Comments
This is a really interesting, thoughtful, and empathetic post.
But I had kinda the opposite objection to offsets lol. :-)
I very much applaud people who eat meat and donate to fight farmed animal cruelty. Such people have done, and can do, so much good for animals.
I just worry offsets may focus people on feeling guilty for eating meat. I don't think people need to feel guilty for eating meat. Animal cruelty isn't the fault of the consumer. Consumers want the animals they eat to be treated humanely. Indeed, consumers consistently pay extra for labels that suggest the animal was treated humanely. Animal cruelty is the fault of companies and executives that abuse animals. These companies often intentionally mislead consumers with humanewashing. Consumers should have the right to buy meat and assume the animal was treated humanely. Indeed, the general public has voted for laws against animal abuse! For example, cruelty is a crime in every single US state and, as Charles mentions, the public in many states has even explicitly banned things like battery cages via direct democracy. So whose fault is it when companies commit animal cruelty despite the law? In my mind, it's squarely the company's or its executive's fault—not the fault of the public that voted to outlaw cruelty and then attempted to buy products that the public thought were humane.
And I think that people feeling guilty for eating meat is, ironically, bad for animals. I have heard there is some research to suggest that when people feel guilty toward a group, it actually makes people less empathetic toward that group! It makes sense. If we think, "the other political party is hurting X group of people," we feel bad for X group and want to help them. If we think "my political party is hurting X group of people," our defense mechanisms kick in and we immediately start coming up with reasons why what we're doing to X people really isn't that bad, or is necessary, or is deserved, in order to protect our self image. Then we just try to think about something else, instead of intervening to help X group. It's usually easier to grapple with someone else's misdeeds than our own. So why encourage the public to think of Big Ag's misdeeds as their own?
I suspect that part of the reason the public does so little to improve the plight of animals in factory farms may be because many members of the public wrongly feel like they have no moral standing to complain about the treatment of animals because they already eat meat. This is just what animal abusers want the public to think.
I want to fight back against the idea that anyone who eats meat is part of the problem. I want everyone to feel like we are benevolent heroes who absolutely have moral standing to complain about Big Ag's treatment of animals. I think that's the best way to encourage people to fight back.
To be clear: I agree it is GREAT to help animals through donations!
And I think people should donate joyously and feel good about donating—not just feel like they're doing it to compensate or atone for something.
I also suspect that people who donate joyously may end up giving more than people who are donating to compensate or atone. Because if you enjoy something, you're inspired to do the maximum amount of it! If I feel great whenever I donate money, why would I stop at my "offset" amount? I'd keep giving until it no longer made me feel great (perhaps because it caused a noticeable decrease in my quality of life), which might end up being ten times the offset amount. What I've learned from fundraising is that most people who give a lot of money to charity seem to really enjoy giving money to charity! More broadly, I've noticed people tend to do more of any behavior that they enjoy. So I think we should frame donating as joyful and heroic, not some kind of duty or apology.
Plus, if someone sees their friend happily donating to a pro-animal charity, they may want to mimic their friend and join in on the donating. But if someone sees their friend sadly and shamefully donating out of guilt, I doubt they'll be inspired to mimic their friend and join in.
Lastly, blaming consumers deflects blame from meat companies for the companies' treatment of animals. Consumer-blame rhetoric lets meat companies claim they're only giving in to consumer demand. That's bad for animals. In reality, a single company has way more control over animal welfare than any consumer. A meat company can affect hundreds of millions or billions of animal lives by a decision the company makes on a random day. We should make sure activists, the public, lawmakers, and judges keep our focus on meat companies and work to change the behavior of meat companies, rather than getting distracted by thinking about consumers.
I got this idea from my friend and former colleague who is an environmental activist. She explained to me that the environmental movement used to focus on blaming consumers for buying products and encouraging consumers to recycle. She explained that it wasn't very effective and deflected blame from companies that actually have way more control over the environment than consumers. She said that the more modern trend in the environmental movement is to focus on holding companies accountable for their decisions, and encouraging the public to become activists. That has struck with me for a long time. If the animal movement is going to ask the public to do something, I want us to encourage the public to vote for pro-animal politicians, donate to pro-animal causes, and pressure companies to treat animals better. And I think the best way to get the public to do that is to focus the public on companies' behavior.
So I guess, I would push back on both this very thoughtful and kind post (because I don't think people need to go vegan if they care about animals) and also the very thoughtful and kind idea of offsets (because I don't blame the public for farmed animal cruelty).
To be clear, I applaud anyone who does anything to help animals—people who go vegan to help animals, people who donate to offset their meat eating to help animals, people who set up offsetting campaigns to help animals, and people who make EA Forum posts encouraging others to go vegan to help animals. I just predict that the best outcome for animals will come on focusing more on how much good we can do and less on how much we can blame ourselves.
Interested in others' thoughts on my perspective!
"Conservatively, each vegan might plausibly create/preserve 5-10 other vegans over the course of a lifetime"
The word 'might' is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. If veganism actually had this kind of multiplier, we would expect the number of vegans to grow by 5X each generation. Vegetarianism hasn't experienced this kind of generational growth. I think claiming veganism will have this growth rate is an extraordinary claim that would require extraordinary evidence.
[I say this as a lacto-veg who doesn't personally do offsetting, but tbh that is more from a moral purity vs harm minimization standpoint]
If every vegan turned 5 other people over the course of their lifetime, then we would only expect the number of vegans to grow something like 10x over a whole lifetime - 60 years or so - and the number of vegans has in fact grown enormously since the 1970s. Besides, many vegans who are included in surveys do not intend to stick with their diet, or do not want to seem "preachy," and so have less of an effect on their immediate circle.
However, population-level data on vegans is pretty spotty and you're right that I don't have any good evidence besides the Veganuary study cited in the piece, which only asked how many people surrounding the subject had tried veganism in a period of six months after the trial period.
The claim is primarily based on (1) my own experience, having been vegan for three years and having so far turned two close friends vegan and one vegetarian (2) my experience with professional activists, who can often turn one person vegan every week just by tabling for an hour or two. If you speak to other serious vegans (such as the commenter below who mentioned "several people") I suspect that they'll give you a similar number.
I think you're assuming that those converts stay veg*n, which seems moderately unlikely. I don't doubt that you are accurately reflecting your experience, but I do think you haven't seen the long-term effects.
This article claims around 82% of veg*ns eventually lapse, which means a 5X conversion rate is actually only enough to keep the movement steady. https://faunalytics.org/a-summary-of-faunalytics-study-of-current-and-former-vegetarians-and-vegans/
Given that Gallup polls have consistently shown 4-6% of US folks were vegetarian over the last 30 years, I think that approximate maintenance is more plausible than strong exponential growth.
Funny diversion, if you really think that a vegan will make 5 converts over their lifetime (who will do the same etc), then we are only 3 generations away from complete veganism (1% -> 5% -> 25% -> 100%). So the value of a marginal vegan matters less for their multiplier effect, since we'll be fully saturated in 3 generations anyways. The direct impact still matters, of course.
Right - the assumption here is that only a small minority of vegans (<10%) are currently committed and vocal enough to be actively convincing their friends and family. Like you said, the high recidivism rate has to be currently being counterbalanced by opposite forces to keep the population of vegans steady (which is more or less what we’ve observed over recent decades). And from conversations with other committed vegans, I think a big chunk of that “maintenance” is being accomplished by the persuasive efforts of committed vegans - which all EAs have the power to become!