Most vegans still drive. Should they? Driving almost inevitably leads to roadkill on a massive scale. A painful way to go. Via Vox:
No one really knows how often animals are killed by cars in the US. But one thing’s clear: it happens a lot.
There are about 253,000 reported animal-vehicle accidents per year (that is, accidents that are substantial enough to cause damage to the car). Last year, State Farm estimated that about 1.2 million deer were killed by cars in total.
When you factor in small animals, the number climbs dramatically. No researchers have done a thorough nationwide count, but very rough estimates are that around 365 million vertebrates are killed per year.
Never mind the vastly larger number of insects painfully killed by cars, if insects can indeed feel pain.
The obvious rebuttal is: “Switching to a vegan diet is easy. Switching to a carless lifestyle is hard.” But this is fallacious binary thinking. Giving up cars entirely may be an enormous sacrifice, but cutting back on your driving by 20% is only a minor burden. And in the long-run, you can easily cut back much more. Move from the suburbs to a city, give up your car, and rely on walking, biking, and public transportation. That should slash your roadkill impact by at least 90%. And you’re living a lifestyle many strongly prefer to suburban living, so how bad can it be?
My point is two-fold.
The first: Most vegans are too hypocritical to follow their own principles to their logical conclusion. Given most self-identified vegetarians still eat meat, this is a rather obvious point, but as Herbert Spencer said, “[O]nly by varied iteration can alien conceptions be forced on reluctant minds.”
The second: Even morally scrupulous vegans are unlikely to follow their own principles to their logical conclusions. Which strongly suggests even they don’t find their principles all that convincing. And as I’ve said before, if even the most admirable advocates of a view ultimately find it unconvincing, that’s probably because the view is wrong.
Confession: I am always a little reluctant to point out additional onerous implications of moral views I deem unreasonable. Part of me says, “Believers are already suffering enough for their mistakes.” In the end, though, truth comes first. If causing major animal suffering for the sake of minor personal gain is morally wrong, then we’re driving far too much. And if you protest, “I can’t curtail my driving,” you’re just wrong.
READER COMMENTS
Adam Gerber
Jan 26 2022 at 10:35am
What are you suggesting is the “logical conclusion” of veganism? Don’t kill anything ever? That’s more Jainism than veganism.
Vegans are a diverse bunch and I’m sure they have a lot of different ‘logical conclusions’, just like people who are ‘free marketer’ may have diverse ‘logical conclusions’ that they’re willing to endorse.
I don’t know if there’s an official census on these things but judging by veganism’s strong liberal and lower income skew I would suspect that vegans do in general live in more urban environments and therefore drive less.
Alex
Jan 26 2022 at 10:52am
The vegans I know mostly do what you suggest (e.g. don’t own cars, live in urban areas, bike everywhere). They give me environmentalist reasons, rather than vegan reasons, for these life style choices so I think that you’re right that most vegans don’t see driving as an un-vegan thing to do.
KevinDC
Jan 26 2022 at 11:33am
I find this pretty unimpressive. I assume it’s at least partly motivated by Caplan’s various exchanges with Michael Huemer on this topic, given that he links to some of those exchanges, but if so, Caplan is continuing to engage a straw man. He argues here that being killed by being hit by a car is “painful way to go,” even suggesting it might be true of insects. I’m not convinced of this – I suspect that for most animals, being hit by a car results in a very quick death and usually far less painful that a natural death. A squirrel that gets run over by a truck dies much more quickly and with much less pain than a squirrel who gets caught by a fox. And the evidence that insect can’t feel pain is pretty overwhelming.
But even if he’s right that being killed by a car causes great pain, that carries no force against Huemer’s argument. As Huemer put it previously, Bryan’s argument seems predicated on insisting that vegans must believe if “factory farming is wrong, it’s wrong because it’s wrong to painfully kill sentient beings, not, e.g., because it’s wrong to raise them in conditions of almost constant suffering, nor because it’s wrong to create beings with net negative utility, etc.” But Huemer explicitly rejects the notion that what makes factory farming wrong is that it involves the painful killing of animals. He argues that it’s wrong because it keeps animals in conditions that cause them to experience constant pain and suffering for their entire lives. This doesn’t hold true for, say, a deer that lives a normal life in the wild until it’s hit by a car. So for Caplan to suggest vegans (or at least vegans persuaded by Huemer’s argument) are hypocritical because driving can result in the painful killing of animals is just a straw man.
Michael Stack
Jan 26 2022 at 11:56am
Great points. Also I don’t find it too persuasive that vegans have difficulty hewing to their own moral philosophy – I don’t think it tells us very much about the morality of eating animals.
Joe Denver
Jan 26 2022 at 12:18pm
Are you ok with hunting and consuming the meat of wild game?
Most hunters (at least in the first world) are very meticulous about killing animals as painlessly as possible.
If the answer is yes, then how can one be a vegan/vegetarian when eating meat is ok under certain circumstances?
If the answer is no, then what qualitatively makes killing an animal with a gun worse than with a car?
KevinDC
Jan 26 2022 at 12:51pm
Yes.
