Why your diet doesn’t make you more ecoconscious
The question of whether eating meat is “right” or “wrong” is particularly divisive. Since many of the billions of people on Earth rely mass food production (and all the mess that comes with that), many Westerners have come to believe that forgoing meat is one of the best courses of action available for fighting the climate crisis.
To support their stances, many invoke moral and ethical arguments to strong-arm the opposition into ideological alignment. This is why people so often attribute their dietary choices to their character. For example, hunters who harvest their own elk claim to be the most passionate conservationist and animal lovers, while those who choose to live by a plant-based diet believe the same of themselves.
In reality, the standards by which people choose their diets — carnivorous, omnivorous, pescatarian, vegetarian, vegan — vary with medical restrictions, traumatic experiences, environmental concerns, cultural, income level, and/or personal opposition to the harm or intentional killing of animals, and so much more. These factors are primarily why the idea that one person is better, more conscious, or more of an environmentalist than another for choosing a specific diet is, and will always be, disingenuous in efforts to combat climate change or animal welfare abuses. Let’s dig a little deeper into why this is.
The problem with moral and ethical arguments for “green” diets
Besides claims that eating a plant-based diet relieves the environmental burdens on communities in the Global South by eliminating livestock emissions and related arguments, many assert that eating non-human animals is a sort of ethical violation, akin to the “discrimination” faced by marginalized communities. But there’s a huge problem with this: There’s no objectively determined line dividing which forms of life deserve advocacy and which don’t.
Some choose to avoid eating mammals and birds, eating fish instead, for a variety of moral and environmental reasons. Yet, others choose to eat plants over fish, mammals, and birds, often citing moral reasons related to life’s intrinsic value. Even further, some refuse to consume anything coming from a non-human animal whatsoever, refusing all dairy products, and even honey, but again establishing vertebrates and non-vertebrates as more ethically considerable than plants and fungus. Why?
Consider this ethical slippery slope that reveals how arbitrarily humans draw the line between which species are morally relevant and which are not:
Timothy Hsiao, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at the University of Arkansas Grantham, defends the choice to eat meat primarily by referencing Kant-like ethics. Hsiao states that not all living organisms “have a welfare that matters morally” (Hsiao, 2015). He builds upon this statement to ultimately claim that the desire or necessity for the human consumption of meat outweighs any possible interests non-human animals could have. Hsiao’s justification of this is not a denial of non-human animals’ capability of feeling pain, he clarifies, but that their pain simply does not matter morally, as they are not rational creatures.
There are quite a few issues of arbitrariness with Hsiao’s argument, as pointed out by Stjin Bruers, Project Manager of Ecolife who holds a doctorate from Ghent University’s Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences.
To that point, Clare Palmer, British philosopher and professor at Texas A&M University, states that an organism which has the “ability to flourish… has an interest in doing so.” Palmer further explains, in the words of Gary Varner, that when an organism has interests this means that it has a “welfare or good of its own” and this good is morally considerable (Palmer, 2012). So, for Hsiao to not only acknowledge that non-human animals have interests, and then later to exclude them from the moral community (disqualifying them from being either moral agents or moral patients) simply due to the belief that they are incapable of rationality, makes him contradict himself and the argument for eating meat begins to crumble.
Hsiao develops a central criterion for determining moral considerability which is based in essentialism, speciesism and, frankly, a blatant denial of what scientists have observed in a number of extant animal species.
Hsiao claims that only humans have a “root capacity” — which leads to an “immediately exercisable capacity” — for rational thought.
(This argument alone is a blatant denial of studies that have demonstrated problem-solving skills in several bird species and rodents, and even emotional expression and language recognition in primates.)
