I remember reading about why greenhouse gas emissions are such a hot topic in environmentalism. The author showed how a lot of the other important environmental degredations we need to fix all interrelate right back to ghgs. Tackling emissions is a nexus problem - solving it simultaneously solves a lot of other environmental problems.
Veganism is similar. In the first place, we are never going to meet climate goals without also becoming significantly more plant-centric, since the animal ag industry is one of the single largest climate change contributors (in addition to their other environmental harms like fecal pollution and deforestation).
www.surgeactivism.org/aveganworld
Going vegan also happens to be a form of fascist resistance, as the animal ag industry is one of the largest funders of conservative groups (including Democrats).
www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus?cycle=2024&i…
www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus?cycle=2024&i…
Going vegan is likely also one of the best choices you can make for your own health, particularly if you go the whole-food plant-based route.
www.redpenreviews.org/…/proof-is-in-the-plants/
Going vegan as a society is probably the only response that has any hope of averting an h5n1 pandemic - which could wipe out as much as half of the human population when it occurs.
www.surgeactivism.org/notifbutwhenbirdflu
And if worker rights and worker exploitation matters to you, then you should know that animal ag is one of the worst offenders.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=sWyK389BJoI&t=915s
Going vegan solves many problems, and it’s an issue that can’t be handwaived with the line “but corporations produce 70%” — sorry. No magically ideal government is ever going to get 99% of the population to go vegan. It’s cultural, and that means individual action matters. If even one person adopts a vegan lifestyle, it’s estimated that as many as 200 fewer animals will be slaughtered per year.
Like it or not, we all have a responsibility to stop animal abuse. Doing so just so happens to help eliminate or at least alleviate a lot of other pressing problems as well.
zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev 7 months ago
Whataboutism.
Norgur@fedia.io 7 months ago
No, im not saying you shouldn't care about animals or that the matter of suffering animals is a trivial one because other things. That would be whataboutism. I'm saying that no one can care about all the suffering in the world at once. So you can't blame people if they care about a suffering that's not top priority to you and vice versa.
I used the other things I listed as examples to demonstrate that a vegan might not care as much about other things that are bad as well. Which is fine. As I said: the only people we should really annoy are those who are doing nothing at all to better the pain and suffering in this world.
amzd@kbin.social 7 months ago
Well that sounds like an appeal to futility while going vegan is so much simpler than eg stopping suffering in Gaza or Ukraine. It’s just choosing the plant milk that’s probably even in the same supermarket isle that you are in anyway.
TheDoozer@lemmy.world 7 months ago
They threaded the needle on it, but they came back around to a point about the subject in the end.