If something would be “ok under certain circumstances,” that doesn’t make it okay generally, and when the overwhelming majority of how it’s produced falls into the “not ok” bucket, I just avoid it altogether. Something like 99% of meat on the market comes from factory farms. If there is some product that’s produced unethically 99% of the time, and ethically 1% of the time, I’d just avoid that product. To quote Huemer again:
If 99% of quinoa was produced through the use of child slave labor, I’d just stop buying quinoa. If someone responded by saying “But 1% of the time quinoa is ethically produced, so how can you say you’re against buying quinoa when in some circumstances it would be ok?” I’d consider that to be pretty underwhelming.
I don’t think hunting is worse than killing an animal with a car. I have no particular quarrel with hunting.
Wade
Jan 26 2022 at 1:19pm
If you think car accidents are a relatively quick, painless way to go, you don’t know much about car accidents. Points of impact suffer tremendous blunt force, which is not immediately lethal unless it directly affects the brain stem or manages to stop the heart. If you’re not that lucky, failure of other organs will take longer to kill you, or you might just die of internal blood loss, and this sometimes takes hours, or even days. With the animals in question, there’s almost no hope of medical intervention or pain relief, as humans can usually expect after such a tragedy.
KevinDC
Jan 26 2022 at 1:28pm
What you say may very well be true, although I would distinguish between “car accidents” (of which I’ve been in one fairly nasty one before) as compared to “animal hit by a car.” I’ve witnessed several incidents of an animal being hit by a car, and in all cases, the animal appeared to have been killed instantly. But maybe I just saw a series of outliers. But still, as I mentioned in my comment, I could grant Caplan the point about animals suffering greatly as the result of car strikes rather than dying quickly, and his argument would still be flawed and fail to engage with Huemer’s case.
Eric Hammer
Feb 2 2022 at 2:30pm
Next time you see an animal hit, I would recommend getting out to check… it quite often is not quick at all. Deer especially are big enough not to die instantly via shock, but fragile enough not to walk it off. Rabbits, squirrels and ground hogs will live for a bit after having their hind quarters run over by a wheel.
Growing up in the country, I have known a number of people who have had to use either a gun they had with them, or one borrowed from a passer by, to put down a deer that had just crumpled the front of their car.
Ryan M
Jan 26 2022 at 4:49pm
All good arguments for the advocacy of more “humane” practices with respect to the consumption of meat. It would inevitably raise costs, but people might be convinced that the increase in cost is worth the better treatment of animals. And major organizations (with donors) might arise to offset those price increases.
Ultimately, the argument that we should adopt a vegan lifestyle must rest on something more inherent than pain of death or pain during life. Consider movies in which animals are humanized – I’ve always found these movies amusing, noting that they often maintain many features of the animal kingdom, such as animals eating one another, or humans hunting animals. Of course, in a world where animals essentially live like humans, with families and occupations, language, etc… the fox or the wolf or the eagle would be absolutely monstrous creatures, akin to murderous cannibals. The actual moral implications are horrific. But, of course, animals are not people, and so we suspend disbelief and allow for the obvious contradictions.But the vegan philosophy, in order to be at all coherent, must necessarily assert that there is no meaningful difference between man and animal (as distinctly opposed to the Judeo-Christian worldview of man as created in God’s image and therefore spiritually distinct from all animals). To kill an animal is murder every bit as much as it is to kill a human (except, apparently, infants still in the womb, but we’ll leave that aside for now). The biggest problem with this philosophical worldview is that it is obviously incorrect. Humans and animals are distinct in a great many ways. If eating meat is murder, then wolves and sharks and lions are all murderers as well… and, as the OP points out, driving your car is every bit the murderous activity as eating at McDonalds.
Interestingly, the most “humane” argument in favor of the “ethical” treatment of animals is that Judeo-Christian worldview, which holds that while man is created in God’s image, animals are also a part of God’s creation, and ought to be treated with a certain degree of respect – to be utilized by man, as is the environment, but also to be protected. Thus, the humane treatment of animals is well-justified, though it is subservient to the sustenance of mankind, just as a certain degree of environmentalism and conservationism is well-justified, though it is likewise subservient to the well-being of mankind.
KevinDC
Jan 26 2022 at 5:11pm
I disagree with you when you say this:
You don’t need to believe that the lives of human animals and non-human animals are of exactly equal value, or lack anything distinctive between them, in order to have a coherent argument for veganism or vegetarianism. I don’t actually know of a single vegan philosopher who argues “there is no meaningful difference between man and animal.” Instead, the argument asserts something more like “the differences between man and animal don’t justify inflicting massive amounts of pain and suffering on tens of billions of animals in order to gain some gustatory pleasure for humans.” This seems perfectly coherent, and doesn’t require the assertion you seem to think is necessary. The argument doesn’t require accepting that no relevant differences exist. It only requires accepting that the differences which exist don’t justify the meat industry that actually exists.
If you’re Tom Hanks stranded on the island in Cast Away, and the only way you can survive is by hunting the local animals, then sure, Michael Huemer and Peter Singer would say that you’re justified in doing so. They certainly wouldn’t argue that by hunting a wild boar you’re committing the equivalent of murdering a human. But the Cast Away situation is not the situation we are in, and that’s not the choice we face. If X is some activity that could be done ethically in principle, but in practice is overwhelmingly done in an unethical way, then you should avoid doing X in practice.
