Vegan Lass is Wrong: Deforestation, Palm Oil & Progress.
28 September 2016 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
ultimately the product is not what's for
lunch the product is not what's for dinner the product is you the question is not what is the plastic package snack you're going to buy today the question is what kind of person are you going to be what kind of person are you going to become what kind of difference are you aspiring to make in the world and what are you willing to sacrifice to make that happen in this video I'm going to disagree with the vegan lass on the topic of production of palm oil what palm oil and related sources of deforestation mean for vegans ethically politically etc in the year 2016 two disclaimers first as I've said recently in videos and as I may say again the prospect of politics absolutely relies on us being able to disagree without making enemies out of each other so obviously this is not a hate video directed towards Lauren there's no personal conflict between us whatsoever in terms of the drama demi-monde here it wasn't that long ago that people were saying on the internet that Lauren and I were an item that we were involved romantically despite the geographic distance between us i I don't know if I could love anyone enough to move to Scotland that would be a oh my god it's now it's going to happen right now I'm gonna fall in love with somebody in Scotland and move move back to Glasgow man my skin my skin crawls of the thought moving back to Scotland but people say it's gotten better people say it's got a lot better since I used to be there if we have to be able to talk about issues not just issues were relaxed about and comfortable talking about and familiar with but exactly the issues we are most passionate about we need to be able to talk about them without making friends into enemies without creating undue hostility without resorting to you know gross personal insults and defamation we have to that's what politics requires politics is easy when nobody cares about the issue it's exactly when you care passionately when you don't have your ID jab to objectivity we've lost track of what's an objective fact with route that's when it's difficult Duggan politics and that's what we got to talk about as vegans and otherwise disclaimer number two it's certainly peculiar for me that engaging with this issue and with so many others I end up kind of representing political science where I say look my background in political science real gives me an advantage to understand this issue it's a strange irony for me because I hate political science as an academic discipline I spend a lot of my time complaining about a lamenting that I have this diploma that's useless it can't get me any job political science diploma from Canada is totally worthless and definitely you know the state of the discipline within Canada is parlous at best it's a disaster political science Canada political science may be better in Germany or Ireland or where you're watching this video as a discipline like it's it's not that easy to generalize about from one country to the next but definitely in Canada it's a complete disaster and most of what I learned in in that discipline is really despite what was going on in the university not because of what was going on University so it's not like I can say to you political science is a wonderful subject if only more people would study political science they'd be able to see things my way not true at all I encourage you to major political science definitely not in Canada give a look this issue making claims about deforestation and the effects of consuming palm oil and then the you know ethical question of whether or not palm oil is vegan whether or not vegans should basically be active as supposing the production consumption of palm oil these arguments rely on extrapolation and many people including many vegans are uncomfortable with extrapolation as such they feel that it's somehow a fake statistic when they're looking at extrapolation and I saw this a great deal back when it was in vogue to discuss in debate some of the shocking claims that vegans made about the percentage of air pollution that was reduced the percentage of land use that was improved the percentage of water pollution that was reduced by eliminating meat agriculture so most those concern about the United States that were not about Europe but they must there must be similar statistical claims for Europe but where different foundations had crunched the numbers and figured out what percentage of for example air pollution would be mitigated improved to reduced by eliminating meat agriculture and many other knock-on effects now those claims relied on extrapolation what we mean by that it means that you don't look at the map and simply color in the areas that are currently devoted to meat production and then delete them you can't you know replace them with a white gap as if within the United States that pollution just cease to exist and nothing would replace it you have to extrapolate what would the land be used for if it were not being used to produce feed for animals or you know to slaughter the animals or for the all the different stages of the meat industry the leather industry etc so that adds up to a lot of land use a lot of air pollution land water pollution all the different stages of that industry it's a lot of math but the point is you can't just delete that number and replace it with zero as if the meat industry and its associated stage-by-stage industries along the supply chain as if it would be replaced by nothing right Suman likewise when you're looking at a particular impetus for deforestation a particular industry or crop like palm oil you can't say oh well if this wasn't a palm oil there would just be nothing there would be zero negative impact the environment it would be replaced by something and in general you're going to use a profile of the non-meat land uses that are likely to replace it given the location given the climate and given a few other economic factors now one of the clearest examples of this back when I was a kid there were many I guess it's a phony political science claims about of smoking and how much money the government would save if people just stopped smoking cigarettes so when these claims were phony is when they lacked extrapolation right so this is why extrapolation is so important there used to be newspapers that would say look this is how much money the government spends on smoking related deaths so there's also smoking related illnesses etc etc but just to keep this simple let's just say deaths okay so people dying of smoking related illnesses cost the government so many millions of dollars every year and then the newspapers would say oh so the government could save all this money because that will be reduced to zero if people just quit smoking now it would not be reduced to zero the point is you have to you can't replace it with a blank you can't replace it with a zero you need to fill in the gap with some kind of disease profile for all the other forms of mortality that those people would experience that the government would have costs for if they were not smoking cigarettes so for example uh people died in car accidents people die of heart disease many many other cause you can't replace the cost of the smoking related deaths with nothing you have to come up with some abstract some extrapolation some set of predictions about how many people would die of how many other causes and what those cost would be to the government in contrast to the cigarette related deaths right uh the same thing is true if you're looking at