Abstract
Climate change compels us to rethink the ethics of our dietary choices and has become an interesting issue for ethicists concerned about diets, including animal ethicists. The defenders of veganism have found that climate change provides a new reason to support their cause because many animal-based foods have high greenhouse gas emissions. The new style of argumentation, the ‘climatic argument(s) for veganism’, may benefit animals by persuading even those who are not concerned about animals themselves but worry about climate change. The arguments about the high emissions of animal-based food, and a resulting moral obligation to abstain from eating such products, are an addition to the prior forms of argument for principled veganism grounded on the moral standing of, and concern for, nonhuman animals. In this paper, we examine whether the climatic argument for veganism is convincing. We propose a formulation for the amended version of the argument and discuss its implications and differences compared to the moral obligations of principled veganism. We also reflect upon the implications of our findings on agricultural and food ethics more generally.
Highlights
Our dietary choices matter greatly for climate change related ethical considerations
We approach the issue by asking: what would a convincing argument for the moral obligation to a low-carbon diet look like and what are its dietary implications, compared to animal-centred, principled veganism? We aim to show how the arguments from climate change for veganism are vulnerable to certain weaknesses and do not always support choices obliged by animal-centred arguments for veg*nism
We focus on veganism for several reasons: animal movements that have adopted the climatic arguments often promote veganism; the vegan diet has been present in public discussion and raises more objections than other proposals due to its demandingness; and veganism is empirically sounder than vegetarianism regarding the climate impacts of diets
Summary
Our dietary choices matter greatly for climate change related ethical considerations. Food production, processing, and consumption activities contribute approximately to 30% of human-caused climate emissions and aggravate other environmental problems like freshwater withdrawal, nutrient pollution, and biodiversity degradation (Clark et al 2019). The overall average difference between the climate impacts of animal-based and Nemecek 2018), pointed out that “a vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use” (Petter 2018).. The overall average difference between the climate impacts of animal-based and Nemecek 2018), pointed out that “a vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use” (Petter 2018).3 The overall average difference between the climate impacts of animal-based and Nemecek 2018), pointed out that “a vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use” (Petter 2018). This is in line
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