feels a bit ironic to urge for making the conference vegetarian, if the critique is that animal agriculture is killing the planet and serving animal products sends the wrong message, then continuing to serve just some of them is like advocating for handing out smokeless tobacco products rather than cigarettes at a cancer conference…
yeah, it’s maybe better, but … not by much, right?
I guess vegetarian would be demonstrably better than including meat, but dairy and eggs are produced the same way with similar climate footprints as meat, no?
not to play purity politics, better is still better - just enjoying the irony I guess
Every public event should be vegan, yes. It’s the common denominator and it’s has the lowest footprint in terms of global warning potential gas.
For a environmental event, of course it should be vegan, but the least you can do is make it vegetarian. It is still quite a lot better. In any case, these big events ate much more about symbolism than consistency, and that would send a message.
I would imagine the flights people take to travel to these conferences also have a significant climate impact, probably more than from the food served at the conference
that said, I’m not sure a conference has to be a perfect representation of the values the conference might hold, especially if the burden in the current society creates restriction … the conference after all is trying to help find ways to alter society so we don’t destroy our world, and I would assume better and greener public transportation is one of those policy positions being advocated - you can’t take a train that isn’t there
though vegan food is more materially achievable than the transportation alternatives, it’s not an insignificant cultural problem as people are not generally on board with the changes to diet, and substitutes (like transportation infrastructure) are not to the point of eliminating that discomfort such that people don’t feel it’s a burden to eat vegan (though in a vegan community this sounds absurd, we all are people who very much decided it’s worth making that change and felt the burden was not too high, but we are not representative of the average person, let alone the average climate scientist or conference-goer, though they probably are more likely to be vegan than the average person off the street).
it’s a cultural problem, food culture is hard to change, even when you have reasons to change
it’s harder for some than others, but the people who find it easy to become vegan are a small minority
rather than being shocked at the hypocrisy (which is admittedly there and is upsetting), I wonder instead what could be done to win more people over to veganism, or what other kinds of actions would move society towards a better set of conditions … a hyper-individualist lens makes it hard to recognize these issues are on a collective and societal level, and it’s more important that we solve those than whether someone was eating meat at a climate protest
pushing for legislation might be more effective than converting more of the minority of people who would become and stay vegan to do so in a society that is effectively hostile and provides little means to do so. Making it easier to be vegan by default is a hard task, though … it’s basically like waiting for the revolution.
if the critique is that animal agriculture is killing the planet and serving animal products sends the wrong message, then continuing to serve just some of them is like advocating for handing out smokeless tobacco products rather than cigarettes at a cancer conference…
Where are you getting the “some of the them part”? It’s a prestigious event made to inspire not to have literal impact so it should lead by example and not serve any meat and do all of the inspirational memes (electric cars etc.) and whatnot no matter how actually effective they are.
Paul McCartney has urged COP30 to go vegetarian, arguing that serving meat at a climate summit is “like handing out cigarettes at a cancer prevention conference”.
I’m criticizing Paul McCartney for arguing the conference should go vegetarian and not vegan. The cows that make the dairy are treated terribly, are slaughtered well before their natural lifespans, and most important to the context, contribute significantly to the climate problems with methane emissions (just like cows grown for meat do).
So vegans have 30% of the emissions as high-meat-eaters, and the differences between vegans and vegetarians are significant with regards to their emissions.
Arguing they should serve cheese, eggs, etc. but just not meat is like arguing they should offer smokeless tobacco but not cigarettes at a cancer conference - meat has similar climate issues as dairy, and McCartney seems to either lack knowledge of this, or is aware of his hypocrisy but chooses it as a more moderate position because he’s hoping it will be more persuasive or likely to succeed.
To your point, the conference should probably go vegan just because they should be advocating for that kind of thing even if it won’t solve the fact that 80% of emissions came from just 57 companies. Even if like electric cars, veganism won’t save us from the climate disaster, you would think it would at least be part of their gimmick to show people what actions they can take (short of the guillotine, for the 57 company heads, as a part of a larger revolution that successfully replaces our economic and political system with something more egalitarian and less death-cult-y, though good luck on that; people don’t tend to get stabby until they’ve missed meals, and once they’ve missed meals the basis of a good future civics goes out the window and it’s more about the killing and retribution than about setting up a stable, but better, government).
Like I initially said, despite my criticism, I’m all for McCartney supporting vegetarianism, even if veganism would be better. Vegetarianism is still a massive improvement, especially when you are primarily looking at climate impacts, and it might be more likely to be implemented and supported socially.
Nowhere did he say that shey should go vegatarian over vegan just that vegetarian would be a minimum first requirement. You can always optimized from there to ad infinitum.
Paul and Linda McCartney are famously vegetarian, they are not vegan themselves and they don’t promote veganism … they only promote vegetarianism. Paul McCartney only suggested the conference go vegetarian, which of course doesn’t mean he wouldn’t support them going vegan, but my point was always that his own vegetarianism and advocacy only for vegetarianism is hypocritical.
Don’t make perfect the enemy of good. You can dig almost ad infinitum into food ethics and levels of veganism to the point where you lost the plot and everyone left the room.
feels a bit ironic to urge for making the conference vegetarian, if the critique is that animal agriculture is killing the planet and serving animal products sends the wrong message, then continuing to serve just some of them is like advocating for handing out smokeless tobacco products rather than cigarettes at a cancer conference…
yeah, it’s maybe better, but … not by much, right?