Kevin Jackson
Jan 26 2022 at 9:16pm
When reading the back and forth between Caplan and Huemer, I reached this exact conclusion, that Huemer does not assign any inherent value to any animal (human or otherwise). Instead, all that matters is capacity for suffering.
This is not the claim made above, that veganism REQUIRES such a belief. And I could certainly be misunderstanding Huemer. But I came by that conclusion honestly, so if that is not the impression you wish to give, then I would say you need to change the way you make the case for veganism.
Here’s a couple of questions that would help clarify things for me:
1. Is there anything wrong with pulling the wings off of a fly?
2. If we could genetically modify animals to remove their capacity for suffering, would it be okay to use factory farming methods to produce meat for consumption?
KevinDC
Jan 27 2022 at 12:07pm
Hello, fellow Kevin! Regarding:
Yes, I would say you’re misunderstanding Huemer. This section from Huemer’s first dialogue on ethical vegetarianism, where he simulates a debate between a meat-eater (M) and a vegan (V) should clear things up:
To answer your two questions:
I think the evidence that bugs don’t feel pain is pretty overwhelming, so it’s definitely not wrong in the same way that pulling the legs off a dog would be wrong. I still find it distasteful and think there’s something wrong with it in an aesthetic sense – if I met someone and learned they liked to spend their time pulling the limbs off insects, I’d find that deeply creepy and probably a sign that something wasn’t fully right with them, but that’s more instrumental than intrinsic.
Yes. And there are some animals that have no capacity to feel pain or experience suffering – oysters, scallops, clams, mussels, etc. They lack a central nervous system or brain, and are insentient and can’t feel pain anymore than a chickpea can. If someone genetically engineered pigs that had the same qualitative experience as oysters, then I’d have no issue with that. Similarly, lab grown meat, where a small tissue sample is taken from an animal and then grown in a lab into large quantities of meat, is perfectly fine. Both Huemer and Peter Singer have said the same too, so this isn’t some esoteric take on my part.
Ryan M
Jan 27 2022 at 1:19am
I get where you’re coming from, but I think it’s still pretty much a philosophy without any meaningful base. You can breed and slaughter animals, solely for the purpose of eating their meat, without imposing pain and suffering on any of them. If your underlying value is the reduction of pain and suffering, or, it’s flip-side, which would be the maximization of happiness and pleasure, and you further acknowledge that there is a pretty big difference in the qualitative value of human life vs. animal life, it would seem that the net benefit of eating meat is at least equal to (though probably higher than) the net benefit of vegetarianism – provided you’re able to “ethically source” your meat (you can define whatever that means).
Keep in mind that breeding animals that would not otherwise exist is pretty much a neutral act. The get to live for a period of time, and you may very well give them a pleasant existence, and they are generally indifferent to dying, especially if you can do so in a manner that does not cause pain and suffering.
This is why I referenced Judeo-Christian principles; without an overarching principle from which to derive your value judgements, you’re left with very little to set one outcome apart from the rest. I also find it interesting that they (I wasn’t sure if you’re making the argument on your own behalf or on behalf of others) would acknowledge that human life is different from animal life, such that killing an animal is not equal to killing another human being. Where exactly does that principle come from? It seems to be an “underlying principle” that is simply accepted without really having any source – in that sense, the morality derived from these principles is a bit random.
KevinDC
Jan 27 2022 at 11:10am
And if that is how meat was produced, I wouldn’t have become vegan. But that’s not how meat is produced, so I am vegan. If all animal products were suddenly produced without the tremendous pain and suffering they currently create, I might stop being vegan. I say “might” because it’s actually not clear to me anymore that, as you say, that “the net benefit of eating meat is at least equal to (though probably higher than) the net benefit of vegetarianism, – provided you’re able to ‘ethically source’ your meat.” Human tastebuds are remarkably adaptable. When you make a permanent change to the way you eat, the kinds of foods that appeal to you change as well. After a surprisingly brief adjustment period, I find that I enjoy the food I eat now somewhat more than how I used to eat.
I’m confused here. Are you suggesting that Judeo-Christian principles are the only possible way to derive valid value judgments? Because if so – well, I disagree, to put it mildly, but I doubt that particular debate is going to be settled in the comments of this blog. Or, are you suggesting that one just needs some way in general to derive value judgments? If so, fair enough, but I think that Mike Huemer’s book Ethical Intuitionism deals with the issue well enough – it’s worth a read if you haven’t done so already.
Ryan M
Jan 27 2022 at 1:07pm
You’d be surprised at how humanely meat can be produced. There are many companies that do this intentionally. Having grown up in Montana, I can tell you that Montana beef cattle generally lead pretty happy lives – and it is not difficult to source your meat from places where you know that the animals involved are being treated quite well. Same goes for chicken and just about any other meat.
