The Ongoing Failure of Veganism (Beme News / Louis Foglia)
26 April 2019 [link youtube]
Beme News put out a video entitled, "We're running out of water", and the creator of the video, Louis Foglia, kind-of-sort-of deals with the ecological and ethical implications of veganism (and, to some extent, he studiously avoids doing so). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16AaXK_53ro
Youtube Automatic Transcription
we have the world's most rock-solid case
for the foundation of our movement and yet look at the reality of the movement we managed to build on top of it we've had ten years of laughable failure Louis folia on the keyboard quote it's getting harder for me to roll my eyes at vegans according to the dead nation's animal agriculture is responsible for 14.5 percent of greenhouse gas emissions the majority of that comes from beef and dairy if we don't reduce emissions the IRC see reports that climate change outcomes we once thought were far away are now expected by 2040 things like we're sending droughts wildfires and food shortages meanwhile the production of one kilogram of beef 2.2 pounds requires over 15,000 liters of water over all a normal diet that includes dairy eggs meat and fish is almost twice as water intensive as a vegan diet eating meat is also bad if your health researchers recently found that the risk of death from cardiovascular disease is reduced by 40% when individuals adopt a plant-based diet the risk of coronary heart disease also drops by 40% then there's the animal cruelty argument the conditions on large scale industrial farms are not good to say the least it's just pasta once that is it in fact the case Louis that you have any familiarity with what conditions are like on small-scale non industrial farms is are you actually comparing something known to something else you know are you comparing something known to something unknown big business in agriculture really is more efficient especially if you care about ecology the tragic but true news is that industrial agriculture is more ethical than small-scale basically third world conditions of meat production because the whole impact on the environment water the amount of food consumed by the animals and the amount of suffering the animals go through it's worse there's this old phrase small is beautiful a lot of people just assume like a big grocery stores evil and a small local three stores somehow virtuous and morally pure I lose I sling a small slaughterhouse is not virtuous and poorly pure you can spend time on a small poverty-stricken family-run poultry farm in Cambodia I've done this I used to live in Cambodia you can be on a small family-run goat farm even of farm producing goat milk rather than goat meat it's horrifying at every stage it's horrifying for the animals their slaughter and even the questions of Hygiene and the ecology and the impact it's very easy I don't know why people find it easy to vilify large-scale industrial agriculture but it's on that large scale and those industrialized methods that are actually more efficient and less efficient doesn't mean more morally virtuous anyway how do you think this is gonna end he's just said there are all these empirically verifiable obvious reasons to support veganism he's saying it's harder to roll his eyes at vegans what does that really mean here's the conclusion guys excuse me if this sounds preachy of what you're excused any time doing I'm just grappling with all this myself as a big eater who consumes more than his fair share of burgers wings and breakfast bacon yeah big eater there's a there's a euphemism I wonder what it says on urban dictionary about that job I'm a big eater it's just reached the point where the empirical evidence is overwhelming my knee-jerk resistance to being nanny nanny if you drink too much alcohol who's gonna nanny you in this life nobody nobody cares you can drink yourself to death yeah and it's cheap but it's affordable you can become a wine out keeping an alcoholic if you want sobriety it's on you if you want to live a life with some sense of self-discipline and moral purpose it's on you if you're gonna eat breakfast bacon / kurz and wings if you're going to be a big eater live a life of you know reckless environmentally destructive immoral self-indulgence nope nobody's going to nanny you man all these corporations are going money off of you McDonald's is gonna put up posters appealing to that side of your character and they're all gonna take your money they're all gonna sit you down and feed you this stuff and make you feel welcome all these restaurants not just the cheap restaurants high-end restaurant 5-star restaurants whatever luxury restaurants do they all want your money well same way the bars want your money for alcohol same way the crack dealer wants to sell you cocaine it's on you we're grown-ups ma'am there are no nannies okay either you have some sense of moral purpose and self discipline yourself or you don't I haven't eaten my last steak but I'm definitely done ripping vegans and vegetarians about their a version a version interesting choice of word after you've just done all this research on the subject living vegans and vegetarians shouldn't have to defend their diets the rest of us should so let's go back briefly to the opening statement quote it's getting harder for me to roll my eyes at vegans is it I've had a bunch of videos lately drawing attention to the real insanity of the people who were in leadership positions within veganism now some of those people came into positions of prominence and leadership accidentally not by any planning or vision on their own part some of them came to those positions kind of organically using the word organic in the 21st century Internet sense we're just you know people like their YouTube videos P they got popular who knows why people shared the link people got interested and you know they ended up in literature position but to a very large extent you have large powerful well organized well-funded organizations making executive decisions about who is gonna speak at la veg fest and who is not pedda People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals if you look at their annual budget you will break