Author: Michael Dello-Iacovo

Two impactful things you can do this World Environment Day

Happy World Environment Day! Last year I wrote a post about what you can do for the environment. This year I’m doing something similar, but going for a lighter format. Enjoy!

https://www.pexels.com/photo/conifer-daylight-environment-evergreen-454880/

Days like these are great opportunities to reflect and make sure we are doing all we practically can to protect the environment. Today, I’d like to focus on two small things that we as individuals can do which are highly effective but not very often talked about.

Cool Earth

Within a particular cause area, some charities can be as much as 1000’s of times more effective than others. So if you’re going to donate to an environmental charity, it’s crucial to make sure your $$ are having the most impact they can. One stand out environmental charity is Cool Earth.

Cool Earth works to stop deforestation, and are so effective that $1.34 US donated to them reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 1 tonne of CO2-equivalent. As of 2016, this was one of the best charities for reducing GHG emissions.

The average American uses about 20 tonnes of CO2 per year as of 2006, so you could offset a years worth of emissions for just $26.8.

Livestock industry

Over the past few decades, the impact of the livestock industry on the environment has become increasingly clear. Below I’ve outlined a few key statistics to show just big the impact is (stats are relative to the average US meat eating diet).

Image from https://91news.com.au/2015/10/02/india-to-reduce-carbon-emissions-intensity-by-35-by-2030/. Stat from http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts/.
Image from http://www.ball-law.com/lawyer-land-use-purdue/. Stat from https://www.amazon.com/Diet-New-America-John-Robbins/dp/0915811812.
Image from https://www.marketwatch.com/story/oil-prices-head-lower-as-global-tensions-continue-unabated-2017-08-11. Stat from http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts/.

Adopting a plant-based diet is more effective for reducing your CO2 emissions than forgoing showers, having solar panels, and using bikes instead of cars.

So what can you do about this? Well for starters, you should definitely consider not having any animal products today (I might be too late for that), but also you should consider having less or no animal products in the future. It’s becoming easier every day with increasing access to cheap, delicious plant-based food.

I initially stopped eating meat because I became convinced that it was one of the most effective things I could do to help the environment, and it was way easier than I expected. I’d like to encourage everyone to try it. Just start with one vegan day a week and work from there.

Great tasting food doesn’t have to contain animal products. If you live in Sydney check out Soul Burger for some plant based deliciousness, like this ‘chicken’ and ‘bacon’ burger (my weekly guilty pleasure)!

If you need some help or inspiration, check out this guide.

For a more detailed look at the research behind the environmental impacts of the livestock industry, start with these: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6392/987 http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM

Collection of weird social media comments – part 1

I have this weird problem where I keep getting involved in debates on social media about various issues. Usually, it’s me trying to steelman one side of some argument where I think both sides are hugely oversimplifying, as I like to do. Unfortunately, this results in people engaging in all sorts of ad hominem attacks and saying some weird, irrational things.

Fortunately, it can result in some comedy gold. Enjoy the first of hopefully not many to come.

Why rational animal lovers should donate to animal charities even if they aren’t vegan

This is something I’ve thought a lot about but have not really expressed much in writing. When it comes down to it, almost everyone cares about non-human animals in some way. No one really wants to see a pig, or a cow, or a dog or a whale suffer, just as no one really wants to see a human suffer. Even with this in mind, many people say that they just can’t go vegan because it would be too hard, too expensive, they enjoy the taste of animal products too much, or they are worried about their health.

All of these concerns can and have been addressed, but let’s suppose we grant that some people just don’t want to be vegan themselves, even if they care about non-human animals. Assuming this individual (possibly you, dear reader) is rational, they should be happy if there are more vegans in the world, even if they never become one themselves. After all, a lot of people care about the environment, but go to varying lengths of effort when it comes to recycling etc. However, they are still happy for the sake of the environment when someone else goes to more effort than them.

Unless you can find a flaw here, you must surely agree that people who care about non-human animals must at the very least be happy about there being more people in the world trying to reduce animal suffering. Having accepted this, know that there are many ways you can reduce animal suffering without being vegan yourself.

One of the most effective ways to do this is to donate money to a highly effective animal charity. I am a big fan of the work that Animal Charity Evaluators do, particularly their recommendations on effective animal charities. For as little as a $10 donation to one of these charities, it’s possible to spare dozens of animals from a life of suffering. Even for a non-vegan, this is a very small sacrifice to make to have a huge impact. Check out their top recommended charities here, or consider donating directly to ACE to maximise your impact.

I truly believe that, if you care about non-human animals but don’t support non-human animal charities, unless you are financially unable, or you think that there are more effective ways to reduce suffering with your money, there is surely some serious cognitive dissonance going on.

Should we have children? Weighing in on the anti-natalism debate

Recently a lot of people, particularly in the vegan community, have been having an often heated discussion about whether one should have a child or not. Some even go as far as to say that having a children is ‘not vegan’, due to the impact it causes. As with a lot of such issues I weigh in on, I think both sides are missing some key points*.

Let me begin by acknowledging that this can be a very difficult topic to speak rationally about. If one is non-vegan, they can realise they were wrong and become vegan somewhat easily (relatively speaking). If one has kids, changing their mind and even just admitting to oneself that it was unethical to have a child would be world shattering. As soon as this internal conflict becomes a possibility, being completely open often goes out the window.

I also want to add that I am not talking about the personal pleasure of having a child. Many do seem to get a lot of intrinsic happiness from having a child, and I’m just not touching that. I’m talking about purely external impact on wellbeing. My goal here is not to attack either people who have had children or have decided not to, I just want to add some extra considerations.