And no, I was not saying that the Bible is the only possible manner of deriving a coherent system of morality. Although, as a Christian, I do believe that it is the only way of deriving a true system of morality, and of course I think that is important. It should go without saying that I disagree with Huemer on that topic (I disagree with Huemer on a great many things, while of course I agree with him on some – with conservatives/libertarians it is often big fights over small differences); while he may attempt to develop a system of morality based solely on logic, that system ultimately fails. At the end of the day, it has to be based on some sort of underlying truth. As an atheist, he will say that this cannot be God, or any god, but he still must rely on certain principles that are not logically derived but are simply assumed as underlying truths (though he will talk around these and never acknowledge them as such); thus, any system he arrives at will be inconsistent at best. Or, more realistically, it will essentially be the adoption of Judeo-Christian morality, scrubbed of any reference to God… which does not actually work.
Dylan
Jan 27 2022 at 3:17pm
@KevinDC – A practical question for you if you don’t mind. I’ve eaten a fairly vegetarian diet for much of the last 20 years. My wife is vegetarian (and an on again off again vegan), so the majority of our meals are veg and I don’t typically buy meat for home. On the taste front, this isn’t a big sacrifice, I generally prefer vegetarian meals anyway and never cared all that much for meat of any type. However, I find that my body disagrees somewhat. I’m good for a week or so without eating any meat, but beyond that point my digestive system starts rebelling and doesn’t seem to ever stop. I can go about a month or so before the running to the bathroom 10 times a day gets to be too much and I breakdown and get a sandwich to calm things down a bit.
Is that the kind of adjustment period you’re talking about, and it eventually passed for you? Cause, I’m pretty convinced on the ethical side, and there are other reasons beyond that make veganism appealing. But the gastro-distress is a high bar.
Eric Hanneken
Jan 27 2022 at 7:31am
I’ve read Huemer’s Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism. One of my reactions to it was to wonder why his argument is applied only to suffering. Isn’t it also wrong to shorten lives for trivial benefits? Causing an animal to suffer for its entire existence moves its enjoyment of life from positive to negative, for months or years. Why would it be okay to move its experience in the same direction but stop at zero? I’m not sure Bryan’s argument is wrong just because animals killed in road accidents don’t suffer (if that’s even true).
Ryan M
Jan 27 2022 at 1:11pm
Why is it assumed that these animals suffer for their entire existence? Interestingly, I think much of that is defined by “confinement.” Somewhat amusing, when, over the past 2 years, a great many so-called libertarians have supported unbelievably freedom-destroying government actions in the name of “safety,” while wholly ignoring individual cost/benefit analysis and quality of life. Regardless, I think we engage in some pretty nonsensical thinking, subconsciously saying: “well, I would certainly be miserable under those circumstances, so the animal must really be suffering.” But consider that when you’re breeding animals, these are lives that would not otherwise exist. We have very little reason to believe, in most cases, that those lives consist entirely of pain and suffering, and the actual slaughter of animals is generally quite humane.
Eric Hanneken
Jan 27 2022 at 2:22pm
I don’t know, Ryan. Having seen a few of the photos and videos from factory farms, I don’t think it’s tenable to remain agnostic on the question of whether the animals suffer. As for which is better: suffering that much or not existing, I don’t know how to answer that objectively, but it’s not obvious that the answer is the latter.
Eric Hanneken
Jan 27 2022 at 2:24pm
Er, it’s not obvious that the answer is the former.
Ryan M
Jan 27 2022 at 3:13pm
My point is not that one should be indifferent regarding the conditions of animals in factory farms, but that one should also not assume that the eating of meat necessarily requires that animals’ lives consist solely of “pain and suffering.” As I mentioned in a previous comment, it could very easily be argued that humans have an obligation to minimize suffering, just as they have an obligation to preserve their environment as much as reasonably possible.
I was making a distinction between the perfectly defensible attempt to minimize suffering and the somewhat more dubious philosophical outlook that fails to distinguish between humans and animals. The most understandable justification for any form of vegetarianism would be that you wish to minimize pain and suffering – but, if that is the case, I think the vegan would necessarily have to acknowledge that there are a great many options for meat-eaters to choose products that already minimize pain and suffering; or, more realistically, products that increase the “happiness” of the animals involved (these are animals who are bred specifically for meat, but who live perfectly comfortable lives and are slaughtered humanely). It is not necessary to refrain from eating meat altogether, when such options are readily available.
Simply saying that there are some conditions under which animals are made to suffer does not serve as any sort of legitimate condemnation of practices that do the opposite. Lobby against such practices; encourage people to give their business to more humane producers; if you wish to argue that people must refrain from eating meat altogether, a different philosophical basis is required… and that is much more difficult to articulate, much less to defend.
Andrew Clough
Jan 26 2022 at 11:35am
Most people’s moral philosophies seem to make strong distinction between intentional and accidental harm. Most people don’t kill their own farm animals but they do directly or indirectly commission a butcher to do it. By contrast no one driving intends to hit an animal.
Also, in terms of harm per year, driving is going to be pretty tiny compared to meat consumption or many other things we do.
I’m not a vegan. As far as I can tell modern farm cows seems to have lives worth living on net but industrially farmed chickens don’t so I eat beef but not chicken. But I don’t find vegan’s stances incoherent.
