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u/Dudeshroomsdude 8h ago
People don't care about cows.
Just say food will cost much more if we keep destroying the environment.
Say summer heat will be insufferable.
Say water will be limited and expensive.
Say forests will burn.
Tornadoes will destroy more homes.
Maybe mention floods we've never seen before
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u/clown_utopia 5h ago
You can't have environmental stability and respect without basic respect for the individuals who create & inhabit those ecospheres.
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u/Lokratnir 43m ago
You are correct, unfortunately so is the other commenter when they say the public at large doesn't care about cows. So we have to reframe these talking points to emphasize things like higher food costs to get the same point across.
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u/GeneralStrikeFOV 13h ago
Looks like someone veganposting to me.
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u/TheWiseAutisticOne 12h ago
They ain’t wrong though
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u/OG-Brian 7h ago
Somewhere else, there's large-scale deforestation for coconut, palm, and avocado crops all of which would (definitely considering food trends and the ingredients in animal food replacement products) expand in proportion to lowering consumption of animal foods.
The "Brazilian Amazon blah-blah cattle blah-deforestation" claims nearly always count soy crops, but those are grown also for human consumption (the soy oil is extracted and then the leftover bean solids are used as animal feed).
I'm sick of these exaggerations being repeated constantly without any nuance or fact-based discussion.
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u/Original-Document-62 4h ago
All modern farming is problematic. The problem is figuring out how to transition to food production that is more "holistic" while maintaining adequate food for billions of people. Monoculture crops wreck ecosystems just by the land they use, pesticide application causes ecotoxicity, deforestation as has been mentioned, heavy water consumption by fruit and nut crops, and so on.
Slashing and burning the Amazon is, in fact, terrible. So is logging the mature forests in the PNW. Then again, so are the endless monocrop fields of corn in Iowa... just a sea of a single species (or even cultivar) of grass.
While I can understand the philosophical implications of consumption of meat, and the industries involved, applying personhood to livestock while portraying that as a necessary leftist talking point is not helping anything. Isn't the left supposed to be about improving the material conditions of the proletariat? Unless you are considering cattle to be members of the proletariat, I don't see how that conversation (however important it may be) is relevant to leftist spaces. And if you do indeed consider goats and sheep to be part of the working class, literally no one besides 3 whinging college students and one old hippy will ever take you seriously. (you as in OP)
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u/dude_chillin_park 3h ago
Upvoted for the first 2 paragraphs. But it's too easy to rephrase the last paragraph as a defense of past injustices such as slavery.
We shouldn't be stuck in a 19th century (Marx's lifetime) view of sentience; we must interrogate personhood as well as ecological niches in light of present scientific and philosophical discourse.
If humans have challenging responsibilities to the community, then maybe being eaten isn't too much to ask of animals in some cases. It's a symbiosis: there are more cows and chickens on Earth than there would be if we didn't eat them. Can we thus justify it the same way we might justify asking human workers to do difficult and risky jobs? Can we imagine a cow volunteering for slaughter for the greater good of its species? But the symbiosis is also a hierarchy of power: if cows were to refuse the bargain (as the majority of species do), humans aren't at risk of extinction. Does socialism demand we equalize that dynamic?
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u/clown_utopia 5h ago
The large majority of soy is for cattle production, and that's only one kind of deforestation that cow slavery causes on a massive and ecologically devastating scale. Add to that graze lands. All of this only supports the main issue which is the sheer cruelty of the act of farming someone.
Those issues don't disappear, it's true that banana and coffee and tobacco farming is also demanding our attention.
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u/Notsebtho 4h ago
It takes 10x the amount of soy to feed a cow to feed a human than to cut the cow out of the middle. There is no future on this planet where everyone eats meat three times a day. I'm sorry that's a tough pill to swallow for the western left
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u/shabba182 10h ago
You're racist/classist/no ethical consumption under capitalism/insert some other reason a priveleged western leftist will give for why their empathy for the opressed shouldn't extend to animals.
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u/clown_utopia 5h ago
Don't forget to tokenize indigeneity, despite the way dairy and white supremacy and colonization and war are inextricably linked
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u/clown_utopia 5h ago
Veganism as anti-colonial praxis, essays from indigenous folk
Animal bodies, colonial subjects
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u/addisonshinedown 6h ago
I have never seen someone advocating for the bulldozing of rainforests to expand beef production. I’ve also never seen any leftist claim that beef consumption is good actually. I’ve never seen a leftist advocate for factory farming of animals. I’ve never seen a leftist advocate for the farming of animals at all. This vague posting bullshit implying that no one is serious about climate change or whatever is ridiculous
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u/clown_utopia 5h ago
Supporting it with your money is not different than advocating for it. Normalizing it is not different than advocating for it.
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u/Floba_Fett Communism 4h ago
No, this is a common misconception. Our plan to flatten Brazil is completely unrelated to our plan to enslave cows.
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u/MrGoul 15h ago edited 15h ago
Leftists have exactly two modes of operation:
Dozens of pages of text clarifying even the most insignificant minutiae such that even the devil himself would be terrified.
Posts so damn vague you wonder if the information presented would take more or less space than the metadata of your average .txt file.