Matt Dillahunty, "Kill Half the World's Population, like Thanos!"

05 May 2019 [link youtube]


Ecology, environmentalism and climate change, according to Thanos. No, wait, I mean, Matt Dillahunty.



Link to the source cited, "Re Think": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQH-NTQPQGU


Youtube Automatic Transcription

is there a way for me to eat meat where
I don't have any of the immoral problems one of the things to consider is what's the impact on humans if I stop eating meat I mean so for instance eating the agricultural industry armours ranchers truckers all of them lose but it's also contributes to the rate of elephants but do you think what you think interviews more to the greater good of humans either making sure those people keep their jobs or combating climate change all right now now we know we've jumped into another row the reason I ask is because the agricultural industry is the single biggest contributor to climate change yes fumbled and travel and their inside doesn't move that together we always have in front of these guys 300 gallons of water across the way we keep almost 400 gallons and we do so down the other side we have a truck that's dedicated solely with a tank on it filling it with water and that's part of our daily routine there's about 319 million people living in the US and the average American eats about 71 pounds of red meat and 54 pounds of poultry per year multiply that by America's population and it will total 22 point 65 billion pounds of red meat and seventeen point 23 billion pounds of poultry meat production requires more water than fruits vegetables for grains per pound for example one pound of beef or course 1,800 gallons of water while one pound of wheat requires about 200 gallons of water we are the those animals aren't gonna go away when we stop eating them well you know yes they are I mean once the demand gets suit so there are currently unthinkable numbers of animals that are specifically being bred to be tortured and sorted if the demand goes down then they simply just won't be born anymore and so it's the animals not gonna go extinct so may the better solution is to do like a fan oh snap and eliminate half the human beings if you just kill half of the people on the planet that's not good well they see and I'm not convinced we have an overpopulation crisis okay but even if we don't like right you could say that one way to combat climate change would be to cut the population up for sure another way to combat with climate change would be driving cars would be to stop driving cars but an even better way than both of those they probably put together was to stop eating meat and in fact I think the single biggest thing that you can do as an individual to combat your personal like ecological footprint it stop eating meat raising live subjects of a huge amount of water because we need to produce massive amounts of feed producing feed for animals to not only take up a lot of water to produce but it takes up land that can be used to grow crops for humans cattle raised for meat consumed equals to the caloric mean of eight point seven billion people more than the current population is seven billion and if that's the case then not only do we now have a situation where there is there is a whole the whole argument of the ethical worth of animals and that's one thing you know put this entirely separate argument about the environmentalism and how that's going to affect you and future generations so so one of the things and this is not so first of all having addressed been presented with this before I am NOT even disagreeing with you on the impact of not changing the truth of the matter is this is I think my objection here isn't even on mold it's on a matter of practicality because we know they're rolling majority people aren't going to take this step and so am individual taking this step isn't it yeah but you can say the same thing about voting but you can say the same thing about voting but you can say the same thing about voting I would probably be a more moral person and probably to be doing more if the world if I just stopped it [Music] never remotely denied that the thing is the factors that would keep me eating meat under some circumstance not all have so far outweighed the factors that would make me stop and what are those factors if you had to will well whittling them down is kind of difficult raising animals for food also produce massive amounts of waste approximately 130 times more than the entire human population farms which raise animals are also responsible for polluting our waterways with animal waste pesticides chemicals fertilizers hormones and antibiotics this is more than all other industrial sources combined so the climate change argument by the way is the strongest one of all of them for me personally when other people presented this about you know the impact of this I'm like yeah that's an issue and if that's the case and I have accurate information then yep on board but that's a separate issue from the moral the types of moral arguments that I'm often presented with which is you know oh don't kill the poor animals is there a way for me to eat meat where I don't have any of the immoral problem like people would just think that you just don't care enough yeah about animal and they could be right [Music]