Martin
Jan 26 2022 at 11:47am
I don’t see the puzzle. The probability that you will kill a single vertebrate seems vanishingly small. I’d be surprised if that figures in the decision to drive of even the most ardent vegans.
The average American consumes > 100 kg of meat / year. Let’s say that one American reduces his meat consumption by > 99% to 1 kg of meat / year. And let’s say the same holds for his consumption of dairy, eggs etc. For all practical purposes you could call them a vegan or a vegan > 99% of the time.
If 365 million vertebrates are killed each year by driving then about slightly more than one vertebrate is killed by each American by driving. That seems comparable to the number of vertebrates killed by someone being a vegan > 99% of the time.
Brendan Long
Jan 26 2022 at 12:22pm
Many people make a moral distinction between doing things on purpose and by accident. If you intentional kill an animal, you’re (more) morally in the wrong than if you kill one by accident. I think in-practice this is how most people’s moral systems work.
The numbers above imply that the average American hits and kills 1.6 vertibrates per year[1]. Eating vegetarian prevents the deaths of 25 land animals, 12 large fish, 140 shellfish, and several hundred other sea animals as side effects[2]. This is a 1-2 order of magnitude difference depending on which animals you care about. I suspect the difference would be even higher if we measured all land animals that die as a side effect of growing food for other animals.
I think many vegans would be persuaded that killing 1.6 animals per year is worth trying to prevent by cutting back on driving (and improving visibility on roads, etc.). I also suspect the average vegan already drives much less than the US average, since they tend to be disproportionately bikers and environmentalists.
[1] There are ~230 million people in the United States with a drivers license (https://www.statista.com/statistics/191653/number-of-licensed-drivers-in-the-us-since-1988/)
[2] See the summary here https://countinganimals.com/how-many-animals-does-a-vegetarian-save/
Patrick Dwyer
Jan 26 2022 at 12:24pm
When eating meat, you deliberately kill animals whereas roadkill is an externality of driving. In my nearly 30 years of driving I don’t believe I’ve killed any animals other than insects. However, I’ve eaten lots of meat so the impact of eating meat is an order of magnitude higher than roadkill.
Parrhesia
Jan 26 2022 at 12:33pm
I find this unconvincing. You obviously believe that murdering other people is immoral. And yet, you continue to drive despite the fact that it kills tens of thousands of people every year. Why is this different?
Scott Sumner
Jan 26 2022 at 1:05pm
Yes, I’m confused too. The Bible says “blessed are the peacemakers”, and yet throughout history large numbers of Christians engage in warfare. Is the Bible wrong?
I suspect that Bryan is right that most vegetarians don’t give this issue much thought, but that has little bearing on the question of whether intentionally killing animals is wrong.
Here’s a claim I would agree with: Revealed preference suggests that most humans regard killing squirrels as being less bad than killing other humans.
Ryan M
Jan 26 2022 at 5:07pm
The Bible has to be taken in its entirety, not in bits and pieces. Jesus also says “the first shall be last,” and “the meek shall inherit the earth.” But he is not presenting an argument that weakness and failure are morally superior to strength and success. How many socialists like to take this one out of context: “surely it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” A full reading of the Bible makes it pretty clear that Jesus is not making a political statement with that passage.
So when he says “blessed are the peacemakers,” he is extolling an ideal. The Bible does a heck of a lot of that – it also engages in a lot of recognition of the fall; that the world we live in is not ideal, and hence our need for salvation. Blessed are the peacemakers does not mean that you should sit idly by while someone engages in evil – at that point, is your inaction, which may result in far more violence, justified by a refusal to personally engage in violence? This is why the Bible is not a pacifist document. Not because God says violence is good, but because it recognizes that violence exists, and that evil exists. Of course that is not a contradiction.
Note my comment with respect to the Bible and veganism. Probably not worth repeating all of that in this comment as well.
nobody.really
Jan 27 2022 at 1:27am
Wait–“peacemakers“? Are you sure?
Ryan M
Jan 27 2022 at 2:05am
I may be taking it too literally… Perhaps it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.
Simon
Jan 27 2022 at 4:29am
So many things in this argument don’t make sense.
I have been a vegan, I still don’t own a car. I can tell you being a vegan was a far, far, far bigger sacrifice than living without a car, which I don’t find in the least difficult.
I don’t have a car mainly because I don’t particularly want to kill humans or animals, even if it’s by accident, plus environmental concerns.
I now have numerous criticisms with regards to veganism, but saying that vegan drivers are hypocritical makes no sense whatsoever. Or at least no more so than any normal driver who isn’t a cannibal.
Jose Pablo
Jan 27 2022 at 8:47am
I find this Parrhesia’s comment very compelling:
1.35 million people are killed in road crashes every year. Around half of them pedestrians. Another 20-50 million suffer non-fatal injuries, often resulting in long-term disabilities. Which also means a lot of “suffering”.
And somehow I still feel that you can be strongly against killing humans to eat their flesh AND keep driving at the same time.
Actually what I found pretty irrational is that you stop driving BECAUSE you are against cannibalism.
