Thanks for the reply and for your ongoing civility, I really appreciate that you seem genuinely interested in having a conversation about this.
You don’t need to explain to me about the horrors of the electronics industry, I’ve been an activist opposing extractive industries since my teen years, but of course I’m glad you’re raising awareness of it. Heck in my recent comment history I was talking about how I am opposed to EV vehicles and advocating for (green) hydrogen fuel cells due to rare earth extractionism.
I believe that extractionism can never be perfect (i.e. it will always cause some harm) but it’s possible to have a mining industry without slavery, murder, etc. and which is ran as ethically as possible to minimize harm on individuals and the environment. As I mentioned in my last comment as well the disposal and recycling of electronics is a massive issue which also needs to be addressed, as well as disposable/single-use electronic products and planned obsolescence.
On the other hand, animal agriculture NEEDS animals to die, and it needs them to die on such a scale that we NEED an industrial approach. I think you could make a pretty compelling argument that an individual hunting animals to feed their family is somewhat ethical (this isn’t my position btw, just making the point for the sake of discussion), but that can’t really scale up and remain ethical. At a certain point you need to keep the animals in shitty living conditions because otherwise the supply/demand curve would make animal products inaccessibly expensive for regular consumption.
My main question is how do people seem to be able to decide they can live with limbless kid electronics but slave labour clothes are too far, cartel avocado’s are an unfortunate necessity but meat is monstrous.
For electronics, I think the biggest reason is the second one I mentioned: it’s not really possible to avoid them. Personally I always try to buy everything second hand that I can, especially electronics, but I don’t think it’s really fair or sustainable to expect everyone to do that, someone has to buy it new to begin with.
A better comparison is blood diamonds. They’re entirely optional and the ethical alternative is widely available and cheaper. I think you’d be well within your rights to say that a vegan who insists on blood diamonds is hypocritical. I don’t think a vegan using a second-hand cellphone is hypocritical. If they always buy the latest phone I would say that’s back to being hypocritical again.
And yeah, scale is a big factor. Over 150,000,000,000 animals are slaughtered in the animal agriculture industry every year. The scale is beyond staggering. Since becoming vegan nearly six years ago, according to the Cowculator app, my personal consumption has resulted in:
8,727,645 fewer litres of water used
42,783 fewer kilograms of grain used
5,842 fewer square meters of deforestation
19,015 fewer kilograms of CO₂
2,096 fewer animals slaughtered
The animal agriculture industry is one of the most polluting, most wasteful industries on the planet. It’s absolutely mind-warping once you get into the numbers.
Thanks for the reply and for your ongoing civility, I really appreciate that you seem genuinely interested in having a conversation about this.
You don’t need to explain to me about the horrors of the electronics industry, I’ve been an activist opposing extractive industries since my teen years, but of course I’m glad you’re raising awareness of it. Heck in my recent comment history I was talking about how I am opposed to EV vehicles and advocating for (green) hydrogen fuel cells due to rare earth extractionism.
I believe that extractionism can never be perfect (i.e. it will always cause some harm) but it’s possible to have a mining industry without slavery, murder, etc. and which is ran as ethically as possible to minimize harm on individuals and the environment. As I mentioned in my last comment as well the disposal and recycling of electronics is a massive issue which also needs to be addressed, as well as disposable/single-use electronic products and planned obsolescence.
On the other hand, animal agriculture NEEDS animals to die, and it needs them to die on such a scale that we NEED an industrial approach. I think you could make a pretty compelling argument that an individual hunting animals to feed their family is somewhat ethical (this isn’t my position btw, just making the point for the sake of discussion), but that can’t really scale up and remain ethical. At a certain point you need to keep the animals in shitty living conditions because otherwise the supply/demand curve would make animal products inaccessibly expensive for regular consumption.
For electronics, I think the biggest reason is the second one I mentioned: it’s not really possible to avoid them. Personally I always try to buy everything second hand that I can, especially electronics, but I don’t think it’s really fair or sustainable to expect everyone to do that, someone has to buy it new to begin with.
A better comparison is blood diamonds. They’re entirely optional and the ethical alternative is widely available and cheaper. I think you’d be well within your rights to say that a vegan who insists on blood diamonds is hypocritical. I don’t think a vegan using a second-hand cellphone is hypocritical. If they always buy the latest phone I would say that’s back to being hypocritical again.
And yeah, scale is a big factor. Over 150,000,000,000 animals are slaughtered in the animal agriculture industry every year. The scale is beyond staggering. Since becoming vegan nearly six years ago, according to the Cowculator app, my personal consumption has resulted in:
The animal agriculture industry is one of the most polluting, most wasteful industries on the planet. It’s absolutely mind-warping once you get into the numbers.