Frankly, I don’t see a version of ‘climate change is good actually’ that just stops at 1 degree of warming. If you end up believing that human civilisation is bad for animals, I don’t really see a point where you apply the brakes short of wanting to end human civilisation that doesn’t look like severely motivated reasoning.
I’d add that the transitional effects of climate change look like they would have particularly negative effects on poor crop farmers in places like the Indian subcontinent who are unlikely to source much/any of their diet from factory farms, and relatively little effect on wealthy Western consumers who eat particularly large quantities of factory farmed meat (it’s even conceivable that price pressures resulting from shortages of some staple crops in some countries could benefit Western factory farms’ profitability...), so it’s really difficult to see the negative animal welfare impact of slowing climate change down a bit
I’m applying the brakes short of ending human civilization because, according to most experts, that’s not currently something that’s on track to happen (at least because of climate change). The world is currently on track for somewhere in the vicinity of 2.5 degrees of warming; my question is whether taking action to reduce that value by x degrees is a net positive or a net negative.
Yes, but if you’re concerned about animal suffering to the extent that you’d be willing to cause humans to suffer in order to mitigate it (as long as the math works out), then I think it’d be hard to get off the train that justifies ending all human lives, which will be a short-term blip that will improve wild and farmed animal suffering immensely.
I think the question is more, “do your philosophical views imply that ending all human civilization would be desirable?” as a gut check, rather than whether climate change is likely to lead to that. The implicit question is whether you are okay with philosophical views that imply it’s good to end human civilization.
Frankly, I don’t see a version of ‘climate change is good actually’ that just stops at 1 degree of warming. If you end up believing that human civilisation is bad for animals, I don’t really see a point where you apply the brakes short of wanting to end human civilisation that doesn’t look like severely motivated reasoning.
I’d add that the transitional effects of climate change look like they would have particularly negative effects on poor crop farmers in places like the Indian subcontinent who are unlikely to source much/any of their diet from factory farms, and relatively little effect on wealthy Western consumers who eat particularly large quantities of factory farmed meat (it’s even conceivable that price pressures resulting from shortages of some staple crops in some countries could benefit Western factory farms’ profitability...), so it’s really difficult to see the negative animal welfare impact of slowing climate change down a bit
I’m applying the brakes short of ending human civilization because, according to most experts, that’s not currently something that’s on track to happen (at least because of climate change). The world is currently on track for somewhere in the vicinity of 2.5 degrees of warming; my question is whether taking action to reduce that value by x degrees is a net positive or a net negative.
Yes, but if you’re concerned about animal suffering to the extent that you’d be willing to cause humans to suffer in order to mitigate it (as long as the math works out), then I think it’d be hard to get off the train that justifies ending all human lives, which will be a short-term blip that will improve wild and farmed animal suffering immensely.
I think the question is more, “do your philosophical views imply that ending all human civilization would be desirable?” as a gut check, rather than whether climate change is likely to lead to that. The implicit question is whether you are okay with philosophical views that imply it’s good to end human civilization.