Eric Hammer
Feb 2 2022 at 2:36pm
I suspect that if Bryan were to kill a person while driving he would cut back on driving for a bit. If he did it randomly as a matter of course, he would probably stop driving all together. Just because SOME drivers kill people doesn’t mean that you should stop driving, considering it is pretty easy to see if your driving is responsible for killing people.
On the other hand, lots of people run over squirrels etc. and hardly notice. (Although I will note that the small animals of Northern VA seemed remarkably good at negotiating roads. I literally saw a ground hog cross at an intersection in the cross walk after looking both ways in Herndon. It was kind of freaky.) Given that you can’t help but splatter a lot of bugs and are pretty likely to kill a number of small animals in any given year, if you value those animals at an appreciable fraction of human value, you probably should consider stopping.
Togo Tallikweb
Jan 26 2022 at 12:42pm
I’m bivalvegan, and much of Caplan’s thinking rings true.
Many vegans struggle to sort out where moral obligations vis-a-vis suffering animals should end.
If it’s wrong to eat animals, is it also wrong to build houses with windows, use most medicine, eat crops from pesticide-using farms?
You could do a cost-benefit analysis for each activity (e.g. I think avoiding factory-farmed meat will win over eschewing vehicular locomotion on cost-benefit grounds), but wherever you choose to draw the line of “morally OK” will be arbitrary.
—
But Caplan’s charge of hypocrisy would apply to most moral stances though(?)
Most people say it’s morally wrong to let Peter Singer’s fictional child drown, but do not act in accordance with that judgment.
As creatures evolutionarily optimized for self-preservation, it’s difficult to really adopt Rawls’ veil of ignorance.
But shouldn’t we try?
—
I wonder whether Caplan’s goal here in writing this is to:
– Nudge vegans to avoid hypocrisy by driving less; or
– Nudge vegans to avoid hypocrisy by eating meat.
If the goal is 2, why?
I understand if you don’t agree that we have a moral obligation to avoid meat. But do you really think a world with more factory-farmed animals is more desirable?(REPOSTING SINCE WORDPRESS DESTROYED POST FORMATTING)
Evan Witt
Jan 26 2022 at 1:21pm
Others have made what I think are interesting counter arguments (like the murder comparison), but the first two objections to pop off in my head were these:1. Effectiveness – Approximately 3.2 x 10^12 miles are driven nationwide each year. Using your number, this comes out to about one vertebrate killed per 8,900 miles driven. Assuming our potential vegan is a heavy driver (19,000 miles per year), this comes out to on average 2.2 vertebrates per year killed by their driving (rounding up). Taking your ‘easy steps’ to decrease their driving by 20% would on average save one vertebrate every two or three years. Compare this to just not eating chicken for two weeks. 2. Ethical Conviction – Personally, by far my bigger objection comes from this idea:
To me, this seems strongly unsupported. In my experience, *most* people don’
Evan Witt
Jan 26 2022 at 1:27pm
Oops, mis-typed!(continued)…most people don’t “follow their own principles to their logical conclusions”. That’s why ethics are such a headache: ethical consistency is really, really hard. That doesn’t mean their proponents don’t honestly find these principles convincing. I struggle greatly with eating a healthy diet; this doesn’t mean that I’m secretly unconvinced of the basics of nutritional science.
KevinDC
Jan 26 2022 at 3:53pm
Well said.
Evan Witt
Jan 26 2022 at 4:44pm
In Caplan’s defense, as a vegan-ish person, I have to admit that it’s possible that certain non-dietary actions may contribute to animal suffering more than I currently suspect (owning a cat? buying leather? traveling by airplane? A combination?). In a hypothetical world, Caplan could convince me that one of these activities did cause more animal harm than a carnivorous diet. It may be that I am more obligated to address one of these other activities, rather than my diet, and that I’m avoiding doing so because of personal comfort or convenience.
David Jinkins
Jan 26 2022 at 1:39pm
If you go looking for hypocracy, you will not have to look very long. That vegans aren’t morally perfect is not an argument against the claim that a vegan diet is more ethical than the consumption of factory farmed animal products.
Monica
Jan 26 2022 at 1:42pm
Hi Bryan,
Vegan here. First off, I very much appreciate meat eaters engaging in conversations about veganism–it is helpful for sharpening our own thinking and our strategies for persuasion alike, so thank you!
I have never been an absolutist. I happily take medicine and vaccines even when they were tested on animals and I recognize that many actions I take have negative impacts on animals. I am vegan because it is one of the most cost-effective steps I can take to reduce my estimate of suffering in the world–a very good thing in my book! You have rightly pointed out that there are other candidates for things I could do to reduce suffering and sometimes my reaction is yes and I am other animal advocates are working on it. But often not in quite the same way you suggest. You point out a lot of ways that our actions impact wild animals. Thinking about reducing the suffering of wild animals is extremely important, but our understanding of what can be done about it extremely limited. If, for example, we killed fewer deer with our cars, the population may explode and lead to mass starvation. Or it would cause the population of predators to explode and they might also eat other animals, leading to even more suffering. Or the average life of a deer might just be bad enough that we should not want them to exist in the same way we do not want factory farmed chickens to exist.
