority think this is inherently wrong.

No, it's an attempt to make you see that there is personal responsibility and our actions matter, and that we shouldn't just lay it on our government to forcefully fix it for us (if it ever happens to begin with), when we can simply do the change ourselves.

Except we can't solve this problem without government. But government can change personal habits. Even if everyone in Europe/North America went vegan, you would have to contend with the consumptive habits of the Chinese middle-class. This requires political power.

So you can claim the same with anything else, since you arbitrarily claim it insignificant.

It's not arbitrary to claim my personal meat consumption is making almost no difference to the planet at all.

If everybody thinks the way you do, the problem never gets fixed - and humans suffer.
If everybody thinks the opposite way, the problem gets fixed - and humans are better off.
According to your moral belief that humans matter, it should be glaringly obvious which stance fits it more.

This is why I'm so keen on the governmental route. This faith in the marketplace of ideas is silly. Politics is the weapon to use here.

I address this below.
Veganism is definitely worth it, since, as I've explained, animal products are the biggest threat for our future.

If veganism isn't worth, then nothing really is. As nothing comes close to the damage (and individual damage) done by eating animal products.

You're treating meat eating as a monolith. Of course global consumption needs to change. This is different from saying all instances of animal eating is significantly bad.

Or would you see no problem with littering your entire garbage outside, joy riding all day, and eating steaks non-stop?
If you individually don't matter, you wouldn't care about people doing any of those things - and therefore you consider recycling useless, as well as caring about emissions useless.

Littering does make a significant difference to my area though. This is different to my personal animal consumption that increase the CO2 ppm by practically zero. Or the risk of pandemics due to the farms I buy from is altered a fraction of a fraction of a percent.

Meat doesn't have to be equally bad to other meat, for all meats to be bad.
All meat can be bad with some meats being worse than others.

Then your ire directed at an individual meat eater must fit the crime. Someone who lives on Brazilian steak is totally different from someone who only eats locally shot game.
A vegan in the first world who lives on nothing but imported, exotic produce is more guilty than the man who eats a sheep once a year and gets all his food from neighbouring farms.

The conclusion we can draw from this discussion may be that "people who cause more damage to the environment are less 'good' than others, all else being the same". The conclusion is not, "we are compelled to not touch meat". The latter is the vegan position. I don't see how this discussion produces the moral obligation to be vegan.
You come close to admitting this here:

I said non-vegan = bad.
That is true regardless of whether vegan = good. Vegan may good, neutral, or bad, but non-vegan = bad just means that vegan = better than non-vegan.

Framing the issue in the vegan/non-vegan dichotomy isn't the most accurate route at addressing environmental ethics.
I understand if you believe animals have rights / we have moral reasons to consider animals that we might be led to veganism but then please argue for this. The environmental debate is not what I'm interested in at this moment in time.

Since we are talking about how animal products affect humans, do you then care to talk about how animal products nutritionally affect our health?

I don't want to go off on another tangent in this thread. This should be another question for another day. All I'll say is that this is less to do with ethics than the environmental problem so I'm not interested at this point in time.

[thebestofenergy]

I'm not a utilitarian. I don't consider events in this way. When I do, I don't consider them morally binding in the same way I would murder.
The discussion at hand is whether I am *compelled* to be vegan for ethical reasons. This is why I want to get back to the topic of animal ethics

You mean whether you *should* be compelled. It's quite clear you are not.
You don't seem to understand that weighing things up is engrained in every scenario, and that is utilitarian.

You even say it yourself, that 1 teaspoon of sugar may or may not damage our health, and whether we eat it should depend from that: that is a utilitarian point, don't you see that?
You're using utilitarian views yourself without even realizing it?

And how would you even arrive at a fair conclusion between what's best for humans in terms of severely diminishing animal products consumption, vs. how much people want to eat animal products?
Does improving the quality of lives of the workers in slaughterhouses and reducing global warming and the chances of global pandemics justify depriving humans of their favorite food?'

So, you can't answer.
Or you don't want to.
Which is it?

That I can't draw a hard line is no issue.

It's not about drawing a hard line, it's about being able to see which option is better in a certain scenario. That's all there is to it.
And of course not being able to do that is an issue. It's a major inconsistency and problem with your morality.

You claim a certain thing to be good, but you can't even know whether it's actually good to begin with and to what extent.
So you can't really claim anything to be good or bad and you struggle as soon as it gets down to concrete examples.

I personally hope to see a reduction in the global consumption of animals for environmental reasons.

Again, why do you hope that?
And what are you doing about it?

Or are you all talk?

How my country or I affect the environment is another question though.

No, not really. It's related to the same thing.
How much you should hope that global warming gets reduced depends by how much global warming is affected, no? Another utilitarian view, by the way.

What is not feasible is for governments to impose limitations on what people consume and love consuming once it has already been consumed for a long time. That was my point.
Didn't work with alcohol, and would work even less with animal products.

The world was/still is reliant on fossil fuels. Price coercion alone has been used to alter people's consumption of oil/gas. Don't be so naïve in assuming this is akin to prohibition. For instance, how could someone secretly set up a factory farm in their basement?

And you're once again missing the point. At this point, I have to wonder whether you're doing it on purpose.
Let me repeat it once again:

What is not feasible is for governments to impose limitations on what people consume and love consuming

People don't 'love' consuming gas for their cars, the same way people love consuming meat or alcohol, as they're addicted to it. Your comparison is fallacious.

On top of that, price coercion isn't the same as setting up hard limitations that people have to abide to by the law. People don't have an allowance of 1 liter of gas per day.

Someone wouldn't necessarily set up a factory farm in their basement, but there would be endless riots if the government tried to forcefully put a limit to animal products consumption, and people would not stand for it.
It will be feasible once animal products consumption has decreased enough that the majority will stand for it, but to do that the majority of people have to change first, and the general mentality with it.

I'm not overly concerned with personally owning slaves in the same way I'm not particularly interested in voting against slavery.
...

These are bad analogies. The fossil fuel example was used because very few people think we are morally obligated to buy eco products - despite the fact they would accept the fact that eco products have a positive effect on the environment.
This differs from slavery where the majority think this is inherently wrong.

