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Comment by leobelle | Hacker News Reader

And yet, are you still eating meat? Fish? What are you doing for your part?

I don't buy fish and don't own a car.

Edit: not that this is the extent of my actions, or even that I agree with this line of questioning.

"What are you doing for your part" is equivalent to nothing, UNLESS you are perhaps paradoxically working in finance to become rich enough to have enough money and/or influence to someday have a real effect on these problems. Or maybe actively researching sustainable technologies, or part of a pro-environmental lobbyist group or something.

Don't kid yourself: if you want to stand on a high horse understand that your lack of eating meat makes absolutely no difference here. If you actually want to take the position that individual initiative is needed, then you have to be doing pretty crazy things to make a dent. Arguably its worse than doing nothing because you assuage your own guilt by convincing yourself that you are no longer part of the problem and disincentivizing yourself from being part of the actual solution.

I can't agree. Knowing the problem and how it is going to affect our children and grandchildren, it is immoral to do things that make the problem worse. Producing one pound of beef emits ~15 pounds of CO2, while one pound of chicken creates ~1 pound of CO2 [1]. Knowing this and having the choice between the two, I think it is immoral to eat beef.

To me, your argument is about the same as saying that it is okay to steal from Walmart. After all, what difference will it make to their bottom line? Essentially none. Does that make stealing (in small amounts) morally okay? (Maybe you see this as a completely different question, but from a Kantian ethics perspective, they're the same.)

[1] http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2009-...

I don't kid myself, you're kidding yourself if you do not think that individual behaviors cause considerable impact on a vast scale in aggregate. The "high-horse" line is just a personal attack that doesn't have any merit in the argument, and really I shouldn't have bothered to respond to you because of it.

Thank you for responding for everyone else's sake, that's what keeps me coming back to HN

This is classic "if everyone just ___" logic, which is a logical fallacy. You admit to as much yourself, these things only matter in the aggregate, and our individual behaviors are independent events that do not affect each other, and thus do not affect the "aggregate". That is to say, you're not eating meat does not cause others to not eat meat in any way that scales, which is the only possibly valid reasoning to it ever making a difference. If it did, if it had some sort of domino affect, it would be a valid criticism, but it isn't. You not eating meat has only the measurable affects on your life and margin of error effects on this problem. To further understand the absurdity of this thinking, apply it to anything else: let's say you don't want to go to the movies, and I say "but what if NO ONE goes, then the movie theaters will go bankrupt!" You would appropriately call me insane, but this is the exact same reasoning. I could respond in the exact same way: "leobelle, don't you understand that individual actions have considerable impact in the aggregate". Yes, they do, but that's besides the point because your individual action does not on its own affect the other individual actions making up "the aggregate".

The "high horse" comment, btw, is completely justified due to your clear moral judgement on OP for not "doing his part", which you then proceeded to give ineffectual advice regarding.

But individuals have a part to play. Individuals contribute to cultural changes, which are really important when it comes to fighting climate change and hunger.[1] Being vegan or vegetarian, full-time or not, doesn't mean that you're not still a part of the problem. But I think it's fair to argue that it's a step in the right direction.

I do think that veg*ns being judgmental of others' diet is worse than doing nothing, because it alienates a movement that could potentially be very good for our planet.

[1][http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/02/un-report...]

And probably driving a personal car, too.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/03/ocean-aci...

Considering that every single thing we could eat would have an impact on the environment (typically negatively), it's not as simple as abstaining from eating a particular substance.

A fair point.

Meat contributes far more of a negative impact on the environment than plants though. Consider the fact that it takes 8 lbs of grain to produce 1 lb of beef[1]. That's absurdly wasteful in the quantities of beef that most American's eat weekly.

[1]: http://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?articl...

That's true, but on the other hand you get a much bigger nutritional boost out of eating the beef - it's rich in protein and other things that we need to live, which can't simply be replaced with more carbs. I'm not a big consumer of beef and I agree with your general point, but it's not the 1:1 equivalence which would mean 7/8ths of the beef someone consumes is a waste.

I do not eat meat and I do not have to eat more food than I did when I did eat meat. You've made a statement of fact, but it's at best highly ambiguous, but probably just outright false. You're confusing a bunch of nutritional concepts and coming to a non-sequitur conclusion.

That's not what I meant at all - there are plenty of other non-meat sources of protein, from cheese to nuts, depending on how vegan you are. Once again, what I'm taking issue with is the notion that because 8 units of grain are needed to provide 1 unit of beef, the units are nutritionally identical. Making weight for weight comparisons as above is what's a non-sequitur.

