Ultimately I think humans are just selfish by nature and they only do things to ensure the continuation of humans as a spices. Everything else is sugar-coating it. So really, there is no morality to be discussed, it is just natural instinct.
My unpopular thoughts on global warming:
https://paradite.com/2018/11/06/extinction-is-natural-so-is-...
Most of that is social construct.
Our biological imperative is too simple for most people to fathom-- if you concern yourself only with the welfare of yourself and your family, you're doing your part for the species by expanding it with viable offspring.
If ensuring the survival of you and yours means paying tribute to the local warlord or toeing a party line, then concern for the neighborhood or country will follow.
But make no mistake, it's not in your interests for the species to thrive. It's in your interests for your own offspring to thrive. Nature can't maintain its balance if the sick and infertile reproduce and the boundless demand for limited resources result in us driving everything else to extinction until we all run around sticking punji knives in each others' guts for lack of food anyway.
Of course the reason we should fight global warming is that it will have huge deleterious effects on humans that are avoidable. Yes, I agree, "the planet" will continue with or without us, but most people would prefer the "with us" option.
Finally, you end with "All we are doing is making the earth more suitable for humans to live, that’s it." What?? Tell that to the billions of people that live along the coast, or say anyone that lives in Bangladesh.
I think you misunderstood the meaning of that sentence. I mean "the effort to counter global warming" is to make the earth more suitable for humans to live, not the lack of effort.
There are many reasons to why we wouldn't eat certain animals. Cats hunt rodents, dogs are protective, horses provide transportation. Cows don't do any of those things well, and they also taste wonderful.
If #2 justified animal agriculture it could also be used to justify human slavery, provided you intentionally bred humans for that purpose.
And regarding my second point somehow justifying human slavery: that's only true if your moral system somehow makes humans and animals out to be equivalent. But we don't even make different classes of humans morally equivalent to each other, so why would we make animals morally equivalent to humans?
How would future societies propose we feed ourselves if we don't eat meat?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelpellmanrowland/2017/12/1...
As to your comment on India, no one is arguing that meat doesn't taste good or that most people don't like to eat it. But whether the number is 300 million or 500 million, clearly meat isn't necessary for a balanced diet, and no one seriously disputes this.
> no one is arguing that meat doesn't taste good or that most people don't like to eat it.
That's pretty much the final word on the subject. People will never stop eating meat. It's part of being human (yes some humans don't do it, but we are omnivores).
Why? It seems you are exactly proving my point: you've compartmentalized one as "ok cause we like it and do it now" and the other as "evil because it's bad and we don't do it anymore", but provide no argument as to why they are logically so incomparable. And your "final word on the subject" is apparently "meat tastes good and people like it." Forgive me if I'm not pursuaded by your "logic".
Because it's a non-sequitur. Slavery and diet have absolutely nothing to do with each other. You could pick any good or bad example of something and strap it to your argument, but it doesn't make it convincing.
> And your "final word on the subject" is apparently "meat tastes good and people like it." Forgive me if I'm not pursuaded by your "logic".
Yep, that's why people will continue to eat meat; it tastes great. Do you honestly think people will ever stop? I know I never would and I'm sure I'm not alone.
So, while it's certainly likely that people alive today will always eat meat, generational turn-over could result in a world without meat eaters.
(I eat meat but do not eat mammals.)
No one is talking about diet. The part where you eat the animal isn't relevant morally. The part where the animal's freedom is restricted and is treated as an object purely for the pleasure of humans is.
What you're experiencing is cognitive dissonance. You're not a bad person for being raised in a culture that encourages you to not think about these things. You should try to look into where your food comes from even though our cultural biases that will make us try to avoid doing so or justify the atrocities when we do see them.
And there are lots of plant sources that are missing or insufficient in essential amino acids. Beans, for example, are lacking in methionine, which is why corn and beans are eaten together in some traditional diets.
Besides, you probably don't want a lot of methionine in your diet (it's linked to feeding cancer) [1..7].
Further, you're recycling the tired myth that "protein comibing" is necessary. Our body maintains pools of free amino acids by dumping protein into the digestive tract, which are broken down and reassembled, i.e. it does the protein combining for us, it's not necessary to explicitly do it through meals if you're otherwise eating a varied diet that sufficient in calories.
[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22171665 [2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18789600 [3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15955547 [4] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18252204 [5] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22342103 [6] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11603655 [7] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14585259
Prefacing an argument with "surely" doesn't make it a stronger argument. I don't see why it follows at all that raising animals for eggs or milk could not be done humanely.
That's not my argument, so I'll try to explain my personal reasoning. To me, the main real reason we have for not killing or hurting other creatures is that we believe they have some level of emotional life, and are capable of things like happiness, love (at least in some form), sadness, fear, and suffering beyond just physical pain. We love our dogs, cats, etc. because we believe at some level they are capable of loving us back (perhaps a stretch for cats I know).
Thus, for me personally I draw the line at mammals because I believe they possess all of these qualities. I will eat poultry, fish and shellfish because I don't believe they have the same capacity of "emotional sentience" as humans, though I'm fully open to the idea that my ideas about poultry are wrong.
Thus, while I "wouldn't enslave humans" I also believe it's possible to keep hens and cows for eggs and dairy in a manner where the animal does not suffer, and I don't see this as any kind of "enslavement".
if everybody eats plants we would also need a huge amount of water/field sizes to feed everybody. guess the best thing is a healthy mix of everything.
Keeping non-human animals for the purpose of eating their flesh requires even huger amounts of water/field sizes; so much in fact that half of the world's crops are fed to non-human animals[0].
[0]: https://www.treehugger.com/green-food/half-of-world-crop-is-...
> The new analysis shows that while meat and dairy provide just 18% of calories and 37% of protein, it uses the vast majority – 83% – of farmland and produces 60% of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions.
I know I was responding to a specific comment about land usage, but I probably wouldn't read that book as I also believe that we should prevent unnecessary pain and suffering, e.g. even if we hypothetically found out that the smoke from the ovens in concentration camps didn't contribute significantly to air pollution, they still wouldn't be a good idea, so of course I object to a book that describes ongoing mass killings as "benign".
But if you have the specific numbers from the book handy, I'd still like to give them a look.
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...
One aspect of this particular cognitive dissonance has always baffled me: you can, for example, see lots of pictures in reddit's "r/aww" subreddit of adorable pigs and cows, and in many cases the draw is the way these animals show behaviors analagous to humans, e.g. cuddling, or playing a game, or enjoying a pet by a human. And folks could coo over these adorable pictures while eating bacon or a burger.
And similarly people have no problem eating pork or beef, but express sheer disgust at the thought of eating horse or dog meat. At some point you realize that these distinctions are arbitrary.
This is certainly a very unpopular opinion in the population at large, but I've always been interested in how cultures can look back at earlier versions of themselves and be amazed at how wrong humans previously were, e.g. with slavery, treatment of women, colonialism, attitudes toward homosexuality, etc. I think that in the future societies will look back at our consumption of meat, especially factory farming methods, and wonder why it took us so long to change our attitudes on this issue.