They're not bad analogies at all.

First of all, whether the majority agrees with something or not is irrelevant to the actual validity of it. So I'm not sure why the majority is even brought up to begin with here, when we're talking about the validity of whether something is true or not. (otherwise you would be making a bandwagon fallacy, I hope that's not the case)

On top of that, there was a time when the majority of people were OK with slavery - at best complacent with slavery, and at worst pro slavery, with only a small minority fighting against it.
Are you saying that in that time you would agree with that statement then?

Thankfully the small minority kept fighting and changing minds, and they weren't some spineless cowards that left everything in the hands of the government - or who knows how long it would have been that way.

No, it's an attempt to make you see that there is personal responsibility and our actions matter, and that we shouldn't just lay it on our government to forcefully fix it for us (if it ever happens to begin with), when we can simply do the change ourselves.

Except we can't solve this problem without government. But government can change personal habits.

You got it backwards.
We can change our personal habits, and the government can assist us. The government won't force personal habits, and the majority has to be convinced first.
As long as you live in a democracy, the government is more or less an extension of what the people want.

The fact that you're honestly fully relying on the government for anything good to happen and to be done is quite honestly hilarious. You can literally do that with anything else that's morally related, and wash your hands clean.

Littering whatever I want? Why stop, the government can handle it.
Using gas extensively to take 3 hour long showers and drive my truck all day? Why stop, the government can handle it.
Scamming people while covering my tracks so I don't get caught? Why stop, the government can handle it.
Giving alcohol to my young children until they are drunk everyday? Why stop, the government can handle.
Mentally abusing my partner? Why stop, the government can handle it.

And so on.

If you seriously believe it's the responsibility of the government to fix your damage, and not yours, then why even care about anything and talk about morality?

Even if everyone in Europe/North America went vegan, you would have to contend with the consumptive habits of the Chinese middle-class. This requires political power.

Not sure what you're trying to say.
If everyone in Europe and NA went vegan, it would be amazing for the environment and reduction of disease, and then, slowly or even very slowly, China would be more inclined to follow the cultural shift.

That China would still eat meat doesn't affect the fact that Europe and NA would be vegan and that the world would be severely better off.

So you can claim the same with anything else, since you arbitrarily claim it insignificant.

It's not arbitrary to claim my personal meat consumption is making almost no difference to the planet at all.

It is arbitrary, because you can't arrive at the conclusion with reason.

You're still just asserting that, while I proved that statement wrong multiple times.
Debate my reasoning or accept that it does make a difference.

You're trying to make the action as minimal as possible, while putting the effect on as large of a scale as possible. Intellectual dishonesty like that isn't seen kindly by anyone.

I hope you realize that raping or killing someone makes almost no difference to the planet at all.

I explained you how it does make a difference, and, as Jebus said, just because you lack the vision to see it doesn't mean it's not there.
It's the equivalent of saying: smoking 1 cigarette makes almost no difference to my body at all. So no reason not to do it, really.
That's simply wrong as a matter of fact, because it does make a difference, and the totality of smoking for a long time makes an even bigger difference.

And like I said (which you seem to have conveniently forgotten),

Or if you consider your share insignificant, so is even more insignificant your taste buds being pleased - thus the former being more important.

Meaning your taste buds being pleased will make much less of a difference for the planet, so it should be given up before your share of animal products consumption is even considered as useless.

If everybody thinks the way you do, the problem never gets fixed - and humans suffer.
If everybody thinks the opposite way, the problem gets fixed - and humans are better off.
According to your moral belief that humans matter, it should be glaringly obvious which stance fits it more.

This is why I'm so keen on the governmental route. This faith in the marketplace of ideas is silly. Politics is the weapon to use here.

And I have already explained why you can't solely rely on the government to fix everything, while you continue to do the most damage possible. Repeating your stance over and over does nothing, at which point you're doing this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_ ... refutation

It is extremely naive to think that the government (which is an extension of the people) can simply just fix everything with a magic wand, while everybody doesn't lift a finger.

I address this below.
Veganism is definitely worth it, since, as I've explained, animal products are the biggest threat for our future.

If veganism isn't worth, then nothing really is. As nothing comes close to the damage (and individual damage) done by eating animal products.

You're treating meat eating as a monolith. Of course global consumption needs to change. This is different from saying all instances of animal eating is significantly bad.

You're dodging now.
You didn't address 'If veganism isn't worth, then nothing really is. As nothing comes close to the damage (and individual damage) done by eating animal products.'

Consider it significantly bad or not, nothing comes close to the damage done to the planet (and therefore us by extension) as animal products. And I'm still waiting to see how you would shift everybody in the world to go catch fishes with the Inuit's (which would cause severe environmental damage too, by the way).

Or would you see no problem with littering your entire garbage outside, joy riding all day, and eating steaks non-stop?
If you individually don't matter, you wouldn't care about people doing any of those things - and therefore you consider recycling useless, as well as caring about emissions useless.

Littering does make a significant difference to my area though.

No, don't change the comparison when it most suits you. It's about the planet, not your area.
Keep the comparison fair. You're talking about the effect on the planet with eating animal products, so keep it that way or knowingly make a fallacious comparison.

This is different to my personal animal consumption that increase the CO2 ppm by practically zero. Or the risk of pandemics due to the farms I buy from is altered a fraction of a fraction of a percent.

Your littering does even smaller numbers than that to the planet. Same as driving a truck everyday.

Unless you solely care about yourself, and not humans in the end - which is what seems to be the case in the end, hedonism.

Meat doesn't have to be equally bad to other meat, for all meats to be bad.
All meat can be bad with some meats being worse than others.

Then your ire directed at an individual meat eater must fit the crime. Someone who lives on Brazilian steak is totally different from someone who only eats locally shot game.

My ire?
No, I'm trying to make a difference, unlike what you would have everyone do - nothing.

You're again dodging and simply repeating your stance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_ ... refutation

I already addressed this by saying
'Meat doesn't have to be equally bad to other meat, for all meats to be bad.
All meat can be bad with some meats being worse than others.'
This addresses what you said already.

