Does the Ecological
Argument for Vegetarianism/Veganism work at all in Australia? Probably not
As I've written in a previous post of mine, it is not obvious that one can rationally defend the moral basis for any kind of 'ethical eating' habit, because even if if lots of people adopted your 'ethical eating' habit it would unambiguously be a good thing for your society, or for the world overall, that does not mean that your individual eating habits (your individual purchasing decisions at shops, cafes and restaurants, more precisely) are making any difference at all (http://writingsoftclaitken.blogspot.com.au/2016/08/a-short-essay-called-how-necessary.html). This is basically the same idea that motivates many to the conclusion that voting is irrational (in terms of self-interested rationality): tiny actions in giant societies are meaningless and inconsequential.
In that previous essay, I did ultimately
come to the conclusion that you could rationally defend the moral basis of a
lifestyle of ethical-eating plus activism for the cause, because that way you
would have a chance of actually having a nontrivial impact upon the world. But
in this essay, I will argue that there is probably no way at all of rationally
defending the moral basis of vegetarianism/veganism (even with activism) if you are an Australian,
because it is not clear at all that lots of Australians becoming vegetarians or
vegans would be a good thing for the precious ecology of our magnificent,
megadiverse continent.
When I wrote that old essay, I thought that it was pretty obviously true that lots of people becoming
vegetarians and vegans now would be a good thing ecologically, because, as we
all know, livestock is so inefficient, often highly destructive to ecosystems, the
cattle industry is responsible for a surprisingly large proportion of the world’s
carbon emissions (and cows produce a lot of methane too), and our oceans are,
without exception, totally fucked – desertified, decimated – so eating pretty
much any kind of non-farmed fish is effectively promoting a maritime holocaust.
More precisely: corn-fed cows consume a huge amount of food that could be set
aside for humans, potentially lifting hundreds of thousands from poverty; overgrazing
of cattle can lead to soil erosion and fuck up entire ecosystems, leading sometimes
to disaster [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overgrazing];
according to a well-known 2013 study by the Food and Agriculture Organisation
of the UN [http://www.fao.org/3/i3437e.pdf], the livestock sector overall produces roughly “14.5 percent
of human-induced GHG emissions”; and overfishing is bad m’kay [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overfishing].
The only problem is
that this is a global snapshot of the ecological impact of carnivorism, and I live
in Australia, and eat (I believe) primarily Australian fruit, vegetables and
grains. Australia is not the world. The following are the unique ecological
features of Australia relevant to the question of eating habits: it is the
world’s driest continent (apart from Antarctica); it it has very little fresh
water and one major, highly vulnerable, massively overpolluted and mistreated
river system, the Murray-Darling; it has the lowest soil fertility of any
continent (due to a deadly combination of the ancientness of the continent, the
lack of geological activity and the long-ago extinction of the megafauna
(absence of fertilisation and soil turn-over)), with only a small layer of
arable top soil in the best areas; the ENSO cycle means that most of Australia
is subject to a highly volatile climate, with drought always lurking around the
corner; sheep in Australia can be grazed on semi-desert areas, surviving off
saltbush; we have the least fertile oceans in the world; and we have tens of millions
of feral animals – rabbits (everywhere), cats (everywhere), goats (everywhere),
pigs (most National Parks in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria) , water
buffalo (mainly in NT), camels (all throughout the desert), brumbies (in the
Snowy Mountains) and wild deer (in Royal National Park and the Snowy Mountains)
– damaging, churning up, polluting and forever altering highly precious native ecosystems
all over the country, as well as competing with our various unique marsupial species.
Because of these
unique features of the ecology of Australia, I conclude the following:
·
An ecologically concerned Australian would ideally
avoid eating any crops which require heavy irrigation (and be an activist about
this).
·
An ecologically concerned Australian should be open to
eating feral rabbits, cats, goats, pigs, water buffalo, camels and brumbies,
and should think of this as an ethical decision (and be an activist about this).
·
An ecologically concerned Australian should ideally not be a
vegetarian or vegan (and should tell vegetarians or vegans that they should not
be either).
I am still a vegetarian, but I wonder if I should be. If
cats, goats, pigs, water buffalo, camels, wild deer and brumbies[1]
were sold at the supermarket, I would probably eat them.
[1] I
am aware of some people who think that the presence of brumbies in the Snowies
might have desirable ecological effects. I don’t know enough to have an opinion
on this.
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