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meh comments on Essay-Question Poll: Dietary Choices - Less Wrong
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Comments (234)
Would it be accurate to say that your primary concern is that there are negative externalities involved in meat production that are not reflected in the price of meat products? If the largest negative externality that concerns you is GHG emissions do you feel that your reasons for not eating meat would be eliminated if the negative externalities were priced in through some kind of energy tax or cap and trade system? Did you ever consider eating meat and purchasing carbon offsets to make up for the unpaid negative externality? It sounds like you don't miss meat much any more but you say that you used to enjoy it so presumably there would have been some additional price you would have been willing to pay in the form of a carbon offset or perhaps a charitable donation of some kind?
Question: Given current regulatory regimes, how effective is buying carbon offsets? My impression is "not particularly."
Furthermore, eating a more vegetarian diet does not compete with buying offsets. One could do both. In fact, because vegetarian food is often cheaper (and would be relatively cheaper still if wasteful agricultural subsidies were eliminated), eating more vegetarian leaves people more money for good causes.
The UK has a Quality Assurance Scheme for carbon offsets, which shows some promise, though I confess I don't know much about the details. Offsets must meet a variety of criteria, and approved providers are listed here (there are currently only 5).
If your main reason for eating a vegetarian diet is to reduce your carbon footprint, how effective is your dietary choice? My impression is "not particularly".
Implicit in my question was an assumption that the person making the choice places some inherent value on meat consumption (they like the taste, or they believe it has health benefits for example). If that is not the case then the question of environmental justifications is irrelevant if it is in fact true that eating vegetarian is cheaper.
Vegetarians who do not feel they are giving anything up by not eating meat and are indeed saving money have already adequately explained their choice. Bringing additional justifications related to environmental benefits is only relevant if they wish to persuade others who do feel they would be giving something up by giving up meat to become vegetarian.
The original poster seemed to be saying that giving up meat was originally motivated by environmental concerns and that it was initially a sacrifice ("I used to enjoy meat a lot") but that he doesn't really miss it any more so he didn't appear to be attempting to persuade anybody. My question was whether he considered alternative ways to alleviate the environmental concerns without paying the perceived cost of giving up a food that he enjoyed.
Is that impression based on anything in particular? The evidence that it will reduce one's individual carbon footprint seems fairly solid (see e.g. here) . The extent to which that translates, via reduced demand, into actual emission reductions is perhaps more arguable, but that doesn't seem to be what you're getting at. Conversely, there are rather more serious, and well-recognised concerns about the efficacy of offsets.
Actually, I think the fact that it's possible to adapt pretty easily to a meat-free diet strengthens the case for others doing (or at least trying) it.
P.S. What makes you assume I'm male?
Not really, I just suspect that if one's primary concern is reducing one's carbon footprint, it seems like it would be a bit too convenient if a comprehensive cost benefit analysis came out with the answer 'become a vegetarian'. That seems like an overly simple answer to a very complex question. All else being equal, eating less meat is probably going to reduce carbon emissions but were you to take into account the full picture (perhaps preferring locally sourced produce over imported, preferring food that you can walk to the store to buy over food that you have to drive to a specialty store to purchase, taking overall nutritional content into account, etc.) and consider other lifestyle changes in addition to dietary then I just find it unlikely that 'stop eating meat' is the uncomplicated best course of action.
I am prepared to believe that the answer to the question 'Will eating less meat tend to lower my carbon footprint?' is yes. I am very skeptical that the answer to the question 'All things considered, what is the best way for me to lower my carbon footprint?' is a simple 'Become a vegetarian'.
It's a data point for others to consider, sure.
Given the male/female ratio here (discussed at length elsewhere) it's my default assumption unless a username seems obviously male or female. In the absence of a good gender neutral pronoun I tend to use he, though in this case I did assume you were male.
Convenient for people who are vegetarians on other grounds, perhaps; not so much for me.
In any event, I don't think anyone was suggesting that vegetarianism is the single best way to reduce your carbon footprint. (The specific suggestion being made was presumably that becoming vegetarian was likely to be more effective than buying an equivalent tonnage of offsets. I think this was true when I became vegetarian, but perhaps the certification mechanisms for offsets have now improved enough that the real issue is cost.)
Whether vegetarianism could be the single best way for any given individual to reduce their carbon footprint will depend heavily on: (a) what margin you're working at (e.g. if you already don't drive or fly much, but eat a lot of red meat and dairy then it's more likely to have a large percentage impact); and (b) the relative value you place on the activities that you could scale back on (which will also vary from person to person).
To get somewhat more precise, the paper I linked to in my previous comment concludes:
Individual mileage will vary of course. Because my carbon footprint was already pretty low (around 1/4 to 1/3 of the US average), I estimated the reductions I could achieve by eliminating meat and dairy at somewhere around 20%. (Which pretty much did make it the best single option I had.)
FWIW, I'm a little unsure about the value of buying local for a couple of reasons.