Yes, of course if I had to pick which one to change, it would be the one with the worse effects (utilitarian view, by the way). But if I can change both, much better.

You keep going back to this ideal way people would eat meat, without realizing that it's unfeasible on a large scale.

A vegan in the first world who lives on nothing but imported, exotic produce is more guilty than the man who eats a sheep once a year and gets all his food from neighbouring farms.

Did you skip parts of my posts? Or are you that intellectually dishonest?

I guess I'll just repost what I said:

Then you should be compelled to not consume that plant.
And in fact, if you are consistent there are non-animal products that are bad enough that you should avoid for the sake of humans, such as palm oil.

By the way, imported food usually results in less emissions.
wiki/index.php/Imported_vs._locally-bought_food

You can solve that issue by simply avoiding plants that are harmful too.
And that 1 sheep would be worse than eating 30 carrots and 10 blocks of tofu, so that person should be compelled to eat something else instead. Also, getting food from neighboring farms doesn't mean much, and it can be worse than imported.
You really think reducing emissions for travel outweighs the emissions of animal products? It doesn't.
Animal products far outweigh the emissions to transport those products. Getting animal products from neighboring farms or not would make a much smaller difference than simply not consuming animal products.

Is it possible to be plant-based while causing significant damage to the environment? Yes. But by being vegan (reducing harm to animals as far as possible and practicable), you should reduce harm done to animals as far as practicable and possible when it comes to plants too (like the example I gave with palm oil).

And when it comes to the least environmentally damaging foods on the planet, it is plants at the top by far.

You're trying to shift the blame on an imaginary strawman (the horrible vegan living on exotic food), while making a tu quoque fallacy.

The conclusion we can draw from this discussion may be that "people who cause more damage to the environment are less 'good' than others, all else being the same". The conclusion is not, "we are compelled to not touch meat". The latter is the vegan position. I don't see how this discussion produces the moral obligation to be vegan.

>people who cause more damage to the environment are less good than others
>animal products cause more damage to the environment

>people who consume animal products are less good than others

You are saying it yourself.

You come close to admitting this here:

I said non-vegan = bad.
That is true regardless of whether vegan = good. Vegan may good, neutral, or bad, but non-vegan = bad just means that vegan = better than non-vegan.

No, there I'm simply correcting your strawman of my position.
My stance has always been that vegan = better than non-vegan, and it's the only stance that you need to arrive at veganism.

Framing the issue in the vegan/non-vegan dichotomy isn't the most accurate route at addressing environmental ethics.
I understand if you believe animals have rights / we have moral reasons to consider animals that we might be led to veganism but then please argue for this. The environmental debate is not what I'm interested in at this moment in time.

What you are interested in doesn't matter with what is correct and what matters. You're not interested in it, fine, but just know that it matters to humans (and therefore should matter to your moral framework).

Here you post the same sentence I refuted once again.
Please, go back and read my logical steps as to why eating animal products is bad (at least in the first world and most of the second world, and not in a survival situation, which is not where you are) - be it 1 sheep in the UK, or 1 cow from Mars.
Take whatever practice to eat animal products you can imagine, and with enough people doing it it would be worse than the same people eating plants.
Unless 99.9% of the world is vegan, at which point finishing with the Inuits is doable and eating hunted animals that are overpopulating is sufficient for everyone, the demand is simply too high and the damage is there - and with plants it's simply better.
That's because as soon as the demand for animal products gets higher than very, very minimal, practices that systematically damage the environment by either undoing a balance of fauna (which has trickle down effects) or agglomerating animals (which causes deforestation and risk of pandemics) inherently have to happen as a result in order for the demand to be satisfied - at which point, eating plants is better.

Simply re-stating your position doesn't do anything.



To address your 'my share doesn't matter' is equal to saying:

'A smaller part of a collective has proportionately less effect, and the less effect is negligible, therefore should be disregarded'.

Which is fallacious reasoning.

'The act of smoking 1 cigarette is negligible, therefore should be disregarded'.
'The act of littering 1 can is negligible, therefore should be disregarded'.
'The act of stealing a couple dollars from someone is negligible, therefore should be disregarded, and it's fine to keep doing it forever until the person becomes broke'.

It should be very obvious why that line of logic is self-defeating. Because even the small action matters to a certain degree, no matter how small that degree is, and the cumulation of said action actually leads to impactful consequences.
And when it comes to animal products, the 'small' action actually matters more than most other small actions (it matters more than all the actions in those examples), and the cumulation of said action leads to very impactful consequences.

And as you can reason, the 'small' consequences of the action of eating animal products, far outweighs the minuscule amount that your taste buds matter.

[DaBankasDaBonuses]

It's not about drawing a hard line, it's about being able to see which option is better in a certain scenario. That's all there is to it.
And of course not being able to do that is an issue. It's a major inconsistency and problem with your morality.

It is better to flick the light bulb off earlier than necessary. I don't really care to make any rules with myself or others about what constitutes the 'acceptable' amount of light bulb usage. The reason I don't care to is because I don't value this poultry amount of fossil fuels being burnt as significant. The line is drawn in everyone concerning what is 'acceptable' behaviour or not. This involves personal value judgments.

People don't 'love' consuming gas for their cars, the same way people love consuming meat or alcohol, as they're addicted to it. Your comparison is fallacious.

A Conservative Minister in my country recently said our meat consumption needs to decrease for the sake of the environment. In other words, the party with the largest industry backing and supported by voters with the least interest in environmental issues has already acknowledged this. Maybe under a pure democracy you'd be right about the viability of political change without individual changes but in the UK with its two party system and unelected Upper Chamber it's different.

On top of that, price coercion isn't the same as setting up hard limitations that people have to abide to by the law. People don't have an allowance of 1 liter of gas per day.

Petrol rationing was a thing only a few decades ago. There doesn't even need to be rationing. Just put large levies on (currently subsidized) meat. Most of the consumption would fall like a stone overnight.
The government can change peoples' minds with the introduction of laws and by voicing, in this case, understandable reasons for doing so.

They're not bad analogies at all.