Getting such comparisons fully correct is certainly hard, but I don't think it goes the way you think it does in this case... looking at a few different specific possibilities for "beef" and "grain", the "grain" looks to usually be nearly twice the calories of the "beef" per pound. Humans do not actually need huge amounts of protein and there is rarely a (medical) need to go out of your way to get protein no matter what your diet is.

A good portion of that excess weight is caused by parts of the plant that we, as humans, can not digest either (cell walls, exceptionally long carbohydrate chains, etc). So while inefficient, us humans wouldn't get much more nutrition out of those 8 lbs of grains.

Also, it's worth remembering that we get a lot more than just meat out of your average cow. We get medicines, leather, meat, fertilizer, gelatin, and pet feed. In fact, the ~40% of the cow which is left after butchering is rendered down into a streams of protein and fat for secondary uses, resulting in zero waste of the animal.

There are simply a lot of things you use day to day which come from those cows and those 8 lbs of grain...

You aren't looking at the whole picture.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/we-could-be-...

>It takes 100 times more water (up to 2,500 gallons) to produce a pound of grain-fed beef than it does to produce a pound of wheat. We’re also running out of land: somewhere around 45 percent of the world’s land is either directly or indirectly involved in livestock production

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-greenhouse-ham...

>the meat [in our diets] cause more greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide, and the like to spew into the atmosphere than either transportation or industry.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.htm...

>Global demand for meat has multiplied in recent years, encouraged by growing affluence and nourished by the proliferation of huge, confined animal feeding operations. These assembly-line meat factories consume enormous amounts of energy, pollute water supplies, generate significant greenhouse gases and require ever-increasing amounts of corn, soy and other grains, a dependency that has led to the destruction of vast swaths of the world’s tropical rain forests.

>Just this week, the president of Brazil announced emergency measures to halt the burning and cutting of the country’s rain forests for crop and grazing land. In the last five months alone, the government says, 1,250 square miles were lost.

> it's not as simple as abstaining from eating a particular substance.

Not eating fish is a pretty simple way to help prevent unsustainable fish depopulation. I'm a bit incredulous that anyone would argue this point. Anyone other than individuals who want to rationalize their current destructive habits.

Have you worked out how much time of species existence, statistically, a single person not eating fish can save? Would you expect it to be more than a fraction of a second?

I'm not sure I understand what your argument is. All I can do is change my behavior. I can't change the behavior of hundreds of other people as much as I would want to. If your argument is that individual effort isn't worth the benefit, I'm not sure what to tell you other than this again seems nothing more than an apologist rationalization to defend existing destructive behavior.

It's easier to rationalize your existing behavior than it is to change it. But instead of changing it, maybe just make the cognitive effort to recognize the wrongness. This requires no behavioral change, just an attitude change. If you do this, after enough time behavioral change comes easier. In other words detach reasoning about the ethics of the behavior from the work involved in optimizing your life.

My argument is that you should examine what your intended outcome is. If your goal is (1) to feel better about yourself by not contributing to the extinction of fish, then by all means continue what you're doing. If, however, your goal is (2) to halt or significantly slow the extinction of fish, then simply not eating fish is completely insufficient, and you need to figure out how to do something that has a larger effect. I think you're arguing as though your goal is (1).

"All I can do is change my behavior. I can't change the behavior of hundreds of other people as much as I would want to."

Well, millions, I assume you mean.

"make the cognitive effort to recognize the wrongness."

I think you're assuming my conclusion. :)

Indignation and personal attacks aside, reasons you might want to still eat fish:

> Most experts say that DHA and EPA -- from fish and fish oil -- have better established health benefits than ALA. DHA and EPA are found together only in fatty fish and algae. DHA can also be found on its own in algae, while flaxseed and plant sources of omega-3s provide ALA -- a precursor to EPA and DHA, and a source of energy. [1]

Fish are healthy and good for us. One of the primary causes of overfishing is caused by our unhealthy fascination for tuna. There are many sustainable sources of fish which are available (such as trout); our society's desire for one that is so inefficient in bulking up does not mean you should give up on fish entirely as a result.

[1] http://www.webmd.com/healthy-aging/omega-3-fatty-acids-fact-...

Well, clearly we just need to eat people.

Comments like this are unhelpful; instead of answering the GPs argument, you're seeking to invalidating by painting the GP as a hypocrite, without any evidence or indeed relevance. This is particularly inappropriate considering that the OP was not castigating other people.

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