Interesting thought, but humans didn’t harm the life that became fossil fuels, most of which came from plant matter anyway. I’m not in a position to unilaterally declare something vegan, but I’m pretty sure fossil fuels are vegan by default.
Sure, its use can harm animals. Still, I could kill a mouse with a cucumber, but it wouldn’t change the fact that cucumbers are vegan.
Hmmm… but taking your argument to the opposite end; the normal consumption of a cucumber may not typically harm animals but I think there is an argument to be had that the normal consumption, and production, of fossil fuels typically does.
It’s a common viewpoint among vegans that systems that depend on animal exploitation should be abolished. On the other hand, systems that contain animal exploitation should be improved.
I’ll give two examples with human animals so it can be clear:
Slavery? Should be abolished.
People getting ran over and killed by cars? We should improve that.
The ones I always come back to are pollinator-dependent crops such as fruits and tree nuts. Wild and feral pollinators are not abundant enough to sustain the level of production we presently demand in these crops. Presumably, if more people were to become vegan then we would demand them even more.
From what I know, vegans oppose the transportation of pollinators for pollinating these crops. Yet it seems most vegans eat plenty of them (apples, peaches, plums, almonds, avocados, etc).
You definitely could bring the wild pollinators back. I do that with my own garden in my backyard. But that means you’d have to remove parts of the orchard to provide a habitat for the pollinators, lowering the density of the trees. Lower density => lower production => smaller crop => more expensive almonds (or peaches etc).
If we want everyone to be vegan that’s gonna mean mostly giving up the luxury products that many vegans currently enjoy and switching to staples (beans, squash, corn, root veggies).
Lower density only means lower production of the usable land remains the same. Which would not be the case if the world became vegan: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
Do you have a link to a discussion of some of the problems?
I’ve often been suspicious of bold claims about land use that lump all the numbers together into one huge hectare or km^2 number, ignoring all of the nuance of climate, water access, soil chemistry, or other broad geographical issues that severely limit what kind of crops can be grown on the land.
One thing people ought to recognize is that large farmers can be just as greedy as any big business. If they could buy up a bunch of cheap pasture land and start growing pistachios or almonds they would. The amount of money to be made by doing that is astronomical, which should be a clue that the land is simply not available.
Do those crops depend on transportation of pollinators? To me it seems like they don’t.
By your own admission, there are natural pollinators. We can also manually pollinate them, which reinforces my point that systems that *contain* exploitation should be improved.
Manually pollinating thousands of almond trees is definitely possible. But then you should expect almonds to be in the same price range as vanilla pods, another manually pollinated crop.
Thanks for conceding. Now to your new point: once the majority of people are vegan, we can focus on those systems that can be improved. Currently the majority does not even care about animal exploitation, so there’s very little value in trying to change systems that don’t depend on animal exploitation.
Those two counter examples that I provided aren’t all possibilities to replace open pollination. Surely experts in the field can come up with better solutions once this problem actually becomes a worry in the minds of the majority.
The question is: can you turn it into a product? Would people be willing to pay $100/lb for hand-pollinated almonds? It’s potentially something to explore on a small scale.
I would love to know how many vegans would pay that much for an ethical product.
Can you give some real world examples of systems that contain animal exploitation that vegans would want to see improved? I’m not sure I completely follow that point.
It’s kind of revelatory that vegan is a shifting term, that means whatever it wants to mean for the believer.
I tell vegans all the time that in order to have their potato chips brought to them, first they have to have millions of hectares of fields destroyed, planted with a monoculture potato crop, sprayed with pesticides, harvested by diesel equipment, made in a factory with pollutants, placed on trucks which ship all over the country.
Swallow a fly, oh my God the world is ending. Kill a couple thousand things on the way to get your vegan chips, let’s not talk about that.
Vegans are aware of the damage the supply chain does, hence “buy local” being such a common phrase and the push to support small local farms. I’m not sure what you’re accomplishing besides hilighting that capitalism is an awful economic structure that incentivises profit over environment, which sure good message, but most people choosing to adopt such a culturally despised practice are going to be aware of the externalities already.
It’s kind of revelatory that vegan is a shifting term, that means whatever it wants to mean for the believer.
Really? It’s not new, at least. Vegans love to disagree about what specific things are vegan- some are cool with honey, some are cool with nestle products made without animal products, and some are cool with anything they don’t pay for. Many aren’t cool with any of that, but don’t think twice about killing a mosquito in their home.
It’s an individual choice and you’ve got to decide what you care about and prioritize that.
This, 100%. For some reason people imagine vegans as an ideologically aligned group rather than a bunch of people making their own varied decisions for their own varied reasons. Then when inconsistencies come up between vegans they’ll decry it all as performative. Meanwhile, vegans themselves tend to just be happy to see others making their own best effort and the hair-splitting over what is vegan matters a lot less than generally resisting animal product consumption in any capacity.
Setting a unifying standard for a broad group of people that they’ll never meet and then reacting to the shock of them failing to meet that standard is a common rhetorical tactic in other contexts, no surprises it turns up here too.
Interesting thought, but humans didn’t harm the life that became fossil fuels, most of which came from plant matter anyway. I’m not in a position to unilaterally declare something vegan, but I’m pretty sure fossil fuels are vegan by default.