First of all, whether the majority agrees with something or not is irrelevant to the actual validity of it. So I'm not sure why the majority is even brought up to begin with here, when we're talking about the validity of whether something is true or not.

It doesn't prove an ethical view is true, my point was to imply there's a hard dividing line in people's minds about whether we should ever commit slavery under any circumstances versus the contextually relevant question of fossil fuel consumption. People don't have the all or nothing approach when it comes to petrol usage which they do when it comes to slavery/murder etc.
I chose trucks and fossil fuels because I thought it offers the simplest analogy without muddying the water.

You got it backwards.
We can change our personal habits, and the government can assist us. The government won't force personal habits, and the majority has to be convinced first.

The government can inform our habits by enforcing new material circumstances. All that needs to happen is a small vocal minority shifts the dialogue towards environmentalism and the government pre-empts the shift and changes its position. This happened with climate change here in the UK.

As long as you live in a democracy, the government is more or less an extension of what the people want.

I live in a constitutional Monarchy with an unelected Upper-House and a First Past the Post voting system. It doesn't work like that here in the UK.

Littering whatever I want? Why stop, the government can handle it.

They do. They fine people for littering which affects people's habits. My littering may not have a significant impact on the world but it does have a significant effect on my area.
Contrast this with fossil fuels. My contribution does not make a significant difference on any resolution because the CO2 blends into the existing atmosphere.
It only becomes a significant problem as a large collective.

If you seriously believe it's the responsibility of the government to fix your damage, and not yours, then why even care about anything and talk about morality?

Because depending on the quality/severity of the action, I think some things are mostly government responsibilities and others are mostly individual responsibilities.

Not sure what you're trying to say.
If everyone in Europe and NA went vegan, it would be amazing for the environment and reduction of disease, and then, slowly or even very slowly, China would be more inclined to follow the cultural shift.

What would be even quicker is if government lobbying was used to pressure them into changing.

Veganism is definitely worth it, since, as I've explained, animal products are the biggest threat for our future.

Animal products are not the biggest threat. There are larger threats and there are smaller threats. "Animal products" exist in many forms and occupy vastly different places on the spectrum. Vegan foods/activities and interspersed between and either side of these individual animal products.
There will be a point on this spectrum where you will stop claiming one *ought* to refrain from a particular activity because it becomes insignificant in your eyes - e.g leaving the light bulb on for a second longer than usual.
Almost every person on the planet has a different place they would put this dividing line. This comes down to a value judgment.

I'll repeat what I said earlier about what we can safely conclude:
"Actions closer to the worse end of the spectrum are worse than actions closer to the better end."
This is different from
"One ought to be a vegan".
You only arrive at the latter if you value 'not committing actions involving any animal products under any circumstances' enough that it passes your threshold of rule-making.
My valuation leads me to conclude eating meat is not inherently reprehensible.

You keep going back to this ideal way people would eat meat, without realizing that it's unfeasible on a large scale.

What is more unfeasible for the elimination of animal products is relying on peoples' consciences to universally align and not use governmental force.

[thebestofenergy]

It's not about drawing a hard line, it's about being able to see which option is better in a certain scenario. That's all there is to it.
And of course not being able to do that is an issue. It's a major inconsistency and problem with your morality.

It is better to flick the light bulb off earlier than necessary.

Ah, so we agree.
Just like with food, it's better to harm the environment less than needed.
You should stop at what's necessary, and not go beyond that (like meat being unnecessary and causing extra harm).

I don't really care to make any rules with myself or others about what constitutes the 'acceptable' amount of light bulb usage. The reason I don't care to is because I don't value this poultry amount of fossil fuels being burnt as significant.

No, the reason why you don't care is because you don't really care about morality to begin with - otherwise you would care.

Light bulbs being switched off is a spit in a lake compared to people being vegan. You keep trying to make it seem like veganism is this inconsequential thing, when it's literally the biggest change you can do for the smallest amount of effort.

The line is drawn in everyone concerning what is 'acceptable' behaviour or not. This involves personal value judgments.

And how do you determine what is acceptable behavior or not, exactly?
Again, you have to resort to weighing things up in a utilitarian way, just like you did with the teaspoon of sugar.

People don't 'love' consuming gas for their cars, the same way people love consuming meat or alcohol, as they're addicted to it. Your comparison is fallacious.

A Conservative Minister in my country recently said our meat consumption needs to decrease for the sake of the environment. In other words, the party with the largest industry backing and supported by voters with the least interest in environmental issues has already acknowledged this.

And? It's easy for people to acknowledge this. What does that matter with what I have said?
There is an ocean of difference between acknowledging something would be good and forcing people to do it.

Maybe under a pure democracy you'd be right about the viability of political change without individual changes but in the UK with its two party system and unelected Upper Chamber it's different.

It's still enough of a democracy that the government won't go against the vast majority for something they would riot for. If you can't see that, you don't know how politics work.
Otherwise there is no reason why it wouldn't have happened already.

On top of that, price coercion isn't the same as setting up hard limitations that people have to abide to by the law. People don't have an allowance of 1 liter of gas per day.

Petrol rationing was a thing only a few decades ago. There doesn't even need to be rationing. Just put large levies on (currently subsidized) meat. Most of the consumption would fall like a stone overnight.
The government can change peoples' minds with the introduction of laws and by voicing, in this case, understandable reasons for doing so.

I have already explained why gas and meat are different, I don't want to have to write 'love' in special characters again.
This feels like beating a dead horse.
You seem set on not wanting to understand.

You say A.
I rebut with B.
You say A again.

And after everything you've said, you're still doing nothing for it to happen. It's all useless talk.
What are you doing to bring political change?

You, again, naively think that a law is going to be enforced randomly without people pushing for it, and with the consumption and demand being in the opposite direction.
Politicians don't just randomly wake up and decide to create a new law, there needs to be a lot of push from people for it to happen.

They're not bad analogies at all.

First of all, whether the majority agrees with something or not is irrelevant to the actual validity of it. So I'm not sure why the majority is even brought up to begin with here, when we're talking about the validity of whether something is true or not.

It doesn't prove an ethical view is true, my point was to imply there's a hard dividing line in people's minds about whether we should ever commit slavery under any circumstances versus the contextually relevant question of fossil fuel consumption.

