Vegetarianism, yes. Veganism, no.

The CO2 emissions from a world full of vegetarians vs a world full of vegans are pretty close to indistinguishable.

Do you have data on this? My understanding is that dairy cows are pretty resource intensive, taking a lot more water and crops than equivalent plant based alternatives.

what do vegans feel stigmatized in doing these days?

gotta say i see the challenges between animal-free and car-free life as much the same: most people around me generally agree we’d be better off with both these lifestyles, but the issue is practicality. best way to promote veganism around me in the past couple years has literally been to cook vegan meals with friends. if the stigma you’re talking about is “vegan food stinks” or “vegan food’s hard to prepare”, then that’s an easy way to address those two.

My experience is that people virulently and irrationally fight against the idea, to the point of misrepresenting facts. It's difficult to bring up, at least online, without raising a lot of hackles. Over 95% of the population uses animal products, and are accustomed to them, so it's considered an afront to say that their behavior is suboptimal in one way or another.

I can't speak for others, but at least for me, an omnivorous diet is not suboptimal.

It may have higher emissions, but that's not the sole metric I use when deciding what to do.

In everyday life I don't generally discuss my diet beyond small talk, because it serves no purpose.

So you'd probably lump me in with that 95% of irrationals, because in person, I'd just try to change the subject.

You are correct, you are entrenched in your beliefs about animal products, and you even admit to being unwilling to discuss them, wanting to change the subject, and (likely unintentionally) misrepresenting facts by comparing animal agriculture to camping and board games.

The fact is though that board games and gas stoves are nothing in comparison to animal husbandry.

"Animal agriculture produces 65% of the world's nitrous oxide emissions which has a global warming impact 296 times greater than carbon dioxide.

Raising livestock for human consumption generates nearly 15% of total global greenhouse gas emissions, which is greater than all the transportation emissions combined. It also uses nearly 70% of agricultural land which leads to being the major contributor to deforestation, biodiversity loss, and water pollution.

Ending our meat and dairy production could pause the growth of greenhouse gas emissions for 30 years, new study suggests."

https://www.colorado.edu/ecenter/2022/03/15/it-may-be-uncomf...

I agree with your quoted section.

I'm happy to discuss it, but almost always, including now, it seems to be a waste of time, because I agree with you! I think you're correct in identifying that a vegan diet has lower emissions and externalities than an omnivorous diet.

Veganism is not the same as low emission. There are plenty of vegan food that has unsustainable levels of emissions if all of earth was to eat it.

The top thing is for people to consider emissions and allow emissions to become part of the decision process. In terms of diet that could be to introduce and consider food outside of the cultural limits, like shell fish and sea weed. A related issue are that a large number (majority?) of Europe and northern American lakes has major issues with eutrophication with mostly fish that people refuse to eat because of culture. Eating those kind of fish would solve two problems at the same time, feeding people and removing uncontrolled overgrowth caused by artificial fertilizers.

Right now it is also cheaper to operate heavy machinery that run on fossil fuels to control plant growth in nature reservation and around power lines, rather than raising animals that would do the same job and create food. Same thing with Lawn mowers. One of the most ecological method to keep grass cut is (real) free range hobby scale chickens. Produce food, cuts grass and keeps pests away.

As with everything else, everything change if people allow emissions to be part of the decision process.

> allow emissions to become part of the decision process.

A carbon tax would do so. Unfortunately it's hard to get anything done nationally, much less globally

I tend to agree, in that it would be wonderful if, say, food packaging had resource usage and emissions printed on the label.

In lieu of that, despite variance in environmental impact across foods, on the whole, the average vegan diet is almost certainly going to be far better for the environment than a non-vegan diet.

And this is not even getting into other positive elements such as health and animal welfare, but those are unrelated topics likely to spark additional argument, so I won't go further.

The average right now is terrible for pretty much everything in the world. Fishermen in Greenland can send their fish to china to have it gutted, then sent to Norway to have it packaged, and then sent to USA to be sold. An avocado can have a piece of rain forest burned up, grown using fertilizers produced in Germany, which in turn is using natural gas mined in Russia. The avocado then get shipped to be packaged in the Netherlands, and then shipped again to be consumed in Norway.

