meh
8
10
meh has not written any posts yet.
meh has not written any posts yet.
I'm sorry, but this argument seems rather confused to me.
Assuming some upper limit on the cost you're willing to pay to reduce carbon emissions, your best strategy is to choose the option that provides the greatest reduction for the least personal cost.
No, it's to choose the best n options, up to the point at which you reach your cost limit. Depending on the limit, and the options you face, n could be 0, or 20, or 100; but there's no particular reason to think it should be 1.
Of course, assuming a fixed upper bound on willingness to sacrifice runs counter to the idea that the sacrifices you're willing to bear should... (read more)
it needs to reduce emissions more effectively than other equally costly options.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but this still seems inaccurate to me. If there is a more effective yet equally costly option O, but the total benefit of O+Vegetarian is still greater than the total cost of O+Vegetarian, then Vegetarian is still worth it (as is O). Your framing seems to deny this.
My original question was an attempt to ascertain whether the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions was truly your primary reason for choosing vegetarianism
Yes. It was, and is. I guess there's an added benefit in terms of cost, but given that I don't care about the animals themselves, I really don't have... (read more)
It's not clear to me that vegetarianism would be the best choice
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?
it seems like it would be a bit too convenient if a comprehensive cost benefit analysis came out with the answer 'become a vegetarian'
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... (read more)
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".
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.
he doesn't really miss it any more so he didn't appear to be attempting to persuade anybody.
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?
Assuming I felt like it, it would depend significantly on the efficiency (particularly energy efficiency) of the production process.
I think that's an accurate characterization of my concerns. I didn't take the offset route for three main reasons.
I think we're pretty much in agreement. Any remaining differences are either trivial, semantic, or (at the risk of angering the Aumann Gods) "things reasonable people can disagree about".