I guess vegetarian would be demonstrably better than including meat, but dairy and eggs are produced the same way with similar climate footprints as meat, no?
not to play purity politics, better is still better - just enjoying the irony I guess
Every public event should be vegan, yes. It’s the common denominator and it’s has the lowest footprint in terms of global warning potential gas.
For a environmental event, of course it should be vegan, but the least you can do is make it vegetarian. It is still quite a lot better. In any case, these big events ate much more about symbolism than consistency, and that would send a message.
I would imagine the flights people take to travel to these conferences also have a significant climate impact, probably more than from the food served at the conference
that said, I’m not sure a conference has to be a perfect representation of the values the conference might hold, especially if the burden in the current society creates restriction … the conference after all is trying to help find ways to alter society so we don’t destroy our world, and I would assume better and greener public transportation is one of those policy positions being advocated - you can’t take a train that isn’t there
though vegan food is more materially achievable than the transportation alternatives, it’s not an insignificant cultural problem as people are not generally on board with the changes to diet, and substitutes (like transportation infrastructure) are not to the point of eliminating that discomfort such that people don’t feel it’s a burden to eat vegan (though in a vegan community this sounds absurd, we all are people who very much decided it’s worth making that change and felt the burden was not too high, but we are not representative of the average person, let alone the average climate scientist or conference-goer, though they probably are more likely to be vegan than the average person off the street).
I went to that extinction rebellion protest a few years back. I saw people eating dead animals! WTF!
it’s a cultural problem, food culture is hard to change, even when you have reasons to change
it’s harder for some than others, but the people who find it easy to become vegan are a small minority
rather than being shocked at the hypocrisy (which is admittedly there and is upsetting), I wonder instead what could be done to win more people over to veganism, or what other kinds of actions would move society towards a better set of conditions … a hyper-individualist lens makes it hard to recognize these issues are on a collective and societal level, and it’s more important that we solve those than whether someone was eating meat at a climate protest
pushing for legislation might be more effective than converting more of the minority of people who would become and stay vegan to do so in a society that is effectively hostile and provides little means to do so. Making it easier to be vegan by default is a hard task, though … it’s basically like waiting for the revolution.
Where are you getting the “some of the them part”? It’s a prestigious event made to inspire not to have literal impact so it should lead by example and not serve any meat and do all of the inspirational memes (electric cars etc.) and whatnot no matter how actually effective they are.
from the article:
I’m criticizing Paul McCartney for arguing the conference should go vegetarian and not vegan. The cows that make the dairy are treated terribly, are slaughtered well before their natural lifespans, and most important to the context, contribute significantly to the climate problems with methane emissions (just like cows grown for meat do).
Here’s a good breakdown of differences between vegan & vegetarian diets in terms of climate impact: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-023-00795-w
Emissions:
Vegan:............. CO2: 2.16, CH4: 04.39, N2O: 0.71Vegetarian:........ CO2: 3.33, CH4: 20.21, N2O: 0.98medium meat-eaters: CO2: 5.34, CH4: 40.88, N20: 1.73high meat-eaters:.. CO2: 7.28, CH4: 65.40, N2O: 2.62So vegans have 30% of the emissions as high-meat-eaters, and the differences between vegans and vegetarians are significant with regards to their emissions.
Also should be noted that there is a big gap between biodiversity impact between vegans and vegetarians, with vegetarian diets causing nearly double the number of species extinctions per day than vegan diets.
Arguing they should serve cheese, eggs, etc. but just not meat is like arguing they should offer smokeless tobacco but not cigarettes at a cancer conference - meat has similar climate issues as dairy, and McCartney seems to either lack knowledge of this, or is aware of his hypocrisy but chooses it as a more moderate position because he’s hoping it will be more persuasive or likely to succeed.
To your point, the conference should probably go vegan just because they should be advocating for that kind of thing even if it won’t solve the fact that 80% of emissions came from just 57 companies. Even if like electric cars, veganism won’t save us from the climate disaster, you would think it would at least be part of their gimmick to show people what actions they can take (short of the guillotine, for the 57 company heads, as a part of a larger revolution that successfully replaces our economic and political system with something more egalitarian and less death-cult-y, though good luck on that; people don’t tend to get stabby until they’ve missed meals, and once they’ve missed meals the basis of a good future civics goes out the window and it’s more about the killing and retribution than about setting up a stable, but better, government).
Like I initially said, despite my criticism, I’m all for McCartney supporting vegetarianism, even if veganism would be better. Vegetarianism is still a massive improvement, especially when you are primarily looking at climate impacts, and it might be more likely to be implemented and supported socially.
Nowhere did he say that shey should go vegatarian over vegan just that vegetarian would be a minimum first requirement. You can always optimized from there to ad infinitum.
Paul and Linda McCartney are famously vegetarian, they are not vegan themselves and they don’t promote veganism … they only promote vegetarianism. Paul McCartney only suggested the conference go vegetarian, which of course doesn’t mean he wouldn’t support them going vegan, but my point was always that his own vegetarianism and advocacy only for vegetarianism is hypocritical.
Don’t make perfect the enemy of good. You can dig almost ad infinitum into food ethics and levels of veganism to the point where you lost the plot and everyone left the room.
yeah, that’s my takeaway as well
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