Epistemic status: Some kind of fuzzy but important-feeling arguments
If one steps away from a very narrowly utilitarian perspective, I think the two are importantly disanalogous in a few ways, such that paying more attention to individual consumption of (factory farmed) animal products is justified.
The two are disanalogous from an offsetting perspective: Eating (factory farmed) animal products relatively directly results in an increase in animal suffering, and there is nothing that you can do to “undo” that suffering, even if you can “offset” it by donating to animal advocacy orgs. By contrast, if you cause some emissions and then pay for that amount of CO2 to be directly captured from the atmosphere, you’ve not harmed a single being. (Sure, there might be problems with real-world offsetting, but it’s at least possible in principle.)
I also think the two cases are disanalogous in terms of moral seriousness (h/t MHarris for bringing up the term in another comment.)
Relatedly to the offsetting point, while factory farming is in and of itself morally wrong, there is nothing intrinsically wrong about emitting CO2. The harmfulness of those emissions is only a contingent fact that depends on other’s emissions, the realities of the climate, and whether you later act to offset your emissions. Doing something that is much less obviously and necessarily wrong doesn’t indicate moral unseriousness as much as something that is much more obviously and necessarily wrong.
Consuming factory farmed animal products also indicates moral unseriousness much more strongly because it is so extremely cheap to reduce animal suffering by making slightly different choices . Often the only cost is that you have to make a change to your habits, and the food might subjectively taste a tiny bit worse. Refusing to make that tiny sacrifice seems very difficult to justify
By contrast, reducing emissions often means completely forgoing goods and services like flights, or paying significantly more for a more climate friendly version of something. Not wanting to suffer those inconveniences, especially when they negatively affect one’s ability to do good in other ways, is much less obviously a sign of moral unseriousness.
As a bonus bit of meta feedback: While skimming it was a bit hard for me to find the key cruxes / claims you were making, i.e. the post could have been structured a bit more clearly. Putting a good set of linked key takeways at the top could have solved much of this problem (and still could!).
The two are disanalogous from an offsetting perspective: Eating (factory farmed) animal products relatively directly results in an increase in animal suffering, and there is nothing that you can do to “undo” that suffering, even if you can “offset” it by donating to animal advocacy orgs. By contrast, if you cause some emissions and then pay for that amount of CO2 to be directly captured from the atmosphere, you’ve not harmed a single being.
This is only reasonable if you believe that causing x units of suffering and then preventing x units of suffering is worse than causing 0 suffering and allowing the other x units of suffering to continue. Actually, it’s probably wrong even with that premise. Suppose Alice spends a day doing vegan advocacy, so that ten people who would have each eaten one hamburger don’t eat them, but then she goes home and secretly eats ten hamburgers while no one is watching. Meanwhile, Brian leaves his air conditioner running while he’s away from home, emitting 1 ton of CO2, then realizes his mistake, feels guilty, and buys 1 ton of carbon offsets. In either case, there’s no more net harm than if both of them had done none of these actions, but according to your argument, Alice’s behavior is worse than Brian’s? Personally I consider these harms fungible and therefore Alice was net zero even if the hamburgers she ate came from a different cow than the ones the other people would’ve eaten.
Yes, that’s the narrowly utilitarian perspective (on the current margin). My point was that if you mix in even a little bit of common sense moral reasoning and/or moral uncertainty, causing x harm and preventing x harm is obviously more wrong than staying uninvolved. (To make this very obvious, imagine if someone beat their spouse but then donated to an anti-domestic abuse charity to offset this.) I guess I should have made it clearer that I wasn’t objecting to the utilitarian logic of it. But even from a purely utilitarian perspective, this matters because it can make a real difference to the optics of the behavior.
Epistemic status: Some kind of fuzzy but important-feeling arguments
If one steps away from a very narrowly utilitarian perspective, I think the two are importantly disanalogous in a few ways, such that paying more attention to individual consumption of (factory farmed) animal products is justified.
The two are disanalogous from an offsetting perspective: Eating (factory farmed) animal products relatively directly results in an increase in animal suffering, and there is nothing that you can do to “undo” that suffering, even if you can “offset” it by donating to animal advocacy orgs. By contrast, if you cause some emissions and then pay for that amount of CO2 to be directly captured from the atmosphere, you’ve not harmed a single being. (Sure, there might be problems with real-world offsetting, but it’s at least possible in principle.)
I also think the two cases are disanalogous in terms of moral seriousness (h/t MHarris for bringing up the term in another comment.)
Relatedly to the offsetting point, while factory farming is in and of itself morally wrong, there is nothing intrinsically wrong about emitting CO2. The harmfulness of those emissions is only a contingent fact that depends on other’s emissions, the realities of the climate, and whether you later act to offset your emissions. Doing something that is much less obviously and necessarily wrong doesn’t indicate moral unseriousness as much as something that is much more obviously and necessarily wrong.
Consuming factory farmed animal products also indicates moral unseriousness much more strongly because it is so extremely cheap to reduce animal suffering by making slightly different choices . Often the only cost is that you have to make a change to your habits, and the food might subjectively taste a tiny bit worse. Refusing to make that tiny sacrifice seems very difficult to justify
By contrast, reducing emissions often means completely forgoing goods and services like flights, or paying significantly more for a more climate friendly version of something. Not wanting to suffer those inconveniences, especially when they negatively affect one’s ability to do good in other ways, is much less obviously a sign of moral unseriousness.
As a bonus bit of meta feedback: While skimming it was a bit hard for me to find the key cruxes / claims you were making, i.e. the post could have been structured a bit more clearly. Putting a good set of linked key takeways at the top could have solved much of this problem (and still could!).
This is only reasonable if you believe that causing x units of suffering and then preventing x units of suffering is worse than causing 0 suffering and allowing the other x units of suffering to continue. Actually, it’s probably wrong even with that premise. Suppose Alice spends a day doing vegan advocacy, so that ten people who would have each eaten one hamburger don’t eat them, but then she goes home and secretly eats ten hamburgers while no one is watching. Meanwhile, Brian leaves his air conditioner running while he’s away from home, emitting 1 ton of CO2, then realizes his mistake, feels guilty, and buys 1 ton of carbon offsets. In either case, there’s no more net harm than if both of them had done none of these actions, but according to your argument, Alice’s behavior is worse than Brian’s? Personally I consider these harms fungible and therefore Alice was net zero even if the hamburgers she ate came from a different cow than the ones the other people would’ve eaten.
Yes, that’s the narrowly utilitarian perspective (on the current margin). My point was that if you mix in even a little bit of common sense moral reasoning and/or moral uncertainty, causing x harm and preventing x harm is obviously more wrong than staying uninvolved. (To make this very obvious, imagine if someone beat their spouse but then donated to an anti-domestic abuse charity to offset this.) I guess I should have made it clearer that I wasn’t objecting to the utilitarian logic of it. But even from a purely utilitarian perspective, this matters because it can make a real difference to the optics of the behavior.