down weeping it's unbelievable how many millions of dollars per year they have to waste and they do waste it and they looked at that budget and they looked at YouTube social influencers Stella Raye who is not vegan and they decided to promote her on Petta and they decided to promote peda through her people of the Ethical Treatment of Animals it's one absurdity after another the annual sexiest vegan competition I've talked about this before it's one of the least popular videos on my channel people-people for whatever reason we're shocked and offended was pointing this out look guys pet is sexually sexist vegan competition it's not even sexy and it doesn't promote veganism what it promotes is precisely this kind of contempt from people for like Louis it makes us condensable it makes people roll their eyes it makes us seem ridiculous it's not putting forward a sober and purely valid ecological and ethical case for veganism it's it's making veganism look like something that has to be promoted through lies through the ridiculous glitzy marketing and again it doesn't make sense on so many levels and sorry I know this is one example I can't go on and on forever but vegans for the past ten years have been in a situation where they have to despise their own leadership and we have to question who elected these people who put them in positions of power vegans have to despise petaa people with ethical Tribunal's vegans have to despise the Humane Society of the United States of America Humane Society of Australia so on and so forth vegans are in a position that's roughly parallel to ecology as a movement whole because ecology has not been able to respect or revere the leadership of the Green Party not in any country I'm familiar with I don't know if some of you are living in Germany you might disagree I know Germany's at a relatively relatively successful Green Party but in the english-speaking world this is not a simple case we can say there's a green movement led by a green party there isn't a vegan movement led by a vegan party nor anything else like that and the fact that these people who were given platforms given promotion by well-funded moneyed organizations you know Tim shieff Tim shieff was invited to speak at la veg fest he was formally promoted this way and obviously not only at la veg fest I think probably at vegan events in London England across Europe so on and so forth these were the people literally put on stage put behind a microphone put it a podium to speak on these issues and guys nobody knows better than I do oh how tightly controlled those events are those organizations would never let someone like me speak the organizations that exist in veganism even the ones that try to have a punk-rock attitude act like it's fun and rebellious and open they won't even let me attend their street protests by I'm considered so controversial the intellectual content of this channel is so shocking that like I can't attend a silent vigil in Vancouver think about that think about the level of misdirected self censorship self-hatred and in turn a scene conflict that exists within veganism where if I want to do something positive I either have to do it alone or I basically have to provide a hundred percent of the leadership organization and funding even when I could do that by the way well I had I had a very modest inheritance for my father and I offered to completely pay for an event in Vancouver and I couldn't I couldn't even get one other person to cooperate not even one it was a little bit of an intellectual bar to entry there I wasn't inviting Complete Idiot's but it hey guys let's have a conference let's let's present papers on this topic let's gather the papers together publish them as a book let's do something that's really trying to put the future of the vegan movement on a better footing I didn't have one person willing to participate and that's when I was not just providing leadership and booking the room but I said okay at this moment I have some money in the bank and I can I can pay for it that's not that's not my situation hell look you know many people find it controversial or shocking to question the competence the intelligence and the sanity of the people who happen to have been in leadership positions in veganism and they questioned it because on some level they think it would be morally virtuous to just support somebody just promote somebody even if there are nut cases said well this guy's a bit eccentric he's a bit cracked he's a bit crazy but so what he's he's one of us he's vegan so let's just promote him and push him forward as a leader in the vegan movement and then you see normally within two or three years you see what the consequences of that are 1 would be leader is pushed to the front again and again it becomes the person who's in the newspaper articles and on TV and at the podium even at our own events right and then one by one they fall from grace and in the background which you don't see like 4 billion people like Lois folia who just keep rolling their eyes okay this is the world's easiest argument to make veganism is real simple it's a real straightforward ok if you want to make an argument for solar power it's not easy if you want to make an argument for phasing out and replacing automobiles that are powered by fossil fuels by gasoline it's not easy when you look into the details I don't think within my lifetime we're gonna see cars running on fossil fuels remove from the roads I think it's going to continue long after I'm dead we really don't have a technology that's superior in a simple sense to eclipse cars and trucks that we open the Rose net we don't you know battery based electric cars are deeply deeply flawed there are a lot of problems with them on a small scale on a large scale we're not going to see the golf cart replace the long haul truck we're not not in my lifetime ok it's the technology of the veggie burger the technology of the bean the technology of baked beans makes beef completely obsolete it has 100 percent positive impacts ethically ecologically for your health etc etc we have the world's most rock-solid case for the foundation of our movement and yet look at the reality of the movement we managed to build on top of it we've had ten years of laughable failure and even after seeing on the fad all the facts seeing all the facts making a YouTube video about it someone like Louie folia he's still rolling his eyes at you [Music]