Sure, its use can harm animals. Still, I could kill a mouse with a cucumber, but it wouldn’t change the fact that cucumbers are vegan.
Hmmm… but taking your argument to the opposite end; the normal consumption of a cucumber may not typically harm animals but I think there is an argument to be had that the normal consumption, and production, of fossil fuels typically does.
It’s a common viewpoint among vegans that systems that depend on animal exploitation should be abolished. On the other hand, systems that contain animal exploitation should be improved.
I’ll give two examples with human animals so it can be clear: Slavery? Should be abolished. People getting ran over and killed by cars? We should improve that.
The ones I always come back to are pollinator-dependent crops such as fruits and tree nuts. Wild and feral pollinators are not abundant enough to sustain the level of production we presently demand in these crops. Presumably, if more people were to become vegan then we would demand them even more.
From what I know, vegans oppose the transportation of pollinators for pollinating these crops. Yet it seems most vegans eat plenty of them (apples, peaches, plums, almonds, avocados, etc).
and why might that bee??? 🔪🪿
You definitely could bring the wild pollinators back. I do that with my own garden in my backyard. But that means you’d have to remove parts of the orchard to provide a habitat for the pollinators, lowering the density of the trees. Lower density => lower production => smaller crop => more expensive almonds (or peaches etc).
If we want everyone to be vegan that’s gonna mean mostly giving up the luxury products that many vegans currently enjoy and switching to staples (beans, squash, corn, root veggies).
Lower density only means lower production of the usable land remains the same. Which would not be the case if the world became vegan: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
that relies on poore-nemecek 2018, which is problematic. you might be right but your link isn’t good evidence.
Do you have a link to a discussion of some of the problems?
I’ve often been suspicious of bold claims about land use that lump all the numbers together into one huge hectare or km^2 number, ignoring all of the nuance of climate, water access, soil chemistry, or other broad geographical issues that severely limit what kind of crops can be grown on the land.
One thing people ought to recognize is that large farmers can be just as greedy as any big business. If they could buy up a bunch of cheap pasture land and start growing pistachios or almonds they would. The amount of money to be made by doing that is astronomical, which should be a clue that the land is simply not available.
If we eliminate animal ag we will have more than enough space for lower density production, here Seppoland as an (albeit extreme) example:
And since we won’t be eliminating animal ag under capitalism the profit motive is gonna be moot point anyway.
Oh honey, I have no idea
Do those crops depend on transportation of pollinators? To me it seems like they don’t.
By your own admission, there are natural pollinators. We can also manually pollinate them, which reinforces my point that
systems that *contain* exploitation should be improved.Manually pollinating thousands of almond trees is definitely possible. But then you should expect almonds to be in the same price range as vanilla pods, another manually pollinated crop.
Thanks for conceding. Now to your new point: once the majority of people are vegan, we can focus on those systems that can be improved. Currently the majority does not even care about animal exploitation, so there’s very little value in trying to change systems that don’t depend on animal exploitation.
Those two counter examples that I provided aren’t all possibilities to replace open pollination. Surely experts in the field can come up with better solutions once this problem actually becomes a worry in the minds of the majority.
The question is: can you turn it into a product? Would people be willing to pay $100/lb for hand-pollinated almonds? It’s potentially something to explore on a small scale.
I would love to know how many vegans would pay that much for an ethical product.
Can you give some real world examples of systems that contain animal exploitation that vegans would want to see improved? I’m not sure I completely follow that point.
Animal manure as fertilizer in farming. We can use fertilizers that don’t depend on animals to be made.
Is any of what you are saying material though?
It’s kind of revelatory that vegan is a shifting term, that means whatever it wants to mean for the believer.
I tell vegans all the time that in order to have their potato chips brought to them, first they have to have millions of hectares of fields destroyed, planted with a monoculture potato crop, sprayed with pesticides, harvested by diesel equipment, made in a factory with pollutants, placed on trucks which ship all over the country.
Swallow a fly, oh my God the world is ending. Kill a couple thousand things on the way to get your vegan chips, let’s not talk about that.
Well that’s… needlessly hostile?
Vegans are aware of the damage the supply chain does, hence “buy local” being such a common phrase and the push to support small local farms. I’m not sure what you’re accomplishing besides hilighting that capitalism is an awful economic structure that incentivises profit over environment, which sure good message, but most people choosing to adopt such a culturally despised practice are going to be aware of the externalities already.
Really? It’s not new, at least. Vegans love to disagree about what specific things are vegan- some are cool with honey, some are cool with nestle products made without animal products, and some are cool with anything they don’t pay for. Many aren’t cool with any of that, but don’t think twice about killing a mosquito in their home.
It’s an individual choice and you’ve got to decide what you care about and prioritize that.
This, 100%. For some reason people imagine vegans as an ideologically aligned group rather than a bunch of people making their own varied decisions for their own varied reasons. Then when inconsistencies come up between vegans they’ll decry it all as performative. Meanwhile, vegans themselves tend to just be happy to see others making their own best effort and the hair-splitting over what is vegan matters a lot less than generally resisting animal product consumption in any capacity.
Setting a unifying standard for a broad group of people that they’ll never meet and then reacting to the shock of them failing to meet that standard is a common rhetorical tactic in other contexts, no surprises it turns up here too.