One of the ways Hsiao says this “root capacity” for rational thought is expressed is through awareness, and acting on this awareness, according to the welfare of community members. Hsiao’s belief that non-human animals’ lack this awareness is disputed by any mammalian species which lives in group settings. Meerkats which stand as lookouts while others eat, and give an alarm call when predators are approaching; penguins which venture out for hunting fish, who return to their young and regurgitate it for feeding, rather than digesting it for itself; dolphins, wolves, bears, and more teach their young to hunt, arguably at their own expense to the benefit of their offsprings’ longevity.
These are all examples of species that act in a community setting in ways that appear to be for the benefit of all — or at least, individuals other than oneself. It may not be definitively altruistic, but there is a clear awareness of the welfare of community members, and abundant demonstrations of animals sustaining and protecting that welfare through behaviors such as feeding, teaching, and alarming or coming to each others’ defense.
Hsiao (2015) deepens his contradictions by acknowledging that animals are fully capable of feeling pain. To feel pain is an evolutionary necessity, as it allows an organism to avoid circumstances that would cause harm or death, therefore strengthening its survivability and fitness — regardless of the organism’s level of sentience. As stated earlier, this then means that there is an interest in avoiding pain. An interest that quite literally means life or death. Yet, Hsiao’s foundational argument is that human interests matter more — an argument, again, that is based on a denial of current scientific knowledge.
This brings an element of arbitrariness to Hsiao’s viewpoint (Bruers, 2015). The idea that human interests matter more than non-human animals’ cannot stand to any counter, as it is just as easy to retort that non-human animals’ interests matter more. An argument that is based on subjectivity and denial of empirically proven facts cannot stand against much.
Objective criteria over subjective morality
Bruers asserts that the question of which species matters more or “Who gets all the basic rights?” needs to change to “Which rights should we (moral agents) give to all individuals and entities?” The conversation needs to shift away from “humans are better/more important because…” because this type of mindset will always end in arbitrariness and a subjective moral opinion. What we need is an objective set of criteria by which rights for all living organisms can be determined and sustained.
The argument that eating meat is morally just because human interests matter more is no longer acceptable. Based on the analysis of the contradictory nature of this argument, it can be concluded that a truly morally “right” perspective would not even include vegetarianism or veganism. This is because plant species also have the ability to flourish, and so have an interest in doing so. What then gives humans the right to elevate their interests above those plants’?
That said, environmentalists, animal rights activists, and everyone in-between must stop presenting veganism and vegetarianism as the moral high ground in the context of global ecological degradation and the climate crisis. The argument does not stand up to scrutiny under an ethical microscope, and neither does it stand to objective questioning.
See, many vegan apologists portray the diet as a vital — even immediate — solution to the climate crisis. There are numerous problems with such an argument. Most notably, Western consumption of vegan products doesn’t stop:
- Disproportionate climate and environmental impacts between the Global North and Global South
- Cultural practices and pressures that cause conflict with local wildlife
- High energy consumption in Western nations
- Waste disposal practices
This is why ecological research needs to be a part of the discussion on the ethical aspects of any given diet and the factors driving that debate.
When ecological relationships are considered, then it is understandable that the human eats the cow, just as the lion eats the gazelle, and the deer eat the foliage. As long as our arguments are based on the “principle of arbitrariness,” though, we will not be able to justify a carnivorous diet, or anything, at that.
References
- Bruers, S. (2015). In defense of eating vegan. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 28(4), 705–717. doi:10.1007/s10806–015–9555-x
- Hsiao, T. (2015). In defense of eating meat. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 28(2), 277–291. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-015-9534-2
- Palmer, C. (2012). An overview of environmental ethics. In L.P. Pojman & P. Pojman (Eds.) Environmental ethics: Readings in theory and application (6th ed.), 10–35.
Jazmin “Sunny” Murphy is a freelance science writer and the owner of Black Flower Writing Services & Supplies. She writes science-based content for a broad range of industries, including pet care, cannabis, and sustainable living. Jazmin earned a B.S. Zoology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and so far has completed 21 units of the M.Sc. Environmental Policy and Management program at American Public University System. Since 2015, she’s written science communication web content for laypeople.