for the foundation of our movement and yet look at the reality of the movement we managed to build on top of it we've had ten years of laughable failure Louis folia on the keyboard quote it's getting harder for me to roll my eyes at vegans according to the dead nation's animal agriculture is responsible for 14.5 percent of greenhouse gas emissions the majority of that comes from beef and dairy if we don't reduce emissions the IRC see reports that climate change outcomes we once thought were far away are now expected by 2040 things like we're sending droughts wildfires and food shortages meanwhile the production of one kilogram of beef 2.2 pounds requires over 15,000 liters of water over all a normal diet that includes dairy eggs meat and fish is almost twice as water intensive as a vegan diet eating meat is also bad if your health researchers recently found that the risk of death from cardiovascular disease is reduced by 40% when individuals adopt a plant-based diet the risk of coronary heart disease also drops by 40% then there's the animal cruelty argument the conditions on large scale industrial farms are not good to say the least it's just pasta once that is it in fact the case Louis that you have any familiarity with what conditions are like on small-scale non industrial farms is are you actually comparing something known to something else you know are you comparing something known to something unknown big business in agriculture really is more efficient especially if you care about ecology the tragic but true news is that industrial agriculture is more ethical than small-scale basically third world conditions of meat production because the whole impact on the environment water the amount of food consumed by the animals and the amount of suffering the animals go through it's worse there's this old phrase small is beautiful a lot of people just assume like a big grocery stores evil and a small local three stores somehow virtuous and morally pure I lose I sling a small slaughterhouse is not virtuous and poorly pure you can spend time on a small poverty-stricken family-run poultry farm in Cambodia I've done this I used to live in Cambodia you can be on a small family-run goat farm even of farm producing goat milk rather than goat meat it's horrifying at every stage it's horrifying for the animals their slaughter and even the questions of Hygiene and the ecology and the impact it's very easy I don't know why people find it easy to vilify large-scale industrial agriculture but it's on that large scale and those industrialized methods that are actually more efficient and less efficient doesn't mean more morally virtuous anyway how do you think this is gonna end he's just said there are all these empirically verifiable obvious reasons to support veganism he's saying it's harder to roll his eyes at vegans what does that really mean here's the conclusion guys excuse me if this sounds preachy of what you're excused any time doing I'm just grappling with all this myself as a big eater who consumes more than his fair share of burgers wings and breakfast bacon yeah big eater there's a there's a euphemism I wonder what it says on urban dictionary about that job I'm a big eater it's just reached the point where the empirical evidence is overwhelming my knee-jerk resistance to being nanny nanny if you drink too much alcohol who's gonna nanny you in this life nobody nobody cares you can drink yourself to death yeah and it's cheap but it's affordable you can become a wine out keeping an alcoholic if you want sobriety it's on you if you want to live a life with some sense of self-discipline and moral purpose it's on you if you're gonna eat breakfast bacon / kurz and wings if you're going to be a big eater live a life of you know reckless environmentally destructive immoral self-indulgence nope nobody's going to nanny you man all these corporations are going money off of you McDonald's is gonna put up posters appealing to that side of your character and they're all gonna take your money they're all gonna sit you down and feed you this stuff and make you feel welcome all these restaurants not just the cheap restaurants high-end restaurant 5-star restaurants whatever luxury restaurants do they all want your money well same way the bars want your money for alcohol same way the crack dealer wants to sell you cocaine it's on you we're grown-ups ma'am there are no nannies okay either you have some sense of moral purpose and self discipline yourself or you don't I haven't eaten my last steak but I'm definitely done ripping vegans and vegetarians about their a version a version interesting choice of word after you've just done all this research on the subject living vegans and vegetarians shouldn't have to defend their diets the rest of us should so let's go back briefly to the opening statement quote it's getting harder for me to roll my eyes at vegans is it I've had a bunch of videos lately drawing attention to the real insanity of the people who were in leadership positions within veganism now some of those people came into positions of prominence and leadership accidentally not by any planning or vision on their own part some of them came to those positions kind of organically using the word organic in the 21st century Internet sense we're just you know people like their YouTube videos P they got popular who knows why people shared the link people got interested and you know they ended up in literature position but to a very large extent you have large powerful well organized well-funded organizations making executive decisions about who is gonna speak at la veg fest and who is not pedda People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals if you look at their annual budget you will break down weeping it's unbelievable how many millions of dollars per year they have to waste and they do waste it and they looked at that budget and they looked at YouTube social influencers Stella Raye who is not vegan and they decided