land use for growing rubber if you were not planting rubber there that doesn't mean that the land would become a Forest Preserve it just doesn't that's just ridiculous it also doesn't mean that the ecological impact would be zero uh with any you know jungle crop with any crop in that climate whether it's palm oil or rubber or frankly rice you know you can cut down the forest and grow rice if you say this one crop is responsible for why the forest is being cut down you then have to come up with some kind of extrapolation for okay well what if nobody was consuming palm oil they would be farming a different kind of oil to replace it there's a substitute there you have to deal with and geographically on the map if they were not farming palm oil in this place what would they be farming so where I was in Southeast Asia there was at that time a lot of forces being cut down replaced with rubber rubber plantations so if we use the same line of thinking you know failing to extrapolate failing to really think about this Durance political science you could very easily come to the conclusion Oh vegans should refuse to use rubber because rubber cuts down the forest and then once you cut down the forest you kill the orangutans and you kill the Tigers and you kill the elephants all this horrible impact happens from from from deforestation and this is being done for rubber now before they were planting rubber on those places they were planting other crops there were other basically fad economic theories people thought they would get rich from planting teak wood there was a time when people were planting opium talking about Laos Cambodia etc when they were cutting shale forest in order to farm opium and I have read articles for people who really argued that opium farming was better for the environment that rubber farming and so on there were especially anthropologists really liked that kind of art where they argue in favor of kind of traditional subsistence lifestyles or whatever traditional drug-dealing lifestyles um there were a lot of debates around that is rubber actually worse than the other crops that people could be trying to make money out of but the fundamental question here of land use is actually not going to be addressed at all by vilifying the one crop or pretending that if people did not farm that crop they would farm nothing or that the land would be returned to a pristine forest environment or even more expensive that these governments would devote money to making habitat conservation schemes on a huge scale like as if Malaysia is going to replace its entire palm oil industry or its entire rubber industry both are huge crops because the same climate etc with enormous National Park System that's just ridiculous right so you have to extrapolate what land use would replace the farming of palm oil or the farming of rubber or whatever the issue is that you're choosing so I do not believe that vegans should vilify rubber or or or palm oil the other thing you have to understand is economically for all of these countries if you're talking about real for us generally intact forest then deforestation economically is an end in itself the might a lot of money is made from cutting down the forest and other projects are often pursued as a pretext for cutting down the forests so where I was in Laos it was completely standard for the government to write contracts for example for building a highway or for building a new set of power lines it could be an underground power line could be a you know power line above ground the companies doing that would often be paid in lumber concessions so what this means is instead of the government of Laos paying them cash the government say okay if you build this road for us or if you build this power line for us we give you the right to cut down so many kilometers of forest along the route where the power line is are along the route where the road is going to be now this leads to really horrible consequences in public policy it leads to people building roads they don't need and building roads in the wrong places because then the company has an incentive not to build the road where it's actually useful or necessary or what have you but to build the road will make them the most money and where it will destroy the most old-growth forest same for powerlines and I did see specific examples of that there's one example of a power plant project that was going to destroy the only wild elephant conservation habitat that they had in all of Laos that I don't know if they went ahead with that project I left for her the end of that story it was like okay why do you think they're building the power line in exactly this place because it's one of the last places where the timber is really worth a lot of money so naturally on the map they're going to draw that line where it makes the most money and not where it's the easiest or most effective place to install power lines so you have first and if you're talking about old-growth forests and very often you're not very often you talk about clearing one crop for another you're talking about destroying rice farms in order to plant rubber trees because rubber trees are more profitable than rice or it seems that way at the moment or you're talking about destroying tobacco plantations all these places from tobacco because tobacco is less and less profitable and people think they can make more money at a palm oil so it's very easy to misrepresent the clearance of a tobacco land for palm oil as if you're talking about cutting down or growth for us when you're not and a lot of these statistics do that in a sense I don't blame them they're making their argument and anyone can read the fine print and figure out what's really going on but if you think that today in 2016 a country like Malaysia or Laos just has doodles of intact old-growth rainforest that's being cut down to convert from one type of crop that you're wrong you're dreaming in a country like Laos a country like Thailand you're already talking about 99% deforestation and we're really the only old-growth forest is in protected areas is in national parks so the type of ecological impact er devastation of it is is different okay finally I think that Lauren toward the end of her video the vegan last Lauren she she makes an argument that's implicit in the earlier part of argument that veganism is in her words quote about doing the least harm possible and it's not I actually disagree with that I recorded a couple of podcasts on this I think two different podcasts that went to patreon in response to questions I got from Jake Eames Jake Eames has deleted his YouTube channel since then which is a shame he had a couple of really good videos um but Jake Eames used to ask me a lot of questions along these lines that isn't veganism about doing as close to zero harm as possible and Jake was worried about stuff like plastic bottles right well you know is it vegan is it ethical to be using plastic bottles that end up either being recycled or put in a landfill or whatever I think it gets recycled does it really get recycled after I part ways this bottle who knows um I'd like to imagine it actually gets recycled and it goes into a recycling bin but I don't know yeah there is real ecological harm done by the use of plastic bottles what's the substitute what's the alternative and what's the ethical decision for me to make there is real or collage achill harms done by taking airplanes airplane transport is one of the most ecologically harmful things you can do in your life as a human being is it worth it my life is actually not about minimizing harm my life is about making hard choices about doing harm