It’s OK. I know, it’s an emotional topic and I appreciate that - even in disagreement - you took your time to reply.

People eating animal products doesn’t cause greenhouse gasses any more than people eating high protein vegan diets.

Hard disagree. If you grow lentils, beans, nuts etc. locally, it means close to zero emissions. If you produce meat, eggs, milk etc. locally, it still means massive emissions. Emissions from transporting non-local stuff you have in both cases, but also here vegan alternatives tend to score better because transporting 1 kg of soybeans for human consumption is emitting less than transporting 5-10 kg of food for the livestock and transporting 1 kg of the final meat.

The greenhouse gasses are from people mass producing the animals. Is this something we can agree on?

Yes. I just wanted to highlight that in terms of greenhouse gases the root cause isn’t cruelty, exploitation etc. If there is a small romantic farm with just a handful of goats the emissions per kg of goat meat will be not necessarily lower than in factory farming. Maybe you can cut back a bit on transport emissions and reduce cruelty, but land use, deforestation, methane etc. will be still problematic. If you scale down factory farms and fully compensate the production with small scale farms, it won’t help much. If we scale down factory farms and lower the overall production, then the effect kicks in. And if we lower the production that 100% means that someone has to lower their consumption. And from my perspective, this should be ideally voluntarily by people going vegan or vegetarian or flexitarian etc. (option A). If we lower production without voluntarily cutting back on consumption, it means that that poorest folks are forced to cut back by the market as the prices will rise and they simply can’t afford it (option B). In my world view I prefer option A.

You said you weren’t blaming omnivores, but then said that people eating animal products needs to stop

To be precise, I said ‘If you want to lower the emmissions, people must lower and ideally stop the consumption.’

That’s not blaming someone, but pointing out a hard physical causality. It’s like ‘if you want to reduce the water usage of private swimming pools, you have to reduce the number and/or size of the pools’. That doesn’t mean ‘people with pools are bad people’. But if you say ‘in area X there’s a water shortage’ then ‘reducing swimming pools in area X’ may be part of the solution.

That is not how morals work. it is unethical for you to tell people what morals they should have

As said, I don’t judge anyone for being an omnivore. I completely acknowledge that being omnivore is like the default setting for human’s in today’s society.

Still I think that morally good behavior can be measured - at least to some degree - objectively. And as said, being a good person has hundreds of aspects. For example I would consider volunteering as firefighters as morally good behavior. They risk their own lives for the benefit of society. That doesn’t mean that I condemn everyone who is not a firefighter or who doesn’t risk their life for others. A single parent who works three jobs to allow for their children a better future is morally good. Also there, I don’t judge single parents who aren’t willing or capable of that level of self sacrifice. Taking mindful decisions when grocery shopping is also an aspect of moral behavior. I don’t say if it’s more or less important than other things. But it’s something everyone theoretically could do. And to emphasize that again: my original argument was not about whether or not people should go vegan. I was just saying that non-vegan diets aren’t forced on the people by the rich.

Just look at how you consider people to be not of the proper “mental capacity” if they don’t make that change.

With that statement I didn’t mean to say that non-vegans are stupid. I think that I mean something similar as when you said ‘you aren’t having the problems they’re having or living their lives’.

If someone is struggling in their lives, for instance as they are a single parent and working three jobs, I completely see that they don’t have the mental capacity to make informed food choices, learn new recipes, find new food that your children like etc. My point wasn’t about insulting anyone, just to acknowledge that people can have other priorities than veganism and that’s OK.

This is the most obtuse statement you could possibly make for your argument.

There are many humans on this planet. If a majority of these humans consumes animal products as they do today this means massive greenhouse gases. If you see a way to strike out the emmissions without striking out production and consumption - please enlighten me.

These are mutually exclusive statements.

They aren’t.

1. If you want to lower emmissions from animal agriculture, you have to reduce animal agriculture. As an intermediate step you may have some options to switch to smaller animals such as insects instead of larger animals. But as acceptance of insect food is much lower than vegan food, I see little sense in pursuing that strategy.

