I directly address this objection in the essay (it’s the first if of my “other objections and responses”). Do you mind spelling out why you found this unconvincing?
It does not really seem to address the reasoning from my second paragraph. You say:
“Similarly, if people refused to consume any goods or services that were associated with net-positive greenhouse gas emissions, then those industries would rapidly decarbonize or go out of business.”,
but it seems to me that this would be way more costly for individuals than giving up on meat, in addition to leading to way larger economic damage in the short to medium term (without enough time for investments into replacement technologies to pay off).
“but it seems to me that this would be way more costly for individuals than giving up on meat”
This isn’t obvious to me. First, I think it’s likely that many vegans underrate the costs that going vegan would impose on many non-vegans. Second, even going vegan doesn’t completely eliminate one’s individual animal suffering footprint, since there are non-dietary channels in which individual consumption causes animal suffering. Going full Jain seems like it would be comparably burdensome to completely eliminating one’s gross carbon footprint.
I do think I agree that rapid decarbonization through individual consumption decisions would be more economically costly than rapid phaseout of animal agriculture, but I think that says more about the short-term tractability of the two problems than it says about the role of individual consumption in solving them. In any case, neither problem is, as a practical matter, going to be solved primarily via individual consumption choices, so I’m not sure too much hinges on this question. Locally, the effects are quite comparable.
I directly address this objection in the essay (it’s the first if of my “other objections and responses”). Do you mind spelling out why you found this unconvincing?
It does not really seem to address the reasoning from my second paragraph. You say:
“Similarly, if people refused to consume any goods or services that were associated with net-positive greenhouse gas emissions, then those industries would rapidly decarbonize or go out of business.”,
but it seems to me that this would be way more costly for individuals than giving up on meat, in addition to leading to way larger economic damage in the short to medium term (without enough time for investments into replacement technologies to pay off).
“but it seems to me that this would be way more costly for individuals than giving up on meat”
This isn’t obvious to me. First, I think it’s likely that many vegans underrate the costs that going vegan would impose on many non-vegans. Second, even going vegan doesn’t completely eliminate one’s individual animal suffering footprint, since there are non-dietary channels in which individual consumption causes animal suffering. Going full Jain seems like it would be comparably burdensome to completely eliminating one’s gross carbon footprint.
I do think I agree that rapid decarbonization through individual consumption decisions would be more economically costly than rapid phaseout of animal agriculture, but I think that says more about the short-term tractability of the two problems than it says about the role of individual consumption in solving them. In any case, neither problem is, as a practical matter, going to be solved primarily via individual consumption choices, so I’m not sure too much hinges on this question. Locally, the effects are quite comparable.