about you know committing to harm the environment to harm the world to make the world a worse place in pursuit of positive goals in pursuit of goals that I think may be worth it is is it worthwhile for me to take an airplane from Canada to China well if it's from my own education I think the answer is yes if it's actually study in a university or teach in a university or learn Chinese or learn something about the ethnic minorities here the politics the history etc obviously it could be enormous ly rewarding you could be talking about in my case one airplane ticket in a year it does harm the environment but I'm doing something really that I think is meaningful and important hypothetical example do I actually believe that what I'm doing in China right now is meaningful and important I have a somewhat sardonic attitude towards my my current educational options as the how to know the least awful of my options that were open to me but I am learning a lot here in China I'm not on vacation it is very different ethically are you just taking airplane trip for fun or they're real outcomes are you pursuing a humanitarian and eight are you running a charity where you take a whole bunch of flights but you're taking those flights to make the world a better place you're using a whole lot of plastic bottles but it's to make the world a better place it's in pursuit of some public policy goal some political goal that's really worthwhile uh real life is about exploiting yourself and exploiting your environment to try to accomplish something meaningful and real and important and there are real costs there are real impacts that signs you can't mitigate because there is no better substitute I do not have a better alternative to you then plastic bottles I don't I don't have a better alternative to an airplane I don't if there was one I'd take it if I can take a blimp that has way less impact in the environment it takes twice as long I'd look at that if I could afford it I actually do not have a substitute for the airplane and when things like palm oil when you look into it are the substitutes really better maybe maybe if you live in Canada you can make the argument that canola oil really is a morally superior substitute DePalma I doubt it I doubt it I think that the deforestation of Canada and the exploitation of our land to produce canola oil is probably just as problematic as what you get with palm oil I think he said canola oil is a type of oil we grow in Canada rapeseed oil etc I've never seen someone making these arguments about palm oil by actually extrapolating what the comparative costs and impacts would be of using instead rapeseed oil canola oil other types of oil and that's exactly what you have to do for the same reasons why with the examples cigarette smoking you have to look at the other causes of death the other costs and what that means for the government you have to look at you have to put it in that comparative context to make the argument there is a better substitute available um with political science ultimately it all comes down to war and peace the costs and the impacts of pursuing a war are unbelievably terrible including ecologically um if you think that governments fail to conserve power or fail to conserve fuel or gasoline when they you know and when they generate electricity in peacetime as soon as there's war involved the loss of human life is tremendous but believe me the waste of for example gasoline is unbelievable and difficult to imagine but if you make the decision yes we need to pursue this war yes we need to win this war for some incredibly more the important reason then that is the commitment you're making and so likewise it's not about doing the least time possible there's no way you can pursue a war by saying well we're going to do the least time possible going to use the least gas think possible you're going to look at you know the loss of human life being minimized but all those other considerations are going to fall by the wayside naturally so the fundamental question is positively what I'm trying to accomplish is that worth it and then you have to look at the impacts beneath that if you are trying to accomplish something positive in your life then taking an airplane using a plastic bottle or joining the army and fighting a war those are all the kinds of hard decisions you need to make it doesn't mean that consumer choices are meaningless as a vegan I think they're tremendously meaningful I think that you know substituting tofu for beef is a tremendously meaningful tremendously important thing for all of us to do in our lives and that does stand up to these tests these issues of extrapolation of looking at you know the whole life cycle every stage of the supply chain what happens etc so there are some decisions on life that are tremendously meaningful however you know most of us are not in a position to just say well airplanes are bad for the environment therefore I'm going to take a boat I met a man who took a boat I think he said it took more than three months from Srilanka to Europe most of us don't have the option of taking a three month boat journey even though I do believe if you scale it up the ecological impact of millions of people traveling by boat instead of by airplane would be very positive right so what are the real substitutions you can't make what are the real moral options you have and then you have to extrapolate for if you take that substitute what are the real impacts even with that boat the boat is polluting the atmosphere much less but on the other hand you're eating three meals a day on a boat for three months so there's an economic and ecological impact just from the amount of time and food you're passing by taking this incredibly inefficient form of transport even though doubtless you know atmospheric emissions impact on the Earth's upper atmosphere is much much better with boat transport than by airplane transport but we can extrapolate if millions of people were taking month long boat journeys instead of airplane journeys that are only a couple of hours what are the real impacts of the whole Rolle even for just all the food being consumed on all those boats etc etc uh life is messy life is full of hard choices and that's why you need to focus on the outcomes you're pursuing why are you fighting the war why are you trying to win the war what are the humanitarian outcomes you're pursuing what are the educational comes to pursuing what is the type of human being you are trying to become you need to focus on that and not focus on just minimizing harm I sympathize with both sides on this one but I want to stay even more clearly what my conclusion is here and why I'm bothering to conclude it why I bother to explain these things to you at such great length altum Utley the product is not what's for lunch the product is not what's for dinner the product is you the question is not what is the plastic package snack you're going to buy today the question is what kind of person are you going to be what kind of person are you going to become what kind of difference are you aspiring to make in the world and what are you willing to sacrifice to make that happen in terms of time money effort intelligence suffering sorrow you name it I totally sympathize with once you get into the mentality of consumer activism once you realize that the choices and what you buy make a big difference that you decide being vegan is not enough and that you're also going to try to eliminate palm oil and you're also going to try to eliminate plastic and unnecessary packaging and you're going to try to eliminate plane tickets I completely understand that I completely