Emissions are not a significant consideration in this global economy. The key factor that everyone cares about is cost.

I understand your point, but animal agriculture alone accounts for more emissions than all transport combined.

https://www.colorado.edu/ecenter/2022/03/15/it-may-be-uncomf...

Different time scale, and different form of emissions. Most of animal agriculture consider methane that are produced by cows eating grass that has grown by taking out co2 from the air. They are just as green as biofuel is green.

Climate change is primary caused by humans burning fossil fuels, and humans extracting fossil fuels to be used in chemical processes like artificial fertilizers. In the short term it might be beneficial to reduce the number of animals that eat plants that has sequestrate carbon from the air, but in every case it would be worse if we humans use fossil fuel to burn the same plants.

Some people has argued that in the very short term, reducing methane while increasing emissions of fossil fuel emissions could beneficial be a better strategy if we can know for sure that carbon capture will save us in the future. I am doubtful to that strategy.

It should be noted that methane leaks from fossil fuel industry is larger than that from cows. A primary source of those methane leaks are the production of artificial fertilizers, but of course all steps between extracting natural gas to producing the fertilizers has large amount of emissions and leaks.

A very large portion of the world is already vegetarian. Making clear what you choices are communicates to your neighbors and eventually elected reps what your inclinations are. The big picture is fundamentally a communication and multi party negotiation issue.

Solving that faster, is what is needed. Maybe instead of having everything be handled at the top level inter community personal outreach is needed.

A large portion doesn't use toilets and these groups intersect. What you eat is personal not a multiparty negotiation.

I believe that is what I am saying ?

What you eat is personal - having an impact on emissions/environment is not solved at a personal level, it requires nation level negotiations.

What you eat is at best a signal to higher level political groups of your inclinations.

Habits are not always preferences.

Political groups are lazy and/or inept and will assume such.

It most certainly is a multiparty negotiation. You eat things that can be reasonably obtained from vendors in your area, who in turn stock things they think they can sell. You order from the items available at the establishments you visit with your friends and family, who have input into where you go. You recommend foods to others, and eat foods that others recommend to you. In short, eating is a cultural activity you participate in.

As far as veganism is concerned, it is notable that it is much easier to be vegan now than 20 or even 10 years ago, as vegan ingredients are more widespread and higher quality, and "vegan options" are essentially standard in restaurants. This didn't happen through legislation, but by the application of social pressure by vegans - if vegans can't eat at your restaurant, they won't just go somewhere else, they'll take their friends with them. It is the output of a massive multiparty negotiation.

Does veganism have a stigma? It certainly doesn't in my circles, it's super common and every restaurant in most major cities has vegan options now. I was vegan for a year and had no problems with it.

If you're talking about "convincing people to go vegan", most people don't like being preached to regardless of the topic, that's not a stigma.

For example, drinking alcohol has its' negatives, but if I'm in the pub with friends and some teetotaler decides to go off on a mission to convert me, my response is going to vary from smiling and nodding to telling them to piss off depending on the mood I'm in that day.

They have the stigma of bringing up veganism out of the blue and proselytizing people about it when it isn’t the subject being discussed.

Like, uh, the comment you replied to.

Gotcha.

Maybe there's a way to fix this with language? If someone says that they use the metro or cycle to work, I'm like, cool man, trains are sick, let's chat.

If someone says they "support a car-free lifestyle", I'm probably already starting to think about something else and glazing over.

See, there is irony in your comment, because I didn't bring it up out of the blue. It's very related to the subject being discussed.

Yes, to a vegan, veganism is relevant to every discussion. That’s what I said.

Thanks for providing more evidence for my original point. Animal agriculture are one of the top emitters of greenhouse gases, even more than all transportation combined, so to imply that it's irrelevant is ignorant at best.

Well that’s not even close to true.

https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector

5.8% vs 16.2%

Read your own link again. That's just one aspect of it. Several percentages are listed for agriculture besides livestock, which are relevant, because 70% of crops are used to feed livestock. Furthermore, the page you link yourself directly encourages eating less animal products.

Here are the rolled up stats, which indeed show animal agriculture using more than transportation:

https://www.colorado.edu/ecenter/2022/03/15/it-may-be-uncomf...