Yes, and that is irrelevant to the point at hand.
There was a time, like I said, where slavery was accepted. The line in people's minds wasn't there then. So what?
Do you agree with the statement then?

People don't have the all or nothing approach when it comes to petrol usage which they do when it comes to slavery/murder etc.

And again, I'm not sure how that's relevant.

You got it backwards.
We can change our personal habits, and the government can assist us. The government won't force personal habits, and the majority has to be convinced first.

The government can inform our habits by enforcing new material circumstances. All that needs to happen is a small vocal minority shifts the dialogue towards environmentalism and the government pre-empts the shift and changes its position. This happened with climate change here in the UK.

I have addressed this countless times.
The government is an extension of the people, and the change has to be brought forward and pushed by the people.

'All that needs to happen is a small vocal minority shifts the dialogue towards environmentalism'

And then the dialogue towards environmentalism has to be actually shifted to veganism. If 99.9% of the people won't agree with it, it won't do shit.

Most people (or at least a very significant part of the people) agree with the climate change policies that have been done so far, that's why they happened.

And regardless, you think politics should favor the consumption of less animal products and you acknowledge that there has to be a push from people, but yet you're doing nothing about it. So you're a hypocrite by definition - you believe X should be the case, but you're doing nothing to make X happen, all while going against X for your own comfort.

As long as you live in a democracy, the government is more or less an extension of what the people want.

I live in a constitutional Monarchy with an unelected Upper-House and a First Past the Post voting system. It doesn't work like that here in the UK.

As I've said, it's still an extension of the people enough that the government will take decisions for what people want. Don't delude yourself and think reforms this big, that affect everybody, have been done with the vast majority being opposed to it, and with a successful outcome.

Littering whatever I want? Why stop, the government can handle it.

They do. They fine people for littering which affects people's habits.

And?
I can do it when nobody is looking - which is very easy to do.
What's stopping me?

My littering may not have a significant impact on the world but it does have a significant effect on my area.
Contrast this with fossil fuels. My contribution does not make a significant difference on any resolution because the CO2 blends into the existing atmosphere.
It only becomes a significant problem as a large collective.

You're going against forum rules at this point. Please take a moment to read them.
You're completely disregarding what I have said, and going back to the original point.

This is how it should be:

You say A.
I say B.
You either say C, or accept B is true.

What you instead do is:

You say A.
I say B.
You say A in different words.

You need to understand that a conversation cannot be had like this.

You said that littering has an impact on your area.
I said that for the comparison to be fair and for your logic to be applied in the same respect, you would have to consider the effect on the planet - since you used 'effect on the planet' when it came to animal products and emissions.
You said that littering has an impact on your area.

Do you see what's wrong here?

On top of that, I have shown you how incorrect and ridiculous your logic of personal responsibility being irrelevant is at the end of the post.

If you seriously believe it's the responsibility of the government to fix your damage, and not yours, then why even care about anything and talk about morality?

Because depending on the quality/severity of the action, I think some things are mostly government responsibilities and others are mostly individual responsibilities.

How do you determine that?
Using your logic, everything should be on the shoulders on the government - or it simply doesn't affect the planet enough.

Not sure what you're trying to say.
If everyone in Europe and NA went vegan, it would be amazing for the environment and reduction of disease, and then, slowly or even very slowly, China would be more inclined to follow the cultural shift.

What would be even quicker is if government lobbying was used to pressure them into changing.

Which won't happen in the current state, and you're doing absolutely nothing for it to happen (hypocrisy).

Veganism is definitely worth it, since, as I've explained, animal products are the biggest threat for our future.

Animal products are not the biggest threat.

Yes, actually. They are.
I have explained this as well.

There are larger threats and there are smaller threats. "Animal products" exist in many forms and occupy vastly different places on the spectrum. Vegan foods/activities and interspersed between and either side of these individual animal products.
There will be a point on this spectrum where you will stop claiming one *ought* to refrain from a particular activity because it becomes insignificant in your eyes - e.g leaving the light bulb on for a second longer than usual.
Almost every person on the planet has a different place they would put this dividing line. This comes down to a value judgment.

Have you read my post?
I literally address this.

Like, what are you doing? Do you read the stuff I write? What's the point of having a conversation if you just ignore and keep repeating the same refuted arguments like a mantra?

I have explained why all forms of animal products get bad as soon as the demand gets high enough for them, and that if you want to minimize the environmental harm, it comes down to plants. And that animal products far outweigh the harm of any other environmentally harmful practice (i.e. veganism is definitely worth it, else nothing really is).
Go back and read.

I'll repeat what I said earlier about what we can safely conclude:
"Actions closer to the worse end of the spectrum are worse than actions closer to the better end."
This is different from
"One ought to be a vegan".

The conclusion is literally that one.

I'm not sure if you've had written arguments before, but you can't just keep addressing your original refuted point endlessly hoping it will eventually be accepted as true.
Check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_ ... refutation

P1. Actions closer to the worse end of the spectrum are worse than actions closer to the better end.
P2. Eating animal products is an action that is closer to the worse end of the spectrum than eating plants.
C1. Eating animal products is worse than eating plants.

You only arrive at the latter if you value 'not committing actions involving any animal products under any circumstances' enough that it passes your threshold of rule-making.

No, you don't.
As soon as you say 'P1. Actions closer to the worse end of the spectrum are worse than actions closer to the better end.', you only need to acknowledge that eating animal products is worse than eating plants to acknowledge that vegan = better than non-vegan.
It's simple logical steps.

And considering that the effect of animal products consumption is of a much higher magnitude than your taste buds being pleased, the conclusion is sound.

You keep going back to this ideal way people would eat meat, without realizing that it's unfeasible on a large scale.

What is more unfeasible for the elimination of animal products is relying on peoples' consciences to universally align and not use governmental force.

This is a broken record at this point. No point in me repeating, you can read above.



There are multiple questions/points you haven't answered/addressed, and that's dishonest - especially since I put the effort in repeating them multiple times, and it cannot be a mistake that you missed them.
So I'll do you the favor of listing them in order, so you can get to them more easily.

