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So... you're seriously trying to argue with me that giving people in the same line of business, with identical morality, outlook, and financial motivation $10 will magically result in less environmental damage than giving them $4, merely because they sell their $10 product with a little more greenwashing PR? Think about it this way... human nature MIGHT be more dramatically different between vegetarian and meat eater than it is between two farmers, one who sells asparagus and one who sells beef. Even more confusingly there are small time farmers who sell both plants and meats yet have about the same political outlook as they slop the hogs or spray the fields. Your ascribing a large difference in customers, which probably does exist, to somehow apply to a relative monoculture of suppliers, where I don't think a major difference exists. I'm not buying it. As a PR tool, yes for vegetarians its popular to publicize animal abuse and rivers of blood from slaughterhouses and such. That valuable PR tool WRT vegetarianism doesn't necessarily mean anything WRT environmentalism. The farmer spraying god knows what on his fields which you eat from is hardly the paragon of virtue just because you don't see any animal blood. Furthermore you're assuming I work at a greener company than most farmers. Possibly true to as many as half the people. Obviously, $10 of income causes 2.5 times more environmental damage than $4 of income. Finally the cold hard truth is for most people, food enviro damage doesn't matter compared to their giant SUV or obese mcmansion. Or obesity in general. I'm a mid size dude, in the tiniest highest conventional MPG car I could get, living in a small old house... I can eat ten steaks a day and not cause as much enviro damage via my lifestyle as one fat SUV driver who only eats (enormous quantities of) kale. Most people are like that, and their house, thermostat, car, and job swamp any food purchase effects by a large enough factor to ignore. Food works as a "guilt sells" PR tactic, its very Puritan, and its traditional to make americans guilty about their diet to control them. But I'm not buying it. I don't think the numbers fit reality. |