As others pointed out, to build that many nuclear power plants that quickly would require 10x-ing the world’s construction capacity.

My counterpoint is that if we had “just got on with it” for solar, wind, and battery, we would have the capacity by now and the cost per kwh of that capacity would be approximately half as much as the same in nuclear. And we would have amortized the costs.

Except that nuclear isn’t the only, or even the cheapest, alternative to fossil fuels.

Oh awesome me too! How long have you been vegan? :)

Never. I eat the deer that has to die due to overpopulation. Flip-side, I’d say anyone who lets that meat rot is the one that isn’t an animal lover (and that includes vegans).

This whole “you can’t be an animal lover if you’re not a vegan” tripe is bullshit. But worse than being bullshit, you automatically lose whoever you were talking to from ever taking your side seriously even if you actually have good points.

Yeah I’ll be honest, i thought exactly the same as you about PETA before going vegan. But if you’re vegan, you’re intent on reducing the suffering of animals right?

I am not an anti-natalist. I am not willing to euthanize animals for some great aggregate goal. As an animal lover, both of those end goals of PETA disgust me. And I’m far from alone. The **only ** way to reduce animal suffering is to wipe them all out and re-engineer their natural habitats. I oppose that. I’m ok with a world where animals (including humans) suffer, but that we work to better things. We had a decent balance once, then it went to shit. I’m not about making it go MORE to shit.

So it’s not too much of a leap to imagine a world where the people with the most money and the most to lose have orchestrated an incredibly effective smear campaign.

You seem to be ignoring, or forgetting, my points. Every complaint I have presented is a first-party complaint against PETA by people who are not part of a smear campaign. So if you’re asking if I’m willing to believe the small animal shelter run by a good friend of mine is part of an “incredibly effective smear campaign”, I’m going to laugh you out the door.

That kind of nonsense reminds me of the people who used to cry about “the gay agenda”. I’m sorry.

I’m giving you the benefit of doubt and assuming you’re here in good faith

I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt of the same, but your last post has made it difficult. Requiring me to be a vegan to be an animal lover (when I mentioned being around nature-worshippers, it should have been obvious). Implying, perhaps unintentionally, that people I know are part of some giant smear campaign. No.

you must understand the commodification of sentient beings is absolutely unnecessary in 2023

What does anything have to do with mass-euthanasia? Are you actually “merciful depopulation”? That is very different from hunters culling overpopulated areas.

Annnnnd you just went full PETA on me.

I’m a huge animal lover, and have spent most of my life around literal nature worshippers. And I can’t think of one who could pull that “Dogs are objects in our society” PETA rhetoric with a straight face.

AKS is not just about pedigree dogs. Having personal involvement with the AKC rescue network, I don’t really care what the BBC might have said about them when the topic is PETA. AKC is ethically better positioned than PETA wrt rescue animals, full stop.

Also, I don’t see why I should. You listed 100 good things PETA did. I can probably pick my worst enemy and find a list of good things they did.

WHY are you finishing like this with a rant you started with me pointing to the experiences of people who run rescues? You sound like a talking head. No, ALL of the criticism of PETA I read on reddit come from individuals who hate PETA for their own valid reasons.

What about the other side of the coin. People who run shelters and rescues who have their own (from experience) criticisms about PETA? I remember a friend of mine who ran a rescue and had to arrange night transportation for a tentatively homed animal because the PETA shelter was going to euthanize in the morning. She was fucking pissed at them. Oh, and they wouldn’t stay open late for her to pick the dog up, and they wouldn’t let her pick the dog up first thing in the morning when they opened.

In fact, I’ve had the opportunity to know a lot of people involved in volunteering/running shelters, and they are as disgusted at PETA as apparently the meat industry is. Accusations of laziness, disinterest in the well-being of individual animals, etc. I remember one of the people dealing with them tell me “I think they’d euthenize a cow to prevent me from buying a bottle of its milk”.