1.
You even say it yourself, that 1 teaspoon of sugar may or may not damage our health, and whether we eat it should depend from that: that is a utilitarian point, don't you see that?
You're using utilitarian views yourself without even realizing it?

2.
'I personally hope to see a reduction in the global consumption of animals for environmental reasons.'
Again, why do you hope that?
And what are you doing about it?

3.
You're trying to make the action as minimal as possible, while putting the effect on as large of a scale as possible. Intellectual dishonesty like that isn't seen kindly by anyone.

I hope you realize that raping or killing someone makes almost no difference to the planet at all.

4.
if you consider your share insignificant, so is even more insignificant your taste buds being pleased - thus the former being more important.

Meaning your taste buds being pleased will make much less of a difference for the planet, so it should be given up before your share of animal products consumption is even considered as useless.

5.
You didn't address 'If veganism isn't worth, then nothing really is. As nothing comes close to the damage (and individual damage) done by eating animal products.'

6.
as soon as the demand for animal products gets higher than very, very minimal, practices that systematically damage the environment by either undoing a balance of fauna (which has trickle down effects) or agglomerating animals (which causes deforestation and risk of pandemics) inherently have to happen as a result in order for the demand to be satisfied - at which point, eating plants is better.

7.
To address your 'my share doesn't matter' is equal to saying:

'A smaller part of a collective has proportionately less effect, and the less effect is negligible, therefore should be disregarded'.

Which is fallacious reasoning.

'The act of smoking 1 cigarette is negligible, therefore should be disregarded'.
'The act of littering 1 can is negligible, therefore should be disregarded'.
'The act of stealing a couple dollars from someone is negligible, therefore should be disregarded, and it's fine to keep doing it forever until the person becomes broke'.

It should be very obvious why that line of logic is self-defeating. Because even the small action matters to a certain degree, no matter how small that degree is, and the cumulation of said action actually leads to impactful consequences.
And when it comes to animal products, the 'small' action actually matters more than most other small actions (it matters more than all the actions in those examples), and the cumulation of said action leads to very impactful consequences.

[Jebus]

This whole environmental argument is a side-show. I wanted to get away from it but I was accused of ignoring another user when I did.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to discuss animal welfare while ignoring the environment. The two go hand in hand.

I am not a utilitarian

What are you then? I'm still confused? I think you are either a closet Randroid or a person who wants to think of himself as a good person, and therefore ignores or twists every fact that suggests he isn't.

Thanks for the "debate." I'm checking out. @thebestofenergy is doing a good enough job pointing out the shortcomings of your arguments.

[DaBankasDaBonuses]

First of all, thank you for typing this concise list. I thought our posts were sprawling too much.

1. I was trying to argue on your terms to convince you it was silly to make hard rules for every single personal choice. The weighing up involves not only the outward consequences of hypothetical actions, but also whether we believe the consequences are significant enough to waste effort and social capital to make a rule about. This is a much more woolly area than you are willing to admit.

2. My personal prejudices lead me to this belief. I don't expect these to be convincing to anybody else which is why I didn't waste my time sharing them. I hope to use my democratic power to vote for parties that make environmental policy and convince others close to me than environmental issues matter.

3. The difference between climate change and rape is that the rapist makes an immediate, tangible difference. A man who fills up his car with petrol commits harm to a hypothetical fraction of a human in the future. The intention of the perpetrator is different. Even if we assume he knew the precise consequences, the consequences are estranged from him.
Don't be so obtuse and compare murder/rape/slavery and environmental damage. You know the difference. The only appropriate time it's worth comparing them is to make a point about moral nihilism, but this isn't the nature of this debate.

4. How do you know this? You aren't inside my head. You don't know how much pleasure I get from these foods (it extends far beyond the immediate sensory pleasures). Only a cynic would view eating meat in this way.
What precisely are the consequences of my personal meat eating. How much hypothetical suffering? You also don't know this because you don't know:
>What animals I eat
>How much I eat
>Where they are sourced
>How they are raised
>The precise environmental implications in the future
This is not the solid foundation required to be making normative rules like "veganism is a moral obligation".

5. I disagree. There are bigger issues. Is nuclear, biological, chemical warfare not a greater cause for damage? Why does it need to be framed as veganism vs non-veganism? The categorisation has been chosen for reasons that are not environmentally related. There are things more damaging than shooting Guinea fowl that do not relate to animal products. They don't get a hearing on this narrow view. Instead you have chosen to make this a vegan/non-vegan thing when it's not.

6. Again, not all animal consumption is identical. There are much more forgiving means of eating meat. All it means is "if we limit meat consumption to X, then veganism is not morally compulsory".

7. I'm not saying it should be disregarded, I'm saying a tiny share of the effect has a tiny share of the blame. There are other factors which I mentioned in point 3 which separates our treatment of different ethical choices and whether one is more likely to call them as morally binding.

[thebestofenergy]

1. I was trying to argue on your terms to convince you it was silly to make hard rules for every single personal choice. The weighing up involves not only the outward consequences of hypothetical actions, but also whether we believe the consequences are significant enough to waste effort and social capital to make a rule about. This is a much more woolly area than you are willing to admit.

Veganism is not arrived at with simply putting a hard rule on having to not do X damage at any cost. It's a logical process that I have shown you before many times - you weigh things up fairly and arrive at the winning-by-a-mile conclusion.
'the consequences are significant enough to waste effort and social capital to make a rule about'
You don't need there to be a rule in place to go vegan. You could do it right now.
And clearly, the consequences are more than significant enough to make the (small) effort to change your diet around.

Either you agree that nothing is worth it, or that veganism is worth it - since veganism has the biggest positive impact for the littlest of efforts. I have already explained this, and you're ignoring it over and over.

And yes, it's definitely worth it in the case of veganism (also explained this before).
It's not a woolly area as soon as you stop ignoring my reasoning and address it directly. But you don't seem to want to do that, and you seem to keep trying to keep things as muddy as possible to have wiggle room.
But I have been concise with my reasoning already, and you haven't refuted it.

And once again, you haven't addressed point 1.
Please do.