Maybe instead we should spend more effort to keep predator populations low or to eradicate diseases that plague animals or to provide wild animals with pain relief or to detect when they are injured and then swiftly euthanize them. I don’t know! Seems like the best thing we can do for now in terms of returns in suffering reduced per unit of effort/money is look into this problem more (or support others in doing so), and a some of us vegans are doing exactly that .
This leads me to what I find the strongest plausible objection to veganism, which is that it is possible that factory farming offsets wild animals lives that suffer more than it creates lives that suffer. I don’t personally believe that both because that is not congruent with my back-of-the-envelope estimates and because I am very skeptical of the ideas that insects are capable of suffering. But I could be wrong.
Even if I am wrong though, I hope you do not feel too sorry for us vegans. Every grocery store in America is jam packed with cheap and delicious options for us. I don’t find it remotely troubling to my philosophy to know that I can’t avoid harming every animal (any more than I would find it troubling to know that I can’t help every animal, human or otherwise). Even if we cannot achieve zero suffering, less suffering seems clearly better than more suffering.
Andrew_FL
Jan 26 2022 at 1:46pm
Unless you live in an area with a lot of deer it’s perfectly possible to drive and virtually never personally cause any roadkill.
Evan Witt
Jan 26 2022 at 2:28pm
I’m not convinced this is true. Deer may be the most obvious examples of roadkill, but I suspect that the vast majority of roadkill are very small vertebrates, especially birds and squirrels. I think most people would be very hard-pressed to say with certainty whether they have killed either of these two animals in the last year of driving.
Andrew_FL
Jan 26 2022 at 2:31pm
I’ve never run over any squirrels or birds. I hit a dog once that jumped in front of my car. Don’t know if he died, but I cried pretty hard.
jjap
Jan 26 2022 at 3:16pm
Caplan has defined veganism as something impossible , then called them all hypocrites.
The only true vegan in this view is someone who has committed suicide as soon as possible. Going to lengths (considered by most of society as extreme, pointless, and stupid) isn’t enough to show moral commitment. And therefore… what? It’s an absurd position and therefore logically wrong? Or untenable for some other reason? How does this not apply to ever other moral stance?
I don’t get it.
nobody.really
Jan 27 2022 at 1:12am
Is life a thorn?
Then count it not a whit.
Nay, count it not a whit;
man is well done with it.
Soon as he’s born,
he should all means assay
to put the plague away.
And I—war-worn,
poor captured fugitive—
my life most gladly give;
I might have had to live
another morn….
jjap
Jan 26 2022 at 3:18pm
As curiosity, Jainist monks are said to sweep the floor in front of them, so as to not accidentally step on insects. Your common variety vegan, too, is aware that their existance inevitibly contributes to suffering.
Chris Lawnsby
Jan 26 2022 at 3:32pm
Commenting without reading comments. Also not sure why I’m commenting; probably no one will read this anyway. Still:
I don’t think I’ve ever killed a mammal with my car. I killed a bird once, but I think that’s it, and I’ve driven 100,000s of miles. I’ve “killed” who knows how many chickens from eating meat throughout my life
Evan Witt
Jan 26 2022 at 4:47pm
I think Caplan is pretty wrong here, but I don’
Evan Witt
Jan 26 2022 at 4:49pm
(continued)… but I don’t think your objection here is a strong one. I suspect that most roadkill mammals are very small (e.g., small rodents), and I’m not convinced most drivers have a very accurate idea of whether they’ve killed a small squirrel during the past year of driving.
Dylan
Jan 27 2022 at 9:09am
I’m not sure I agree with you on either point.
(1) The only animal I’m aware of killing with a car was some kind of rodent that I hit when I was 16 or 17, and it was very noticeable that I hit it.
(2) If small rodents were being hit all the time by cars, I think I’d notice more. I live on a street with a LOT of rats (I’m next to a garbage transfer center) and a lot of heavy truck traffic. If there were a lot of rats getting hit by cars, this would be the place you would notice it, yet it has been pretty rare for me to see a rat or pigeon that’s been hit by a car.
Obviously anecdotal, and I haven’t owned a car for close to two decades, so my recent driving experience is limited.
Steve Brecher
Jan 26 2022 at 5:32pm
Bryan assumes vegans are motivated by ethical concerns. Indeed many are, but I eschew (I love that word in this context!) animal foods for health reasons.
To be persnickety: I’m a dietary vegan. I have some leather shoes and belts. Strict ethical vegans neither eat nor use any products of animals.
Peter
Jan 26 2022 at 6:24pm
You are using veganism as a synonym for vegetarianism, they are not the same thing even closely. You are a vegetarian.
Dylan
Jan 26 2022 at 7:06pm
The definition of vegan I’ve always seen is someone who doesn’t eat anything with animal products in it, while vegetarians eschew meat but will eat eggs and dairy. The exact definition of what counts as an animal product varies from vegan to vegan (some won’t eat honey for example). And reasons for being a vegan can vary a lot as well, from the ethical, to health, to environmental, to just not liking the taste of animal products. Ethical vegans are pretty likely to also avoid leather products, but those doing it for health reasons might not care.
nobody.really
Jan 27 2022 at 12:42am
My brother sez he became a vegetarian not because he loves animals–but because he really hates plants.
