it would also reduce crop farming and associated rodent/insect deaths, which are more sentient than bivalves.
It’s not clear this is good rather than bad. Plausibly the population effects dominate, and they could be bad. Also, even the population effects are complicated and may be very context-specific, e.g. from Fischer and Lamey’s Field Deaths in Plant Agriculture:
The authors of the Argentinian study on grass mice implicitly raise a fourth problem. They note that the arrival of agriculture in central Argentina had increased the local populations of some field animals. “Some rodent species benefitted from the changes because of increased food availability and decreased predator abundance” (Cavia et al. 2005: 95). In other words, some of the animals killed by contemporary agriculture may owe their existence to the same systems that kill them. If they weren’t vulnerable to death via combine, owl, or poison, they wouldn’t have existed in the first place.
This class of wild animal welfare considerations affecting personal choice just seems like a lot (my concern does not apply to all of wild animal welfare, such as large scale policy or programs which seems good to research or explore).
I’m not sure what we can do with this right now.
One of the links advises eating rainforest cleared beef.
I’m down with eating beef because in many farms it’s possible beef cows have good lives.
But intentionally destroying rainforests just hurts from a lefty perspective. I can feel this in my bones. I think most EAs have the same aversion.
Is it good to have a system that brings about lots of sentient creatures and then kills some of them (ignoring the fact that this system feeds us)? Opinions may, of course vary, particularly between purist consequentialists and others; In my opinion it’s bad. This is one of the reasons I oppose factory farming, even though I believe every life to be “net positive”.
See also Brian Tomasik’s “How Does Vegetarianism Impact Wild-Animal Suffering?”
Again I’ll just note that Tomasik’s view stems from strictly consequentialist ethics. I’m not sure I view suffering caused by a creature’s natural habitat in the same light that I view suffering caused by humans.
It’s not clear this is good rather than bad. Plausibly the population effects dominate, and they could be bad. Also, even the population effects are complicated and may be very context-specific, e.g. from Fischer and Lamey’s Field Deaths in Plant Agriculture:
See also Brian Tomasik’s How Does Vegetarianism Impact Wild-Animal Suffering? and Crop Cultivation and Wild Animals among others, from a suffering-focused/negative utilitarian perspective.
The effects on wild aquatic animals are also complicated.
This class of wild animal welfare considerations affecting personal choice just seems like a lot (my concern does not apply to all of wild animal welfare, such as large scale policy or programs which seems good to research or explore).
I’m not sure what we can do with this right now.
One of the links advises eating rainforest cleared beef.
I’m down with eating beef because in many farms it’s possible beef cows have good lives.
But intentionally destroying rainforests just hurts from a lefty perspective. I can feel this in my bones. I think most EAs have the same aversion.
Is it good to have a system that brings about lots of sentient creatures and then kills some of them (ignoring the fact that this system feeds us)? Opinions may, of course vary, particularly between purist consequentialists and others; In my opinion it’s bad. This is one of the reasons I oppose factory farming, even though I believe every life to be “net positive”.
Again I’ll just note that Tomasik’s view stems from strictly consequentialist ethics. I’m not sure I view suffering caused by a creature’s natural habitat in the same light that I view suffering caused by humans.