You are using a utilitarian way to arrive at a conclusion, when you are saying utilitarian views aren't necessarily correct when it suits you.

2. My personal prejudices lead me to this belief. I don't expect these to be convincing to anybody else which is why I didn't waste my time sharing them. I hope to use my democratic power to vote for parties that make environmental policy and convince others close to me than environmental issues matter.

'My personal prejudices lead me to this belief.'
Yes, but how and why. How do you arrive at the conclusion that reducing animal products is better, and how do you justify your hypocrisy in doing the opposite.

3. The difference between climate change and rape is that the rapist makes an immediate, tangible difference. A man who fills up his car with petrol commits harm to a hypothetical fraction of a human in the future. The intention of the perpetrator is different. Even if we assume he knew the precise consequences, the consequences are estranged from him.
Don't be so obtuse and compare murder/rape/slavery and environmental damage. You know the difference. The only appropriate time it's worth comparing them is to make a point about moral nihilism, but this isn't the nature of this debate.

Whether the difference is immediate and tangible doesn't matter, and is an arbitrary line drawn.
What if you created a situation where someone would be raped in the future? Would that be OK then?

'A man who fills up his car with petrol commits harm to a hypothetical fraction of a human in the future.'

It's not hypothetical. It's statistical and empirical. Unless you don't believe in science. Do you?

'The intention of the perpetrator is different. Even if we assume he knew the precise consequences, the consequences are estranged from him.'

No, not necessarily. A lot of people know of the damage they are causing - like you.
You know the harm you're doing, and you intentionally disregard it for your comfort.

The consequences being estranged from him is completely irrelevant. Consequences can be far away from you, but that's completely irrelevant to whether you ought to do something or not.
That fact that you even mention this is indicative at skewed and inconsistent your moral framework is. The damage is the same whether someone cares about it or not. Someone and killing that someone can be estranged from me - doesn't change how wrong killing that person is. Like, come on. How can you call yourself sane and bring up a point like being estranged from the consequences meaning taking the action is more or less bad?

Intention also only matters so much, and can tell us about the moral character of a person - but when someone knows the harm they're doing and chooses to continue, there is no excuse.

'Don't be so obtuse and compare murder/rape/slavery and environmental damage. You know the difference.'

Don't be stupid and try to slide in a strawman where I'm saying they are the same. Obviously there are differences, a comparison isn't an equation.

But it's a perfectly valid comparison when it comes to effect to the planet. And you're - again and against the forum rules - dodging my point.
You used 'effect on the planet' in the first scenario, to claim that it was useless, so it's only fair that you use it for other evaluations too.
Be fair, or take it back and admit you were wrong.

What's the point of me enumerating things and explaining you something 10 times, if you keep disrespectfully ignoring my point and derailing the conversation?

>You said that X is worthless to do because it doesn't have an effect to the planet.

>I made a reductio to show you how inane that logic is.

>Now you're backtracking and trying to derail the conversation.

P1. X doesn't have a visible effect on the planet.
P2. Only things that have a visible effect on the planet are worth doing.
C1. X is not worth doing.

That's the logic you used.
Do you agree with that logic, and therefore insane conclusions, or disagree and admit you were wrong in the first place?

4. How do you know this? You aren't inside my head. You don't know how much pleasure I get from these foods (it extends far beyond the immediate sensory pleasures). Only a cynic would view eating meat in this way.
What precisely are the consequences of my personal meat eating. How much hypothetical suffering? You also don't know this because you don't know:
>What animals I eat
>How much I eat
>Where they are sourced
>How they are raised
>The precise environmental implications in the future
This is not the solid foundation required to be making normative rules like "veganism is a moral obligation".

How do I know it? It's, again, basic science of what pleasure a person gets from eating. You aren't orgasming with every sip of milk, are you?
It's pretty obvious to anybody that is honest that your taste pleasure is far outweighed by the damage - especially considering you could get taste pleasure from something else.

It apparently far extends beyond sensory pleasure, but you don't even explain how, and how it outweighs the environmental damage you cause. Until you can do that, it's a mute point.

'How much hypothetical suffering?'

Again, there is nothing hypothetical in statistics and empirical data.
Maybe if I repeat enough you will understand, eventually? THAT is a hypothetical.

'>What animals I eat
>How much I eat
>Where they are sourced
>How they are raised
>The precise environmental implications in the future
This is not the solid foundation required to be making normative rules like "veganism is a moral obligation".'

Yes, you have to be honest and answer those questions (but you don't, of course, and leave the burden of proof on me for something that you do), and like I have explained, unless you are an Inuit eating 1 fish and being done after that for good, I'd bet that you are eating animal products regularly - which is enough to be far worse than plants regardless of how and where they are raised (see my explanation of threshold after which animal products are worse than plants regardless because of agglomeration and deforestation/disease).

And even if you ate very little, veganism would still be better in the current state of things - it would have better consequences for the rest of the world if you ate no animal products.

You keep trying to make this absurd idealized world where there is some unrealistic way to eat animals where it would be fine.
It's not the reality.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

5. I disagree. There are bigger issues. Is nuclear, biological, chemical warfare not a greater cause for damage? Why does it need to be framed as veganism vs non-veganism? The categorisation has been chosen for reasons that are not environmentally related. There are things more damaging than shooting Guinea fowl that do not relate to animal products. They don't get a hearing on this narrow view. Instead you have chosen to make this a vegan/non-vegan thing when it's not.

No, it is not. The greatest threat to us is actually climate change and pandemics, and animal products consumption is at the forefront by far for both (I think I have said this before).
Both of those are the most likely causes for our extinction and/or our suffering.

There is also very little you can do to prevent warfare, besides voting as best as you can and doing some forms of political activism - while you can directly and effectively affect animal products production with your choice (it's a 100% guaranteed change, done by your hands).

'Why does it need to be framed as veganism vs non-veganism?'

Are you serious?

Do I need to make a copy-paste table where I copy paste the answers to the stuff you keep asking/saying over and over?

You have even agreed with your own logic that vegan = better than non-vegan.

