Memes

I don’t ask people I’m debating vegan adjacent topics with if they eat meat

I didn't ask if you were a vegan. I was asking why you're repeating arguments I've rebutted a dozen times in lemmy. We're deep enough that no random person is going to read this, so if you're just arguing for veganism, it can stop now. I need to know if the environmental argument is foundational to you before I waste time repeating stuff I've said plenty of times elsewhere, knowing you'll be the only person to read it.

To be honest, I've dealt with the classic 3-leg gishgallop of this topic (environment, health, ethics) enough that I'm learning to disengage fast. I just need to be sure there's value in the conversation before it just turns into that. That's not about voir dire. It's about Street Epistemology. If we're discussing something non-foundational to you, the conversation is frankly meaningless.

And frankly, I had to ask the question because you are bringing up infamous objections (like "land use" in full ignorance or negligence of marginal land) that are as much a staple of the vegan-missionary movement as... well, anything I hear out of pro-life arguments.

I am a vegan but I had been arguing against livestock use from an environmental perspective for many years before becoming a vegan or even a reductionist

Interesting. Are you of the position that there is no world where even a single livestock animal being consumed is *ever environmentally better than that same animal NOT being consumed? Do you have well-conceived answers to the symbiosis problem and animal population problem? I mean, is it a goal for the Western World's carbon impact to dip below pre-industrial levels, and do you genuinely think fossil fuel climate change can be circumvented by terraforming our methane footprint artificially? Is there a meaningful view here that might change, or will it remain secondary to your vegan ethical position?

Though after learning some ideas from utilitarianism related to statistics and commutative events as well as ideas from virtue ethics about modeling behavior and living heterodoxy my stance on boycotts or at least reduction in other areas has changed as well.

Peter Singer, I presume? This is actually a separate topic I have some experience discussing. I, too, am largely Utilitarian in my ethical foundation. But I do strongly reject his argument on many grounds. A rejection I don't want to intermingle with an environmental discussion, if you get my point above about how easily these discussions can turn into a 3-legged stool of constantly rotating complex discussions.

I’ll avoid responding to your arguments on the main subject because it would pressure you to respond when you’ve made it clear that you don’t want to continue having the discussion based on who I am

Sorry to steal your decision to use court terminology, but I object. I simply don't want to respond if you aren't arguing for the environment because it matters to you. I need to understand whether you being convinced that consuming some animals is good for the environment would CYV on anything at all, or if you'd just lean on "but I think it's wrong to consume animals".