Also, to point to the Chihuahua story (since I care about this one). Nobody who claims to care about animal welfare should be euthanizing animals on pickup because they were asked to by someone that isn’t their owner. My fucking VET won’t even euthanize a healthy dog, and will insist on rehoming it if the owner wants to get rid of it. As someone who has helped pick up stray animals to transport to a shelter, the disposition of the person requesting the pickup is always ignored. No, we will not put down that cat who had kittens in your wall. But we will take it away.

EDIT: Also, what about the AKC? People forget that it’s not just the meat industry, but animal rescue and animal rights groups, that criticize PETA.

That’s a symptom of too much caffeine…

I know, I have it.

And caffeine.

I agree, I love the idea of a brain chip, but not if someone can change licensing terms on something that’s INSTALLED in me.

junk science and fabricated propaganda… how?

Different discussion, and feel free to read my MANY other comments on this thread if you’re interested in my take on that. I said that’s how we see the vegan side. If you want to cover whether that opinion is accurate, my answer here is going to be RTFM in the other comments, sorry.

Besides the scientific consensus on the benefits of plant based diets on the environment, veganism is an ethical stance to stop unnecessary harm towards sentient beings

That “scientific consensus” has tons of asterisks. The consensus is that reducing global meat intake would have an environmental impact in a vacuum. And I agree with that. And as long as it’s not too many people “doing their part” by going vegan, go ahead. And as long as you don’t think that’s the ONLY thing you should be doing.

And no, veganism is not “an ethical stance to stop unnecessary harm towards sentient beings”, it’s just not eating animal products. And here’s how I can show that. If someone handed you a shotgun and said “this deer has to die; feel free to eat it. If you don’t kill it, 5 more animals will starve to death” what would you do? Trolley problem. If your stance is actually stopping unnecessary harm, you kill the deer and you feast. You kill the deer because it saves lives, and you feast because at least the death served a purpose directly.

If you don’t do those things, you’re not doing what you can to “stop unnecessary harm towards sentient beings”. But if you DO do those things, you’re not a vegan. Words have meanings, and vegan doesn’t mean “stop unnecessary harm”, it means “won’t eat animal products at all costs”.

The only science we need is to prove that plant based diets do that, and they do

I disagree. I think too much veganism, especially preachy veganism, costs more lives and causes more suffering. I see what overpopulation does every day, and I’ve seen many times how many animals die on a farm.

Also I’m definitely not pushing people away from veganism, I’ve been at this for a long time and the truth is you weren’t going to change your mind

No, I wasn’t going to change my mind because I’m educated on this matter and have been dealing with smug vegans for a decade now. Unlike a lot of dupes you might talk to, I have a background in philosophy and ethics, as well as at least some knowledge about agriculture and how farming actually works. But my wife toyed with veganism until she got annoyed by someone not very much unlike you. It led her to stop. She un-quit red meat, which was a huge win to me.

But think about this. Anyone on the fence who reads this comment chain is going to see the preachy vegans overreaching with what arguments they have and come to the not-quite-true conclusion that NONE of what you’re saying is accurate. Which is funny because we SHOULD still be trying to improve our overall relationship with food.

I’m just providing opposition to your points for everyone who reads this thread

Actually, quite the opposite. This all started because you insisted vegans aren’t smug. Readers can come to their own conclusions. At this point, I’m convinced any non-vegan reader will agree that you came across similar to a JW.

You do realise that meat-eaters eat animals that were killed for them to be eaten?

Yup. Animals that lived lives in the first place because they were going to be eaten. Why should anyone have an ethical problem with that? But honestly, I don’t think it’s just “were killed for them to be eaten” to you. I live in a deer population control zone. Hunters have a critical task of preventing deer overpopulation from devastating the area. Got any problems with the venison steak I had last week from deer that HAD to be killed?

Please explain to me how this is more empathetic than posting a meme that triggered some meat-eaters.

More empathetic? Because I’m not an anti-natalist. I know those animals would not have been born if not farmed. This is not a vacuum choice between “cows die” and “cows live”. It never was, and it never will be. I know that most of them live better lives and die easier than their non-domesticated counterparts. Ever watch a cat play with a mouse, slowly torturing it to death? My local farm (plants) have animals that do exactly that every day with the goal of killing off pest animals so they won’t destroy the harvest (a single pest animal like a squirrel can destroy 40 or 50 tomatoes in an hour).