sympathize with that because the people who think that way like myself are on a trajectory where they're trying to lead a morally good life they're trying to make a positive difference in the world and trying to mitigate or minimize the negative impacts that world I appreciate that I sympathize with that but I think you can fall into a trap and this very commonly happens with people have more of a spiritual background who maybe approach veganism via Hinduism or via a yoga mat Hinduism Hinduism message from watered down and popularized among white Western people it's really easy to fall into a trap where you're just thinking about personal purity and when you're just thinking about minimizing harm and what you need to do is take the naps next step and not just think how can I use les you have to think about how can I have the optimal outcomes impact how can I make the most positive difference how much am i using up is a question worth asking and I ask myself that all the time but what use am I putting myself to what use am I putting this plane ticket towards what use am i putting the food I eat in the water I drink towards is ultimately the much more meaningful question because it comes pretty close to the meaning of life itself you have to be objective oriented you have to be goal oriented and once you are thinking in terms of those positive goals you're trying to accomplish I think it puts these problems like palm oil into a very different perspective if you want to deal with deforestation deal with deforestation research deforestation become an activist involved in deforestation if you want to deal with deforestation in Malaysia or Laos or Cambodia or Thailand then that's the issue that's what you have to tackle that's what you have to learn about and that's ultimately what you have to get involved with and get politically organized to make a difference about whether you are a scientist or you work at Starbucks or you're studying language or art or architecture whatever your situation is in life if deforestation is the issue then you look at your own life you look at the tool kit you've got how you can make a difference right and yeah plastic bottles and what kind of oil your snacks are made of those are going to become relatively trivial questions when you're on that road to actually make that positive difference don't start from the assumption that you're a disempowered passive person it were the only difference you can make is through the choices you make as a consumer even though as vegans we tend to put those consumer choices first and foremost front and center because of the emphasis we place on a course eliminating meat and dairy from our lives it's a trap it's a trap that a lot of people don't realize they've fallen into because you think I want to be good I want to make a positive difference in the world what you end up doing is exclusively thinking in terms of a negative difference in the world in terms of what you eliminate from your diet in terms of what you eliminate from your consumption habits and instead what you need to get positively engaged with the real issue whatever that issue is whether that issue is orangutans and tigers and elephants and preserving habitat for them because ultimately that can only come about through a positive change through government programs or private charity programs that should buy the land and own and operate habitat conservation agencies so that those elephants tigers ranges have place to live it's never going to come about through simply reducing the oil in your diet no matter what oil that is palm oil otherwise it's never going to come about by vegans deciding they can't buy rubber because rubber plantations do eliminate Tiger habitat also etc etc can never come about through those merely negative changes in your life it has to come about through positive engagement the first thing that happens is that positive engagement is your own education you learn how that's have agriculture works how those types of government policies work etc it said you learn how you can and can't make a difference in the world and that positive engagement takes guts it takes time it takes energy it's all in another level from simply the decisions you make every day at the corner store and I encourage all of you to take the time whether through Google just sitting now on your living room chair to learn more about these things if you care to learn about where you can and can't make a difference but at the end of the day those are also part of the hard decisions you have to make you can't commit to every cause you can't make every positive difference at some point you have to draw the line in your life and say okay I'm engaged with humanitarian issues and deforestation and Laos but not Malaysia and for someone else is going to be Malaysia but not Laos etc etc so those that's also in the realm of those tough decisions you get informed you get engaged you get active but then you also choose what issues you're going to remain ignorant about you're going to remain disengaged about where you can't possibly make a difference the end of the day you got to buy that ball water you got to waste that plastic you got to burn that airplane fuel because if you're positively engaged in the world you don't want to do it half-assed you don't want to do it halfway you want to commit to achieving those goals once you've decided those goals are worthwhile we're doing hypothetical scenario let's say 10 years from now I'm running for Parliament in Canada for the Green Party Green Party of Canada it's not impossible ten years in the future I can be running for Parliament am I going to look at that prospect that problem that situation in terms of how can I minimize mycological impact how can I have the smallest possible number of airplane flights the smallest possible number of kilometers when I take that bus know I make the decision first and foremost is this worth doing or not if it's worth pursuing that goal if it's worth taking the message of ecology and veganism on the road from town to town across Canada when I'm running for Parliament then I'm going to take the largest number of airplane ticket spots we're going to burn through all that jet fuel I'm going to go to a de wapis cat and Hamilton and Vancouver I'm going to go from coast to coast to small towns in big cities and I'm going to go out and talk to people and say hey I'm running for Parliament I really want you to hear this message and I want your time and attention and your vote and your money I want you to donate to me I want you to hear me I want you to spread this message because this message I've got about ecology and veganism and animal rights I think it's so important that yes I committed to take all these airplane tickets and burn through all this jet fuel and I'm not doing it halfway I'm not minimizing uh you know the input I'm maximizing the output I'm pursuing those real impacts as I've already decided they're worth pursuing and if they're not worth pursuing that's when you make that decision is when you say no this is a waste of my time so waste of money and this is a waste of jet fuel I'm not going to run for the green and currently today that's the decision I make but ten years from now that's possible so don't sabotage yourself don't sabotage your own ambitions by looking at a scenario like that and say oh well I'm going to run this whole campaign for Parliament over the internet so that I don't have to take airplane flights I don't have to really do a campaign know if those objectives are worth pursuing then they are definitely worth pursuing at that cost and dealing with those costs and taking more responsibility for the damage done is part of being a grown-up in the 21st century
