Eating meat seems indirect enough that offsetting feels acceptable. When you purchase meat, the harm unfolds as follows: A farm reviews the previous year’s demand and decides to expand operations to supply another 1,000 chickens. Of course, this decision typically occurs for every 1,000th chicken sold. This level of indirectness feels similar to the harm caused by emitting CO₂ during a commute. For instance, my emissions might exacerbate a flood by 0.1% twenty years later, leading to one extra death for every 1,000 commutes on average.
One could classify a whole lot of harms as “indirect enough” under this logic. I’m hesitant to trot out examples involving serious mistreatment of human beings on the Forum. However, I submit that consideration of some examples along those lines would suggest that while “indirect enough” (as described in your post) may be a necessary precondition to offsetting being morally acceptable, it is not a sufficient precondition.
The CO2 hypothetical strikes me as meaningfully different. There’s a sustainable amount of CO2 emission, and certain forms of offsetting can ensure that your net contribution to CO2 emission does not exceed your fair share of the sustainable amount. In that scenario, you’re not violating the side constraint of taking more than your net fair share from the commons at all.
I continue to think many (but not all) offset calculations are too low in ways that may be problematic from a deontological perspective. For instance, some end up shifting much of the cost of one’s own morally problematic conduct onto third parties, which doesn’t seem to fit within a deontological framework. And standards for crediting impact need to be stricter here because multiple counting is a much more meaningful problem than when an altruistic donor is deciding where to donate. But that is somewhat of a different issue.
The other problem with the “indirect enough” argument is that the donations are even more indirect
Sure, the meat people eat is usually killed long before it’s ordered and eating a few dozen chickens per year doesn’t individually shift an industry. But likewise, a $1000 donation doesn’t meaningfully affect an advocacy charity’s ability to win a court case.
Both only work in aggregate, and on a causal basis the link between meat demand and factory farming is much more robustly-established than advocacy charity income and relative absence of factory farms[1]
And standards for crediting impact need to be stricter here because multiple counting is a much more meaningful problem than when an altruistic donor is deciding where to donate
This is a good point too. If you’re using donations to prioritise in a counterfactual scenario, what part of the outcome is actually “your impact” is irrelevant. If you’re using them to buy indulgences, that’s less obviously the case.
on a money basis it’s less certain, but I still don’t think vegan diets are dramatically more expensive than meat ones, and the DALY impact of eating half a chicken doesn’t seem to be very different from favourable estimates of DALY impact of a dollar donation to Legal Impact for Chickens…
One could classify a whole lot of harms as “indirect enough” under this logic. I’m hesitant to trot out examples involving serious mistreatment of human beings on the Forum. However, I submit that consideration of some examples along those lines would suggest that while “indirect enough” (as described in your post) may be a necessary precondition to offsetting being morally acceptable, it is not a sufficient precondition.
The CO2 hypothetical strikes me as meaningfully different. There’s a sustainable amount of CO2 emission, and certain forms of offsetting can ensure that your net contribution to CO2 emission does not exceed your fair share of the sustainable amount. In that scenario, you’re not violating the side constraint of taking more than your net fair share from the commons at all.
I continue to think many (but not all) offset calculations are too low in ways that may be problematic from a deontological perspective. For instance, some end up shifting much of the cost of one’s own morally problematic conduct onto third parties, which doesn’t seem to fit within a deontological framework. And standards for crediting impact need to be stricter here because multiple counting is a much more meaningful problem than when an altruistic donor is deciding where to donate. But that is somewhat of a different issue.
The other problem with the “indirect enough” argument is that the donations are even more indirect
Sure, the meat people eat is usually killed long before it’s ordered and eating a few dozen chickens per year doesn’t individually shift an industry. But likewise, a $1000 donation doesn’t meaningfully affect an advocacy charity’s ability to win a court case.
Both only work in aggregate, and on a causal basis the link between meat demand and factory farming is much more robustly-established than advocacy charity income and relative absence of factory farms[1]
This is a good point too. If you’re using donations to prioritise in a counterfactual scenario, what part of the outcome is actually “your impact” is irrelevant. If you’re using them to buy indulgences, that’s less obviously the case.
on a money basis it’s less certain, but I still don’t think vegan diets are dramatically more expensive than meat ones, and the DALY impact of eating half a chicken doesn’t seem to be very different from favourable estimates of DALY impact of a dollar donation to Legal Impact for Chickens…