Vegan is about doing the least harm to animals (and that includes human animals) as far as practicable and possible. And it just so happens that eating plants is the best for the environment. How do you not understand this yet?

'The categorisation has been chosen for reasons that are not environmentally related.'

That's irrelevant. It is better for the environment, regardless of whether it was chosen for X or Y reason.

'There are things more damaging than shooting Guinea fowl that do not relate to animal products. They don't get a hearing on this narrow view. Instead you have chosen to make this a vegan/non-vegan thing when it's not.'

Maybe if you stopped being dishonest and started giving less ridiculous examples, you would get the right idea. Nobody is talking about shooting Guineafowls.

Let me change your sentence to:
'There are things more damaging than destroying our chance at a future through extreme environmental damage and risk of pandemics through animal products, that do not relate to animal products.'
How does that sound now? It sounds a bit silly, doesn't it?

As long as you look at the science and not fantasy land or absurd non-sensical anecdotal examples that represent only a bunch of people on the planet, animal products are the biggest risk to our future - by far.
I mean, this isn't a hard conclusion to arrive at. Look at the numbers with emissions, deforestation, and pandemics coming from animal agriculture. Everybody that isn't biased can see this with a little bit of research.

It is a vegan/non-vegan thing, because, for the 8th (?) time, animal products carry the worst outcomes for our future.

6. Again, not all animal consumption is identical. There are much more forgiving means of eating meat.

Jesus Christ.
Maybe someone else (if anyone is still reading this) can explain him with different words what I have told him 10 times? My patience isn't infinite.

What you said literally doesn't refute anything with my point. It still stands. How can you not see that?

Once again, you're making an assertion fallacy. It's like you heard that argument and you can't get it out of your head.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_ ... 0assertion.

Nobody has claimed meats are the same. You are endlessly arguing a strawman with this point.
Nobody has claimed so, nobody has hinted so, and it wasn't the conclusion that could be drawn from anybody's post.

I'll repeat it, hopefully for the last time:

Your claim:

'not all animal consumption is identical. There are much more forgiving means of eating meat' (i.e. meat isn't all bad)

My rebuttal:

'as soon as the demand for animal products gets higher than very, very minimal, practices that systematically damage the environment by either undoing a balance of fauna (which has trickle down effects) or agglomerating animals (which causes deforestation and risk of pandemics) inherently have to happen as a result in order for the demand to be satisfied - at which point, eating plants is better'
and
'not all meats have to be equally bad for all meats to be bad'

'All it means is "if we limit meat consumption to X, then veganism is not morally compulsory"'

You kind of get it with this (besides the 'morally compulsory' part), but only if you understand that the reduction has to be very, very minimal - to the point where there is no undoing a balance of fauna or agglomerating animals.
Therefore my question becomes: are you reducing your animal products consumption to almost nothing to be consistent with that view? Or are you a hypocrite?

7. I'm not saying it should be disregarded, I'm saying a tiny share of the effect has a tiny share of the blame. There are other factors which I mentioned in point 3 which separates our treatment of different ethical choices and whether one is more likely to call them as morally binding.

Yes, actually, you did say something along those lines (not worth doing, not worth the effort, etc.). You claimed your share didn't matter/is insignificant.

I'm not saying I have no share of responsibility for environmental implications but that my share is insignificant.

(7th post on the 4th page)

And I have shown you how incorrect that line of logic is with point 7.
You kept arguing that point. Now you seem to not hold it anymore, and have shifted your view, claiming you never held your previous one.

A tiny share of the effect has a tiny share of the blame.
And a tiny share of the effect when the effect is big, has a tiny share of a big blame.
And a tiny share of the effect when the effect is very, very big, and a tiny share of the very, very big blame - like with animal products.

7 billion people causing a worse future for multiple generations of 7 billion people, and you being part of them, means you causing a worse future for multiple generations of 1 other person. (that is basic statistics and math)
Any reasonable person can eventually admit that pleasure from eating animal products (when they could eat something else and get pleasure from that instead) is less important than fucking over multiple generations of 1 other person.

When the blame is big enough, even the tiny share matters enough. It's not that difficult.

All you did in point 3 is arbitrarily asserting things without any sound reasoning to back your assertions up.

Whether something bad happens very soon or in the future, there is no reason why the one happening further in the future should have less consideration.

Whether you're raping someone in the moment or setting someone up to be raped, they're both worth consideration and they're both worth the effort not to do - setting it up and having it happen in the future doesn't give you any more justification than doing it in the moment.

Whether you're depriving someone with water in the moment or setting someone up to be deprived of water (climate change in poor countries), you're a piece of shit for putting your own comfort ahead in priority.

[brimstoneSalad]

Before the 'conservative pragmatism' is brushed aside, I'll reiterate that a new ethical trend should be put under greater scrutiny and suspicion than an already established order. A two thousand year moral order which still exists in my moral community is worth more than a new one - all else being the same.

I already answered this in my post here:
viewtopic.php?p=50041#p50041
All else is not the same.

You should take care to respond to people's points, and if you agree you can say so, and if you disagree you can say so and why.
The wager when it comes to veganism should be a very very easy one to make. Likewise, it can be made by appealing to long existing moral principles that only recently (less than a hundred years) made veganism the conclusion of empirical consideration of those principles.

When it comes to scientific matters, appeal to tradition will get you nowhere very fast. It is not more reasonable to hold a two thousand year old empirical belief that arose from superstition before the advent of the scientific method than to believe objective peer reviewed research in the hard sciences published less than a decade ago and confirmed over and over again ever since.

This doesn't prove anything about ethics. It just makes me lament the fact that I cannot prove an ethical system from the ground up.

If you lament it, then maybe help us help you understand ethics better so you can.

As far as the practical consequences of my beliefs are concerned, myself and the vast majority of the political community align on this question and are willing to use the barrel of a gun to enforce our preferences.

So if you disagree with others about ethics, you will not be reasoned to change your mind, and you believe you can not reason with them (only suggest that they do without any real argument), so you turn to violence or threat of violence. Basically, instead of preferring to turn to reasoned debate based on an objective moral framework, you want people to murder each other until whoever is victorious gets to dictate morality?

Do you see how that's not great?