lunch the product is not what's for dinner the product is you the question is not what is the plastic package snack you're going to buy today the question is what kind of person are you going to be what kind of person are you going to become what kind of difference are you aspiring to make in the world and what are you willing to sacrifice to make that happen in this video I'm going to disagree with the vegan lass on the topic of production of palm oil what palm oil and related sources of deforestation mean for vegans ethically politically etc in the year 2016 two disclaimers first as I've said recently in videos and as I may say again the prospect of politics absolutely relies on us being able to disagree without making enemies out of each other so obviously this is not a hate video directed towards Lauren there's no personal conflict between us whatsoever in terms of the drama demi-monde here it wasn't that long ago that people were saying on the internet that Lauren and I were an item that we were involved romantically despite the geographic distance between us i I don't know if I could love anyone enough to move to Scotland that would be a oh my god it's now it's going to happen right now I'm gonna fall in love with somebody in Scotland and move move back to Glasgow man my skin my skin crawls of the thought moving back to Scotland but people say it's gotten better people say it's got a lot better since I used to be there if we have to be able to talk about issues not just issues were relaxed about and comfortable talking about and familiar with but exactly the issues we are most passionate about we need to be able to talk about them without making friends into enemies without creating undue hostility without resorting to you know gross personal insults and defamation we have to that's what politics requires politics is easy when nobody cares about the issue it's exactly when you care passionately when you don't have your ID jab to objectivity we've lost track of what's an objective fact with route that's when it's difficult Duggan politics and that's what we got to talk about as vegans and otherwise disclaimer number two it's certainly peculiar for me that engaging with this issue and with so many others I end up kind of representing political science where I say look my background in political science real gives me an advantage to understand this issue it's a strange irony for me because I hate political science as an academic discipline I spend a lot of my time complaining about a lamenting that I have this diploma that's useless it can't get me any job political science diploma from Canada is totally worthless and definitely you know the state of the discipline within Canada is parlous at best it's a disaster political science Canada political science may be better in Germany or Ireland or where you're watching this video as a discipline like it's it's not that easy to generalize about from one country to the next but definitely in Canada it's a complete disaster and most of what I learned in in that discipline is really despite what was going on in the university not because of what was going on University so it's not like I can say to you political science is a wonderful subject if only more people would study political science they'd be able to see things my way not true at all I encourage you to major political science definitely not in Canada give a look this issue making claims about deforestation and the effects of consuming palm oil and then the you know ethical question of whether or not palm oil is vegan whether or not vegans should basically be active as supposing the production consumption of palm oil these arguments rely on extrapolation and many people including many vegans are uncomfortable with extrapolation as such they feel that it's somehow a fake statistic when they're looking at extrapolation and I saw this a great deal back when it was in vogue to discuss in debate some of the shocking claims that vegans made about the percentage of air pollution that was reduced the percentage of land use that was improved the percentage of water pollution that was reduced by eliminating meat agriculture so most those concern about the United States that were not about Europe but they must there must be similar statistical claims for Europe but where different foundations had crunched the numbers and figured out what percentage of for example air pollution would be mitigated improved to reduced by eliminating meat agriculture and many other knock-on effects now those claims relied on extrapolation what we mean by that it means that you don't look at the map and simply color in the areas that are currently devoted to meat production and then delete them you can't you know replace them with a white gap as if within the United States that pollution just cease to exist and nothing would replace it you have to extrapolate what would the land be used for if it were not being used to produce feed for animals or you know to slaughter the animals or for the all the different stages of the meat industry the leather industry etc so that adds up to a lot of land use a lot of air pollution land water pollution all the different stages of that industry it's a lot of math but the point is you can't just delete that number and replace it with zero as if the meat industry and its associated stage-by-stage industries along the supply chain as if it would be replaced by nothing right Suman likewise when you're looking at a particular impetus for deforestation a particular industry or crop like palm oil you can't say oh well if this wasn't a palm oil there would just be nothing there would be zero negative impact the environment it would be replaced by something and in general you're going to use a profile of the non-meat land uses that are likely to replace it given the location given the climate and given a few other economic factors now one of the clearest examples of this back when I was a kid there were many I guess it's a phony political science claims about of smoking and how much money the government would save if people just stopped smoking cigarettes so when these claims were phony is when they lacked extrapolation right so this is why extrapolation is so important there used to be newspapers that would say look this is how much money the government spends on smoking related deaths so there's also smoking related illnesses etc etc but just to keep this simple let's just say deaths okay so people dying of smoking related illnesses cost the government so many millions of dollars every year and then the newspapers would say oh so the government could save all this money because that will be reduced to zero if people just quit smoking now it would not be reduced to zero the point is you have to you can't replace it with a blank you can't replace it with a zero you need to fill in the gap with some kind of disease profile for all the other forms of mortality that those people would experience that the government would have costs for if they were not smoking cigarettes so for example uh people died in car accidents people die of heart disease many many other cause you can't replace the cost of the smoking related deaths with nothing you have to come up with some abstract some extrapolation some set of predictions about how many people would die of how many other causes and what those cost would be to the government in contrast to the cigarette related deaths right uh the same thing is true if you're looking at land use for growing rubber if you were not planting rubber there that doesn't mean