Let’s go another way. Statistically, odds are pretty good that my death will be 100x worse than how a farm animal dies. So no, me being ok that death exists in our world is NOT a lack of empathy. You don’t get to make up my morals for me. The way I see it, giving farm animals a peaceful life is the height of empathy… so I look at you (your words) “triggering some meat-eaters” and note that statistically many of the people you go out of your way to “trigger” are going to end up dying long and painful battles with cancer. My view of empathy? Give them just a LITTLE bit more bloody peace while they’re alive.

Here’s my empathy. I fight for animal right laws. I strongly supported the free range chicken law that just passed in my state. I reject unethical and inhumane ways of treating and killing animals. But I’m not uneducated. I know how farming works. I know how the delicate relationship between agriculture and horticulture, while not perfect, leads to less death and less environmental impact than EITHER side of those alone.

Vegans are letting some crayola-colored dream be the enemy of good. And it’s nothing more than flat-earther, tinfoil, antivax gibberish to me. And I don’t care as long as they leave people alone.

JW’s would say the exact same thing to vegans. YOU think the issue is real, but all the rest of us see is you throwing around junk science and fabricated propaganda. Ultimately, you think you can force your morals on us because you think you’re better than us… and think we have no right to do the same to you. That’s where the “smug” part comes in. You know we’ve thought about the ethics. You know we might even be more educated in right-and-wrong than you are. But you don’t care what our conclusions were as long as they differ from yours. You’re infallible on that topic, are you?

Religion is a personal choice, but actions that harm others are not

You don’t think what you’re doing is harming people? Or is it that you don’t care because your ethics are more valuable than others are? Proslytization hurts people. Which means preachy vegans hurt people.

You can call it preachy but that’s how things get better.

You’re pushing people AWAY from veganism. I’ve been on a constant mission to improve my footprint, but every time I end up in an argument with a vegan I end up so exhausted by their zealous crap that I start questioning whether it’s worth all the effort I put into MY part of the environment. It literally just makes me want to go out of my way and eat a steak, but that’s not much better (but it is a little better) than what preachy vegans do.

I find vegans tend to have less empathy for their fellow man than we meat-eaters have for animals. It comes across as smug (and let’s be honest, it’s less insulting to call them smug).

Funny thing is that many of us feel the same way about vegans. We just want them to change and stop getting in our face like street preachers with what we consider to be flawed logic and more flawed ethical philosophy.

And the only way to do that is to keep standing up to vegans the same way we do JWs. It sucks because it’s exhausting and we just want to be left alone.

Are you from a farm town?

A supermajority of animal feed comes from the waste product of crops we that were being grown anyway, or grass from a fallow field that needs to be harvested anyway (not enough the latter due to logistics, but my local farms all do). That whole “8 to 1” calorie to cow thing leaves out the part that it’s 8 calories of landfill material to make 1 calorie of beef. Nobody has an “animal only” corn field. And nobody is using harsh animal-killing chemicals on the fallow fields.

And cows are still being fed things whether you eat them or not. We need their manure and it’s overall better for the environment than synthetic fertilizer. Without some form of fertilizer, we need much more farmland, which means more animals killed per calorie. All compared to 700,000 calories in a cow.

Unfortunately, nobody has ever demonstrated in a defensible manner that a horticulture-only scenario would be anywhere near as efficient on animal lives as what we have now. It’s one thing to cut animal intake 10%, entirely another to try to rebuild our farming industry without animals.

Most people who eat meat also eat some subset of vegetables and know they like/hate some other subset of vegetables.

The human body loves getting addicted to the unhealthy sugar carbs found in some plants, but our taste buds do tend to have a healthier long-term relationship with the umami balance you get more easily from meats and seafoods.

It was when better sandboxing came out and the only valid complaints about javascript became invalid.

I was there. It was a good time.