to promote her on Petta and they decided to promote peda through her people of the Ethical Treatment of Animals it's one absurdity after another the annual sexiest vegan competition I've talked about this before it's one of the least popular videos on my channel people-people for whatever reason we're shocked and offended was pointing this out look guys pet is sexually sexist vegan competition it's not even sexy and it doesn't promote veganism what it promotes is precisely this kind of contempt from people for like Louis it makes us condensable it makes people roll their eyes it makes us seem ridiculous it's not putting forward a sober and purely valid ecological and ethical case for veganism it's it's making veganism look like something that has to be promoted through lies through the ridiculous glitzy marketing and again it doesn't make sense on so many levels and sorry I know this is one example I can't go on and on forever but vegans for the past ten years have been in a situation where they have to despise their own leadership and we have to question who elected these people who put them in positions of power vegans have to despise petaa people with ethical Tribunal's vegans have to despise the Humane Society of the United States of America Humane Society of Australia so on and so forth vegans are in a position that's roughly parallel to ecology as a movement whole because ecology has not been able to respect or revere the leadership of the Green Party not in any country I'm familiar with I don't know if some of you are living in Germany you might disagree I know Germany's at a relatively relatively successful Green Party but in the english-speaking world this is not a simple case we can say there's a green movement led by a green party there isn't a vegan movement led by a vegan party nor anything else like that and the fact that these people who were given platforms given promotion by well-funded moneyed organizations you know Tim shieff Tim shieff was invited to speak at la veg fest he was formally promoted this way and obviously not only at la veg fest I think probably at vegan events in London England across Europe so on and so forth these were the people literally put on stage put behind a microphone put it a podium to speak on these issues and guys nobody knows better than I do oh how tightly controlled those events are those organizations would never let someone like me speak the organizations that exist in veganism even the ones that try to have a punk-rock attitude act like it's fun and rebellious and open they won't even let me attend their street protests by I'm considered so controversial the intellectual content of this channel is so shocking that like I can't attend a silent vigil in Vancouver think about that think about the level of misdirected self censorship self-hatred and in turn a scene conflict that exists within veganism where if I want to do something positive I either have to do it alone or I basically have to provide a hundred percent of the leadership organization and funding even when I could do that by the way well I had I had a very modest inheritance for my father and I offered to completely pay for an event in Vancouver and I couldn't I couldn't even get one other person to cooperate not even one it was a little bit of an intellectual bar to entry there I wasn't inviting Complete Idiot's but it hey guys let's have a conference let's let's present papers on this topic let's gather the papers together publish them as a book let's do something that's really trying to put the future of the vegan movement on a better footing I didn't have one person willing to participate and that's when I was not just providing leadership and booking the room but I said okay at this moment I have some money in the bank and I can I can pay for it that's not that's not my situation hell look you know many people find it controversial or shocking to question the competence the intelligence and the sanity of the people who happen to have been in leadership positions in veganism and they questioned it because on some level they think it would be morally virtuous to just support somebody just promote somebody even if there are nut cases said well this guy's a bit eccentric he's a bit cracked he's a bit crazy but so what he's he's one of us he's vegan so let's just promote him and push him forward as a leader in the vegan movement and then you see normally within two or three years you see what the consequences of that are 1 would be leader is pushed to the front again and again it becomes the person who's in the newspaper articles and on TV and at the podium even at our own events right and then one by one they fall from grace and in the background which you don't see like 4 billion people like Lois folia who just keep rolling their eyes okay this is the world's easiest argument to make veganism is real simple it's a real straightforward ok if you want to make an argument for solar power it's not easy if you want to make an argument for phasing out and replacing automobiles that are powered by fossil fuels by gasoline it's not easy when you look into the details I don't think within my lifetime we're gonna see cars running on fossil fuels remove from the roads I think it's going to continue long after I'm dead we really don't have a technology that's superior in a simple sense to eclipse cars and trucks that we open the Rose net we don't you know battery based electric cars are deeply deeply flawed there are a lot of problems with them on a small scale on a large scale we're not going to see the golf cart replace the long haul truck we're not not in my lifetime ok it's the technology of the veggie burger the technology of the bean the technology of baked beans makes beef completely obsolete it has 100 percent positive impacts ethically ecologically for your health etc etc we have the world's most rock-solid case for the foundation of our movement and yet look at the reality of the movement we managed to build on top of it we've had ten years of laughable failure and even after seeing on the fad all the facts seeing all the facts making a YouTube video about it someone like Louie folia he's still rolling his eyes at you [Music]