that the land would become a Forest Preserve it just doesn't that's just ridiculous it also doesn't mean that the ecological impact would be zero uh with any you know jungle crop with any crop in that climate whether it's palm oil or rubber or frankly rice you know you can cut down the forest and grow rice if you say this one crop is responsible for why the forest is being cut down you then have to come up with some kind of extrapolation for okay well what if nobody was consuming palm oil they would be farming a different kind of oil to replace it there's a substitute there you have to deal with and geographically on the map if they were not farming palm oil in this place what would they be farming so where I was in Southeast Asia there was at that time a lot of forces being cut down replaced with rubber rubber plantations so if we use the same line of thinking you know failing to extrapolate failing to really think about this Durance political science you could very easily come to the conclusion Oh vegans should refuse to use rubber because rubber cuts down the forest and then once you cut down the forest you kill the orangutans and you kill the Tigers and you kill the elephants all this horrible impact happens from from from deforestation and this is being done for rubber now before they were planting rubber on those places they were planting other crops there were other basically fad economic theories people thought they would get rich from planting teak wood there was a time when people were planting opium talking about Laos Cambodia etc when they were cutting shale forest in order to farm opium and I have read articles for people who really argued that opium farming was better for the environment that rubber farming and so on there were especially anthropologists really liked that kind of art where they argue in favor of kind of traditional subsistence lifestyles or whatever traditional drug-dealing lifestyles um there were a lot of debates around that is rubber actually worse than the other crops that people could be trying to make money out of but the fundamental question here of land use is actually not going to be addressed at all by vilifying the one crop or pretending that if people did not farm that crop they would farm nothing or that the land would be returned to a pristine forest environment or even more expensive that these governments would devote money to making habitat conservation schemes on a huge scale like as if Malaysia is going to replace its entire palm oil industry or its entire rubber industry both are huge crops because the same climate etc with enormous National Park System that's just ridiculous right so you have to extrapolate what land use would replace the farming of palm oil or the farming of rubber or whatever the issue is that you're choosing so I do not believe that vegans should vilify rubber or or or palm oil the other thing you have to understand is economically for all of these countries if you're talking about real for us generally intact forest then deforestation economically is an end in itself the might a lot of money is made from cutting down the forest and other projects are often pursued as a pretext for cutting down the forests so where I was in Laos it was completely standard for the government to write contracts for example for building a highway or for building a new set of power lines it could be an underground power line could be a you know power line above ground the companies doing that would often be paid in lumber concessions so what this means is instead of the government of Laos paying them cash the government say okay if you build this road for us or if you build this power line for us we give you the right to cut down so many kilometers of forest along the route where the power line is are along the route where the road is going to be now this leads to really horrible consequences in public policy it leads to people building roads they don't need and building roads in the wrong places because then the company has an incentive not to build the road where it's actually useful or necessary or what have you but to build the road will make them the most money and where it will destroy the most old-growth forest same for powerlines and I did see specific examples of that there's one example of a power plant project that was going to destroy the only wild elephant conservation habitat that they had in all of Laos that I don't know if they went ahead with that project I left for her the end of that story it was like okay why do you think they're building the power line in exactly this place because it's one of the last places where the timber is really worth a lot of money so naturally on the map they're going to draw that line where it makes the most money and not where it's the easiest or most effective place to install power lines so you have first and if you're talking about old-growth forests and very often you're not very often you talk about clearing one crop for another you're talking about destroying rice farms in order to plant rubber trees because rubber trees are more profitable than rice or it seems that way at the moment or you're talking about destroying tobacco plantations all these places from tobacco because tobacco is less and less profitable and people think they can make more money at a palm oil so it's very easy to misrepresent the clearance of a tobacco land for palm oil as if you're talking about cutting down or growth for us when you're not and a lot of these statistics do that in a sense I don't blame them they're making their argument and anyone can read the fine print and figure out what's really going on but if you think that today in 2016 a country like Malaysia or Laos just has doodles of intact old-growth rainforest that's being cut down to convert from one type of crop that you're wrong you're dreaming in a country like Laos a country like Thailand you're already talking about 99% deforestation and we're really the only old-growth forest is in protected areas is in national parks so the type of ecological impact er devastation of it is is different okay finally I think that Lauren toward the end of her video the vegan last Lauren she she makes an argument that's implicit in the earlier part of argument that veganism is in her words quote about doing the least harm possible and it's not I actually disagree with that I recorded a couple of podcasts on this I think two different podcasts that went to patreon in response to questions I got from Jake Eames Jake Eames has deleted his YouTube channel since then which is a shame he had a couple of really good videos um but Jake Eames used to ask me a lot of questions along these lines that isn't veganism about doing as close to zero harm as possible and Jake was worried about stuff like plastic bottles right well you know is it vegan is it ethical to be using plastic bottles that end up either being recycled or put in a landfill or whatever I think it gets recycled does it really get recycled after I part ways this bottle who knows um I'd like to imagine it actually gets recycled and it goes into a recycling bin but I don't know yeah there is real ecological harm done by the use of plastic bottles what's the substitute what's the alternative and what's the ethical decision for me to make there is real or collage achill harms done by taking airplanes airplane transport is one of the most ecologically harmful things you can do in your life as a human being is it worth it my life is actually not about minimizing harm my life is about making hard choices about doing harm about you know committing to harm the environment to harm the world to make the world