this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2026
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[–] rbn@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

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.