Banned from c/vegan for this one. My bad.
Captions: Anakin Padme 4-panel:
- "I'm going to make everyone go vegan and eat soybeans."
- "So we won't destroy any more ecosystems, right?"
- ...
- "We won't destroy any more ecosystems, right?"
this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2022
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Yeah, because it is utter nonsense. Depending on the source 60-90% of the soy is being fed to animals.
Edit: If that is the point of the post...
Making the point specifically about soybeans was stupid, but i think it's important to criticize the "eco-friendly"/"vegan" capitalist industry. I'm happy to elaborate if you will.
Absolutely!
I really liked your posts so far, so I'd also gladly read your elaboration on that topic =)
Haha thanks! I'm an old bird so i'm used to old-style mailing-lists and BBS where we have detailed discussions and not just flamewars for points like you find on Reddit. I hope more people like us can keep Lemmy a friendly place to have deep discussions and learn something.
The short version is vegan doesn't mean eco-friendly, and "eco-friendly" in a capitalist context does not mean something that respects the environment. Two examples:
Vegan is about direct and conscious harm to other living beings, while eco-friendliness is more large. But organic/eco-friendly labels are far from enough ; they're just a form of feel-good capitalism. For a practical example, take a look at electric bikes/cars: it's advertised as green but why? There's plenty of raw materials that are fucking polluting that you need to make an electric bike. Don't get me wrong, electric bikes are a nice piece of assistive technologies for persons facing situations of handicap. But the greener bike is the mechanical bike and what's good for the environment is to produce less shit in all cases.
Also interesting to consider: our personal consumer choices matter very little on the environment. Concrete and transportation industry account for a lot of pollution and CO2 emissions so as long as you reside in the city and eat vegan quinoa from the other side of the world, the environment keeps getting destroyed.
It's art, thus invites interpretations and provokes thought.
Extrapolating from the 60-90% figure, if the eaters of those animals ate the soy directly (bypassing the ~10% conversion efficiency issue), 19-46% of the soy would still need to be grown, thus 19-46% of the ecological destruction would remain.
This would be a wonderful improvement and would be of great benefit to Earth; the statement is lessened, yet remains: Consuming broadacre soy crops destroys ecosystems.
Which returns us to the topic at hand in the c/vegan thread which inspired this meme:
– commented as an extrapolation of a series of statements exploring the absurdity of calling various animal slaughter/husbandry practices "humane".
How can you see this as a valid argument ? Human have to eat to survive. Any animal alive have an impact on its environment. Any other political proposition other than the eradication of the human race is anti-ecological at this point !
Bike instead of cars ? Making the bike cost energy, which production will always have an impact.
Walking ? No, you consume energy, will have to eat more.
Insulating existing houses to consume less energy ? No way, the building industry pollute way too much !
Plus, you say that is we keep consuming a few dozen percent of the soy we used to eat, it would still destroy the environment. But the main issue is that we keep expanding this agriculture, much more than it existing in the first place. Agriculture existed for thousand of years with a non-lifethreatening level of environmental impact.
Sorry if you were sincere in your critique, I'm quite aggressive here, but I have to admit I have a hard time believing you are sincere here and not just trolling.
Yeah wow. Convincing people to stop killing and eating animals is hard enough, what would be the better option? Making people kill themselves? That sounds like a practical alternativw
For real? Pull your head out of your vegan high-horse! Just sit in the sea of ideas for a while and listen to your own mind to see if some new thought comes along.
For the situation of ecological destruction to grow crops, it needs more consideration if you're vacillating between denial and universal human genocide.
Alternatively, accept that the vegans and the carnists are sitting in the same clump on the "humane spectrum". One doesn't get to opt-out of moral culpability by being vegan.
"Same clump" ? So the average USAian sits in the same clump as the average Ethiopian because both eat so they both impact their environment. The fact that that lifestyle of the first emits dozen of times the CO2 of the other have no relevance whatsoever ?
I am still not sure what your point is?
We have to eat something and a vegan diet is one where we minimize land use by directly consuming the "raw" materials instead of a middle-men that introduce a significant amount of energy loss.
It is definitely necessary to improve the way modern agriculture works. Large monocultures do not provide a healthy ecosystem and we should work on creating a diverse and vibrant ecosystem. I really liked the movie The Biggest Little Farm that showed an alternative (despite them endorsing omnivore diets).
Playing devils advocate here, but there are dryland areas that are most effectively utilized by pastoralism for example, which is of course a non-vegan lifestyle, and there are also ways to grow shrimp on microorganisms for example that could not be consumed directly by humans.
Wtf I dont think you actually refer to my comment here
Well, I'm not aware of any vegans that claim going vegan will prevent the destruction of all ecosystems.