a worse place in pursuit of positive goals in pursuit of goals that I think may be worth it is is it worthwhile for me to take an airplane from Canada to China well if it's from my own education I think the answer is yes if it's actually study in a university or teach in a university or learn Chinese or learn something about the ethnic minorities here the politics the history etc obviously it could be enormous ly rewarding you could be talking about in my case one airplane ticket in a year it does harm the environment but I'm doing something really that I think is meaningful and important hypothetical example do I actually believe that what I'm doing in China right now is meaningful and important I have a somewhat sardonic attitude towards my my current educational options as the how to know the least awful of my options that were open to me but I am learning a lot here in China I'm not on vacation it is very different ethically are you just taking airplane trip for fun or they're real outcomes are you pursuing a humanitarian and eight are you running a charity where you take a whole bunch of flights but you're taking those flights to make the world a better place you're using a whole lot of plastic bottles but it's to make the world a better place it's in pursuit of some public policy goal some political goal that's really worthwhile uh real life is about exploiting yourself and exploiting your environment to try to accomplish something meaningful and real and important and there are real costs there are real impacts that signs you can't mitigate because there is no better substitute I do not have a better alternative to you then plastic bottles I don't I don't have a better alternative to an airplane I don't if there was one I'd take it if I can take a blimp that has way less impact in the environment it takes twice as long I'd look at that if I could afford it I actually do not have a substitute for the airplane and when things like palm oil when you look into it are the substitutes really better maybe maybe if you live in Canada you can make the argument that canola oil really is a morally superior substitute DePalma I doubt it I doubt it I think that the deforestation of Canada and the exploitation of our land to produce canola oil is probably just as problematic as what you get with palm oil I think he said canola oil is a type of oil we grow in Canada rapeseed oil etc I've never seen someone making these arguments about palm oil by actually extrapolating what the comparative costs and impacts would be of using instead rapeseed oil canola oil other types of oil and that's exactly what you have to do for the same reasons why with the examples cigarette smoking you have to look at the other causes of death the other costs and what that means for the government you have to look at you have to put it in that comparative context to make the argument there is a better substitute available um with political science ultimately it all comes down to war and peace the costs and the impacts of pursuing a war are unbelievably terrible including ecologically um if you think that governments fail to conserve power or fail to conserve fuel or gasoline when they you know and when they generate electricity in peacetime as soon as there's war involved the loss of human life is tremendous but believe me the waste of for example gasoline is unbelievable and difficult to imagine but if you make the decision yes we need to pursue this war yes we need to win this war for some incredibly more the important reason then that is the commitment you're making and so likewise it's not about doing the least time possible there's no way you can pursue a war by saying well we're going to do the least time possible going to use the least gas think possible you're going to look at you know the loss of human life being minimized but all those other considerations are going to fall by the wayside naturally so the fundamental question is positively what I'm trying to accomplish is that worth it and then you have to look at the impacts beneath that if you are trying to accomplish something positive in your life then taking an airplane using a plastic bottle or joining the army and fighting a war those are all the kinds of hard decisions you need to make it doesn't mean that consumer choices are meaningless as a vegan I think they're tremendously meaningful I think that you know substituting tofu for beef is a tremendously meaningful tremendously important thing for all of us to do in our lives and that does stand up to these tests these issues of extrapolation of looking at you know the whole life cycle every stage of the supply chain what happens etc so there are some decisions on life that are tremendously meaningful however you know most of us are not in a position to just say well airplanes are bad for the environment therefore I'm going to take a boat I met a man who took a boat I think he said it took more than three months from Srilanka to Europe most of us don't have the option of taking a three month boat journey even though I do believe if you scale it up the ecological impact of millions of people traveling by boat instead of by airplane would be very positive right so what are the real substitutions you can't make what are the real moral options you have and then you have to extrapolate for if you take that substitute what are the real impacts even with that boat the boat is polluting the atmosphere much less but on the other hand you're eating three meals a day on a boat for three months so there's an economic and ecological impact just from the amount of time and food you're passing by taking this incredibly inefficient form of transport even though doubtless you know atmospheric emissions impact on the Earth's upper atmosphere is much much better with boat transport than by airplane transport but we can extrapolate if millions of people were taking month long boat journeys instead of airplane journeys that are only a couple of hours what are the real impacts of the whole Rolle even for just all the food being consumed on all those boats etc etc uh life is messy life is full of hard choices and that's why you need to focus on the outcomes you're pursuing why are you fighting the war why are you trying to win the war what are the humanitarian outcomes you're pursuing what are the educational comes to pursuing what is the type of human being you are trying to become you need to focus on that and not focus on just minimizing harm I sympathize with both sides on this one but I want to stay even more clearly what my conclusion is here and why I'm bothering to conclude it why I bother to explain these things to you at such great length altum Utley the product is not what's for lunch the product is not what's for dinner the product is you the question is not what is the plastic package snack you're going to buy today the question is what kind of person are you going to be what kind of person are you going to become what kind of difference are you aspiring to make in the world and what are you willing to sacrifice to make that happen in terms of time money effort intelligence suffering sorrow you name it I totally sympathize with once you get into the mentality of consumer activism once you realize that the choices and what you buy make a big difference that you decide being vegan is not enough and that you're also going to try to eliminate palm oil and you're also going to try to eliminate plastic and unnecessary packaging and you're going to try to eliminate plane tickets I completely understand that I completely sympathize with that because the people who think that way like myself are on a trajectory