2. I don’t think bad of people for being omnivores. That’s the traditional way how humans lived forever. People are used to consume animal products and it’s hard to break with habits. Not everyone has the mental capacity to do so, people have other priorities in life. That’s fine for me.

But if someone else is running around saying ‘consuming animal products is not problematic, it’s all about the rich!’ then that’s incorrect from my perspective and I want to point that out.

Yet still unwilling to blame the groups who literally destroy the world

I literally wrote in my initial post that ‘there are many good reasons to blame rich people’. The fact that many rich people have a negative impact on our society and planet, …

1. does not mean that individual consumers are completely off the hook in all kinds of moral questions.
2. that everything any rich person says is automatically wrong

Especially in a topic like veganism I can’t see an intrinsic motivation of ‘the rich elite’ to force animal products on the people. You can be rich by selling meat or you can be rich by selling tofu. Selling vegan alternatives at a large scale to the masses would probably even lead to higher profits as the production is cheaper.

allows you to live guilt free

Veganism isn’t about being morally inferior. A moral lifestyle has numerous aspects, veganism is just one aspect. Being a good person is not limited to veganism or trying to protect the environment in general. It’s not about rating people against each other. Yet, it’s absolutely fair to say from my perspective that veganism can do a lot of good for the world: reduce CO2 and methane emmissions, lower the risk of famines, reduce animal harm, reduce deforestation and land use, lower the risk of pandemics and resistent germs, get rid of the horrible working conditions for factory workers in the animal industry and many more.

All humans just going vegan at once is completely delusional. But every single person helps, even if it’s just lowering the consumption a bit helps.

And my point is that it is absolutely in the power of each individual to take these small steps. If you want it, no rich person can hinder you from that.

you are incapable of making reasonable arguments

Major parts of your post are personally attacking and insulting me. That’s not necessarily what I’d consider a healthy debate. But unfortunately it seems to be a very emotional topic I guess.

The consumption of animal products isn’t the problem. It is the exploitation of the production for profits

Greenhouse gases aren’t created through exploitation, but by the pure existence of the animals. Even if we hypothetically held all animals under perfect conditions (which is impossible anyhow due to lack of land and ressources), it doesn’t significantly reduce the greenhouse gases. If you want to lower the emmissions, people must lower and ideally stop the consumption.

You can point fingers at people who want to eat meat

I don’t fingerpoint at omnivores. I fingerpoint at people who claim that people consuming animal products is only the fault of some third party rich people. We know that veganism helps the planet in many aspects. If you decide to live different that’s OK, but it’s your choice.

if you can afford to live like that.

Unless you’re a Mongolian shepard in an area where soil and weather allow nothing but grass and goats or you live off food donations only, that’s not true. For people who buy their food in supermarkets, veganism isn’t more expensive than an omnivore diet. If you live off basic ingredients rather than comfort food, it’s usually rather cheaper.

If billions of people on the planet want to eat animal products, this inevitably causes significant harm to the nature, the animals and ourselves (global warming, pandemics etc.). Just because our species lived off meat in the past (with way less individuals) that doesn’t mean we can and should continue like this.

The real problem is that the rich only give the poor so many options to choose from.

So the rich do not give you the option to reduce the animal products in your diet? IMHO there are many good reasons to blame rich people, big oil etc., but that doesn’t mean that everyone individually is released from any kind of responsibility. Vegan diets are available, affordable and healthy. If you’re unwilling to question your habits and adapt your lifestyle for the better, that’s your choice. Don’t put the blame on others.

Also came here to see the ingredients of the salad. :D

Even though he’s right with his arguments from my perspective, I don’t like his style of debate. He barely let’s her finish a sentence and also tries to intentionally twist the arguments that she might not have thought about in detail yet into something intentionally evil. I think every debate should be respectful and at eye-level. If one party has a deeper knowledge in the area than the other that party should try to convince and explain.