Variation in production efficiency can swamp transport costs. The classic example here is that it's apparently more energy efficient to ship lamb from New Zealand than to produce it in the UK. (Though much of this apparently comes down to coal vs. hydro electricity generation, and won't apply to all forms of production.) More broadly, I worry that increasing demand for local products because they are local could incentivise inefficient production.
Large supermarket chains actually have pretty efficient distribution systems, and, as I understand it, most of the emissions from food transport tend to enter at the point-of-sale to front-door stage anyway.
(Not convinced it's bad, either. Just unsure about the size of the benefits.)
I'm not particularly advocating buying local as a better option, it was just an example of the kinds of factors that one might need to consider.
I tend to think that if there is a significant negative externality to carbon emissions that is not currently reflected in prices, the optimal solution would be to impose some kind of carbon tax to reflect that hidden cost. This would avoid the need for individuals to try and make complex cost benefit calculations for themselves on optimal carbon reducing choices.
I don't think it's very likely that it is politically feasible to implement such a tax though so if I considered the issue important I might attempt to make lifestyle choices that reduced my own personal impact. Under those circumstances I'd want to make choices efficiently. It's not clear to me that vegetarianism would be the best choice but since I don't consider reducing my own carbon footprint a priority I haven't done a lot of research on the issue.
Given that vegetarianism doesn't exclude other strategies for emissions reduction, I'm unclear why you think it's relevant whether or not it's the single best strategy. Surely all that's required is that it have a net positive effect?
Net positive taking into account all of the personal costs, yes. It's not enough that it merely reduces emissions, it needs to reduce emissions more effectively than other equally costly options. I get the sense that we're largely in agreement there though.
My original question was an attempt to ascertain whether the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions was truly your primary reason for choosing vegetarianism (with the choice made by weighing up the costs and benefits of various ways of reducing emissions) or whether it was a convenient 'added benefit' given a choice that was made partly or wholly for other reasons. The (seemingly) more common animal welfare justification for vegetarianism seems more directly linked to the particular decision to not eat meat than does a carbon emissions argument.
Forced to give a number, I would say it is 1/3 of my moral motivation for eating mostly vegetarian.
Your impression is wrong. See: http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~gidon/papers/nutri/nutri3.pdf and http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16573-eating-less-meat-could-cut-climate-costs.html and http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/27/opinion/27wed4.html?em&ex=1167368400&en=819c6a4e381eeb26&ei=5087%0A
Those links seem to address the question 'does a vegetarian diet reduce carbon emissions?' which is not quite the question I was asking. The relevant question is 'what is the most cost effective way for me to reduce my carbon emissions?'. A 'yes' answer to question 1 does not necessarily imply an 'eat a vegetarian diet' answer to question 2.
As an alternative example of the same kind of distinction, a 'yes' answer to the question 'does a Prius have lower emissions than my current car?' does not necessarily imply that the answer to the question 'what is the most cost effective way for me to reduce my carbon emissions?' is 'buy a Prius'.
I agree, of course, that we must take costs into accounts. Comments by meh basically explain how to think about that.
You said, in what I consider an unjustified mocking tone, that my dietary choice was "not particularly" effective in reducing my carbon footprint. This is wrong.
For the record, I never claimed, implied, or believed, it was the most efficient thing for every single person concerned about global warming to do. I believe my writing is very clear. I feel you are being an uncharitable discussion partner. At this rate, I will not continue discussing the issue with you.
I feel you misinterpreted my tone. When I said 'your' dietary choice I wasn't specifically addressing you - the thread was in response to meh's survey answers and you didn't mention your own diet in the comment I was responding to. I did realize in a later reply to meh that 'your' made the discussion sound unintentionally personal and so started using 'one's dietary choices' in place of 'your dietary choices'. If you re-read my comment with that substitution perhaps the tone comes across differently?
By echoing your use of the phrase "not particularly" I was trying to make a point that in the context of the thread your 'impression' that carbon offsets were not very effective carried no greater weight than my 'impression' that a vegetarian diet was not very effective. You've subsequently provided links to evidence that a vegetarian diet may be effective and so rebutted my point.
To be clear, the intent behind my questions is to elucidate to what extent people are choosing vegetarianism as a carefully thought out consequence of prior values (reduced environmental impact, minimizing harm to animals, etc.) and to what extent these are rationalizations for a choice made for other reasons.
I appreciate that you are making some adjustment to new evidence and therefore vote you up.
I acknowledge that the my moral calculations are far from the only thing driving my dietary decisions, the social motivations are interesting, and cut both ways. The fact that I have been exposed to, and learned how to cook, a delicious variety of vegetarian food certainly lessens the sacrifice I make. This is worthy of more discussion, though I may have to excuse myself from it at this point.
That said, I do believe I am, compared to the vast majority of people - even, I imagine, people on LW: 1. making better moral calculations regarding my dietary choices, 2. acting more in accordance with my moral calculations than other people.
Of course, most people probably believe those things about themselves.
I think that's an accurate characterization of my concerns. I didn't take the offset route for three main reasons.
Seconded. We're also helping to create a larger market for vegetarian food or vat meat and reducing stigma against vegetarians.