where they're trying to lead a morally good life they're trying to make a positive difference in the world and trying to mitigate or minimize the negative impacts that world I appreciate that I sympathize with that but I think you can fall into a trap and this very commonly happens with people have more of a spiritual background who maybe approach veganism via Hinduism or via a yoga mat Hinduism Hinduism message from watered down and popularized among white Western people it's really easy to fall into a trap where you're just thinking about personal purity and when you're just thinking about minimizing harm and what you need to do is take the naps next step and not just think how can I use les you have to think about how can I have the optimal outcomes impact how can I make the most positive difference how much am i using up is a question worth asking and I ask myself that all the time but what use am I putting myself to what use am I putting this plane ticket towards what use am i putting the food I eat in the water I drink towards is ultimately the much more meaningful question because it comes pretty close to the meaning of life itself you have to be objective oriented you have to be goal oriented and once you are thinking in terms of those positive goals you're trying to accomplish I think it puts these problems like palm oil into a very different perspective if you want to deal with deforestation deal with deforestation research deforestation become an activist involved in deforestation if you want to deal with deforestation in Malaysia or Laos or Cambodia or Thailand then that's the issue that's what you have to tackle that's what you have to learn about and that's ultimately what you have to get involved with and get politically organized to make a difference about whether you are a scientist or you work at Starbucks or you're studying language or art or architecture whatever your situation is in life if deforestation is the issue then you look at your own life you look at the tool kit you've got how you can make a difference right and yeah plastic bottles and what kind of oil your snacks are made of those are going to become relatively trivial questions when you're on that road to actually make that positive difference don't start from the assumption that you're a disempowered passive person it were the only difference you can make is through the choices you make as a consumer even though as vegans we tend to put those consumer choices first and foremost front and center because of the emphasis we place on a course eliminating meat and dairy from our lives it's a trap it's a trap that a lot of people don't realize they've fallen into because you think I want to be good I want to make a positive difference in the world what you end up doing is exclusively thinking in terms of a negative difference in the world in terms of what you eliminate from your diet in terms of what you eliminate from your consumption habits and instead what you need to get positively engaged with the real issue whatever that issue is whether that issue is orangutans and tigers and elephants and preserving habitat for them because ultimately that can only come about through a positive change through government programs or private charity programs that should buy the land and own and operate habitat conservation agencies so that those elephants tigers ranges have place to live it's never going to come about through simply reducing the oil in your diet no matter what oil that is palm oil otherwise it's never going to come about by vegans deciding they can't buy rubber because rubber plantations do eliminate Tiger habitat also etc etc can never come about through those merely negative changes in your life it has to come about through positive engagement the first thing that happens is that positive engagement is your own education you learn how that's have agriculture works how those types of government policies work etc it said you learn how you can and can't make a difference in the world and that positive engagement takes guts it takes time it takes energy it's all in another level from simply the decisions you make every day at the corner store and I encourage all of you to take the time whether through Google just sitting now on your living room chair to learn more about these things if you care to learn about where you can and can't make a difference but at the end of the day those are also part of the hard decisions you have to make you can't commit to every cause you can't make every positive difference at some point you have to draw the line in your life and say okay I'm engaged with humanitarian issues and deforestation and Laos but not Malaysia and for someone else is going to be Malaysia but not Laos etc etc so those that's also in the realm of those tough decisions you get informed you get engaged you get active but then you also choose what issues you're going to remain ignorant about you're going to remain disengaged about where you can't possibly make a difference the end of the day you got to buy that ball water you got to waste that plastic you got to burn that airplane fuel because if you're positively engaged in the world you don't want to do it half-assed you don't want to do it halfway you want to commit to achieving those goals once you've decided those goals are worthwhile we're doing hypothetical scenario let's say 10 years from now I'm running for Parliament in Canada for the Green Party Green Party of Canada it's not impossible ten years in the future I can be running for Parliament am I going to look at that prospect that problem that situation in terms of how can I minimize mycological impact how can I have the smallest possible number of airplane flights the smallest possible number of kilometers when I take that bus know I make the decision first and foremost is this worth doing or not if it's worth pursuing that goal if it's worth taking the message of ecology and veganism on the road from town to town across Canada when I'm running for Parliament then I'm going to take the largest number of airplane ticket spots we're going to burn through all that jet fuel I'm going to go to a de wapis cat and Hamilton and Vancouver I'm going to go from coast to coast to small towns in big cities and I'm going to go out and talk to people and say hey I'm running for Parliament I really want you to hear this message and I want your time and attention and your vote and your money I want you to donate to me I want you to hear me I want you to spread this message because this message I've got about ecology and veganism and animal rights I think it's so important that yes I committed to take all these airplane tickets and burn through all this jet fuel and I'm not doing it halfway I'm not minimizing uh you know the input I'm maximizing the output I'm pursuing those real impacts as I've already decided they're worth pursuing and if they're not worth pursuing that's when you make that decision is when you say no this is a waste of my time so waste of money and this is a waste of jet fuel I'm not going to run for the green and currently today that's the decision I make but ten years from now that's possible so don't sabotage yourself don't sabotage your own ambitions by looking at a scenario like that and say oh well I'm going to run this whole campaign for Parliament over the internet so that I don't have to take airplane flights I don't have to really do a campaign know if those objectives are worth pursuing then they are definitely worth pursuing at that cost and dealing with those costs and taking more responsibility for the damage done is part of being a grown-up in the 21st century