Jose Pablo
Jan 27 2022 at 8:40am
Do plants suffer more than insects?
If you eat only carnivores, are you avoiding more animal suffering that you are causing? Does this reasoning apply to carnivores of all age, or only if you eat “young carnivores”? (which are probably more tender, anyway)
Steve Brecher
Jan 31 2022 at 12:41pm
I’m happy with the description dietary vegan (italics added in this reply). Although some define vegans as a subset of vegetarians that doesn’t eat animal products, I think dietary vegan is clear and unambiguous.
uncertain
Jan 26 2022 at 5:58pm
Bryan, on what basis do you believe that the average vegan doesn’t drive 20% less than the average non-vegan?
Rob Rawlings
Jan 26 2022 at 5:58pm
There are over a hundred animals killed by the meat industry annually for every human in America. Based on the numbers in the post there is only about one roadkill per human. So the benefits of veganism easily outweigh the benefits of giving up car use.
Bryan appears to be claiming that if one is prepared to take a specific action in support of a goal then one is a hypocrite if one does not go further and take other possible actions even if the benefits towards the goal are much more marginal. If this claim were true then I guess not only all vegans but also all other humans would be deemed hypocrites!
Peter
Jan 26 2022 at 6:19pm
Given the adult vaccination status among vegans is near 100%, I think that alone speaks to their hypocrisy lol.
nobody.really
Jan 27 2022 at 12:38am
The first step in any analytical process is to clarify the question. In this case, roughly 80% of vegans are women. So the question is really a sub-species of the more general question, “Should women drive?”
Having clarified the question, the answer becomes self-evident, amIright?
(*Ducking*)
Giving
Jan 28 2022 at 8:22pm
There are many problems with the arguments Bryan makes on this issue, which, as other have hinted, mostly seem an exercise in whataboutism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
I.
First, as a thought experiment, let’s swap “vegans” for “non-cannibals”, and let’s imagine that the non-human animals killed by both cars and farming in our world were instead all humans.
That is, imagine we lived in a world in which more than 70 billion humans are killed for food each year, and an untold number of humans, hundreds of millions at least, are killed by cars. Imagine that more than 90 percent of people in this world are cannibals and drive, while a few percent are strict non-cannibals, refusing to eat other humans. Yet most non-cannibals still drive.
Now, what should we infer from the tendency of the non-cannibals to drive? That their non-cannibalism is misguided, and that they don’t even find their non-cannibalism convincing themselves?
When framed in this way, I suspect it’s clear to most people that, obviously, whatever failings the non-cannibals in this hypothetical world are guilty of do not undermine the soundness of their non-cannibalism.
II.
Back to our own world, there are a number of obvious points and questions worth raising.
First, as others have noted, it seems worth asking whether vegans in fact do drive as much as others. A quick Google search suggests that many ethical vegans in fact do try to limit their driving.
Second, it seems plausible that there are often good reasons to drive despite the risks. After all, driving also risks killing humans, yet most people with anthropocentric ethics still choose to drive despite the risks, including the risks to their own lives. Likewise, the instrumental benefits to driving might make the risks worthwhile from a non-anthropocentric perspective as well, such as when driving to do a job that can keep you a strong and healthy vegan role model (💪!), and which can enable you to fund effective charities, among other things.
Lastly, it seems likely that vegans are often just ignorant about the risks of driving, and that they therefore don’t take these risks adequately into consideration. But their being ignorant of these risks still doesn’t undermine or even challenge their veganism. After all, one could argue that most people are also ignorant about the true risks that driving poses to their own lives and to the lives of their fellow humans. But again, this obviously doesn’t imply that most humans are wrong to care about their own lives or that of other humans, let alone that they are wrong to insist on not eating them.
Magnus
Jan 29 2022 at 5:54am
[Resubmitting because the formatting got messed up for some reason.]
1. This post seems a case of whataboutism, an attempt to “discredit an opponent’s position by charging hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving the argument” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism).
2. A quick Google search suggests that many ethical vegans in fact do try to drive less.
3. Most people are willing to drive even though it also risks killing other humans and themselves.
3.a: This obviously doesn’t mean they are wrong to care about humans, let alone that they are wrong to insist on not eating them.
3.b: Such driving is often worthwhile and justified despite the risks, also from a non-anthropocentric perspective, e.g. driving to a job that can enable one to remain a strong and healthy vegan role model, to donate to effective charities, etc.
4. One can argue that most vegans are ignorant of the risks that driving poses to other beings, and that this is one of the main reasons they fail to act accordingly. Yet the same is plausibly true of most people’s driving from an anthropocentric perspective. That is, most people are probably ignorant about the real risks that driving poses to themselves and other people (e.g. few seem to act as though it’s the third greatest cause of death among 15 to 49 year olds https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death#causes-of-deaths-for-15-to-49-year-olds), and hence much of their driving behavior is also irrational relative to their own stated values. But again, this ignorance obviously does not mean that most people are wrong to care about other humans, or that they are wrong to take a principled stance against eating them.
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