This problem generalizes to other areas as well: increasing human populations almost certainly mean increased environmental strain, for example. I don’t want to digress into that too much, but I will say that I think you brought up a good response to this sort of critique: we shouldn’t assume too much about future causal chains. There is a great deal of awareness at the moment of both factory farming and climate change, and it is entirely possible that the effects of one additional human will be far lower than current states would project them to be.
Off the top of my head, I believe there are about 8-10 billion factory farmed animals consumed every year in the US—roughly 35 per person. Most of these are chickens, and I think we can say they lead net-negative lives (I simply do not believe non-breeder chickens are at a 4). There is no doubt that increasing the size of the US population would substantially increase the number of factory farmed animals, and an increase of 35 factory farmed animals per human is far from trivial. However, the good news is that the vast majority of lives extended by EAs are not in the US, and thus the increase in meat consumption their longer lives will produce is likely going to be sourced from animals with lives that are probably worth living.
I absolutely agree regarding animal charities. The potential is quite large simply due to the number of animals involved in factory farming and the quite poor conditions many of them live in. There are probably a relatively small number of humans who are actually living net negative lives. There are undoubtedly billions of animals who are living such lives. This alone should probably be a very important consideration for EAs.
Thanks, Zach! Point 3 seems especially important to me and something that I may highlight more in future articles.
I wanted to dive more into point 1 about environmental stress, but it’s so difficult! I genuinely don’t know whether eating beef is unethical or not—Compassion by the Pound’s welfare numbers are pretty positive for cows but their climate impact is much larger than chickens/pigs. I think it’s fairly clear that veal is bad, but hamburgers? It’s one question I’d like to see someone dive into.
This problem generalizes to other areas as well: increasing human populations almost certainly mean increased environmental strain, for example. I don’t want to digress into that too much, but I will say that I think you brought up a good response to this sort of critique: we shouldn’t assume too much about future causal chains. There is a great deal of awareness at the moment of both factory farming and climate change, and it is entirely possible that the effects of one additional human will be far lower than current states would project them to be.
Off the top of my head, I believe there are about 8-10 billion factory farmed animals consumed every year in the US—roughly 35 per person. Most of these are chickens, and I think we can say they lead net-negative lives (I simply do not believe non-breeder chickens are at a 4). There is no doubt that increasing the size of the US population would substantially increase the number of factory farmed animals, and an increase of 35 factory farmed animals per human is far from trivial. However, the good news is that the vast majority of lives extended by EAs are not in the US, and thus the increase in meat consumption their longer lives will produce is likely going to be sourced from animals with lives that are probably worth living.
I absolutely agree regarding animal charities. The potential is quite large simply due to the number of animals involved in factory farming and the quite poor conditions many of them live in. There are probably a relatively small number of humans who are actually living net negative lives. There are undoubtedly billions of animals who are living such lives. This alone should probably be a very important consideration for EAs.
Overall, great article!
Thanks, Zach! Point 3 seems especially important to me and something that I may highlight more in future articles.
I wanted to dive more into point 1 about environmental stress, but it’s so difficult! I genuinely don’t know whether eating beef is unethical or not—Compassion by the Pound’s welfare numbers are pretty positive for cows but their climate impact is much larger than chickens/pigs. I think it’s fairly clear that veal is bad, but hamburgers? It’s one question I’d like to see someone dive into.