Let’s first examine why one would make the case that ‘it is more ethical to not have a child’. I think it mostly comes down to the impact that having one additional human on the planet causes. Even if your child is vegan (which is not a guarantee even for two vegan parents), they will still have an impact on others. Just through their food consumption, they will contribute to 0.3 vertebrate animal deaths per year, they will contribute to climate change, and basically any issue relating to population growth. Granted, they will have a lower impact in all of these areas than an omnivore, but an impact they will have nonetheless.

This is the case that anti-natalists make, however I rarely see them acknowledge the pros to having a child. Either they don’t think there are any relative to not having a child, or they don’t think they are strong enough to consider. I hope I am not making too strong of a strawman here.

The external benefits of having a child

Let’s ignore opportunity cost (what else you could be doing with your time and money if you didn’t have a child) and just consider whether having a child is net good compared to doing no other ‘advocacy’ with your life (e.g. activism, donations etc). There is a lot to weigh up here.

There is a chance your child will be share your values (e.g. be vegan = lower impact on suffering over their life, but higher than if they hadn’t been born ; chance of converting additional vegans), and a chance they won’t be (e.g. not be vegan = higher impact on suffering). However, if you believe that you can do a lot of good over your life via other means, e.g. donating a percent of your income to effective charities, via your career and outreach, your child might have similar goals in life (via upbringing and shared genetics).

Let’s do a toy expected value estimate (not to be taken seriously, only illustratively). Suppose you estimate your impact in life to be the equivalent of creating 10 vegans (honestly a very low estimate if you take effectiveness seriously), but your impact of just existing to be equivalent to 0.5 non-vegans (that is to say, 2 vegans have the same impact on suffering, environmental damage etc. as 2 non-vegans – surely an exaggeration). Your life net effect is then to create 9.5 vegans.

Let us now suppose that your child could share your values (create 9.5 vegans), be the opposite (-1 vegans), or somewhere in between. Even if we assume that the child of a vegan is only 50% likely to stay so (which seems low to me, but happy to be proven wrong), the average effect of having a child is equivalent to creating 4.5 vegans in this massively oversimplified example.

Having kids as a personal choice

Sometimes, people say something like “Have kids if you want to have kids, and don’t if you don’t. You can’t tell people not to have kids, it’s a personal choice.” What is interesting to me is that a lot of vegans make this argument, but it sounds so similar to the argument many use to justify eating animals, e.g. “Eat meat if you want to, and don’t if you don’t. Respect my personal choice.”

Anti-natalists typically attack this view, and I agree that it is flawed, but I want to add a nuance here. Anti-natalists see having a child as bad (comparable to eating meat) while natalists see it as good (not comparable to eating meat). I think that people are generally talking past each other and not disagreeing where they think they are.

Opportunity cost

I think the strongest argument (but one I rarely see) for not having a child is actually just that having a child seems like a highly inefficient way of improving the world. Even given the argument that ‘your child will likely (not definitely) share your genes and behaviour and do good in the world’, the amount of time and money that it costs to have a kid could be spent elsewhere. We need to think about it in terms of opportunity cost.

Using Australia as an example, it costs an average of $406,000 (in 2012) to have and raise a child to adulthood, not including time. This money alone could convert dozens of additional vegans on the low end of the estimate, if that is the primary thing you are concerned about. Even if I thought having a child would be an enjoyable experience on the whole, this reason alone is enough to convince me to not to. Along the same vein, instead of having a child, you could mentor or influence multiple people.

Population ethics

Finally, I also rarely see any nod to population ethics in these discussions. I am going to attempt to summarise a complicated and much debated field in a few sentences. If this field intrigues you, please go actually read about it rather than let my text form your view.

People are concerned about overpopulation often because they believe that additional human lives would make the lives of humans already existing less positive. This is probably broadly correct. However, if extra child has a positive life (better off being alive than not being born, as I believe my life is), that has to be weighed against the negative impact of them being born on others. One can conceive of a scenario where having more children is better on balance for global wellbeing even if it makes life for others worse.

Of course, taking farmed *and* wild animal suffering into consideration, this gets far more complicated, but I just wanted to at least acknowledge this field which gets no mention in this debate.

In summary, I lean heavily to the side of the anti-natalism argument, but I admit that the steelman of both sides has good points.

* I should make it clear that by ‘both sides’ I’m referring to the two versions of the argument I’m presenting here. I don’t doubt that many also provide a more nuanced view.

Morality is Hard podcast episode 6 – Elie Hassenfeld of GiveWell

After a short hiatus, the Morality is Hard podcast is back with a new interview featuring Elie Hassenfeld, one of the co-founders of GiveWell. Find the interview on iTunes, below or here!

https://soundcloud.com/michael-dello-iacovo/episode-6-eli-hassenfeld-givewell-and-how-to-get-the-most-out-of-a-donation

Elie Hassenfeld and I spoke about the charity he co-founded with Holden Karnofsky, GiveWell, and how it analyses charities to determine how effective they are at alleviating suffering.

We also spoke about Open Philanthropy Project, a sister organisation of GiveWell, which started with the question of “How can we accomplish as much good as possible with our giving?”

Unfortunately due to venue and time constraints, we had the record the interview in the back room of a restaurant, and you can heard some of the chatter in the background. I hope that doesn’t take away from the content too much!

If you’re interested in finding out how to make sure your charitable donations are having as much impact as possible, this is the interview for you.

Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook to stay up to date with the podcast and to join the discussion.

Melbourne steakhouse protest – acceptable in what circumstance?

Several days ago, a group of activists peacefully (by all accounts) entered a Melbourne, Australia, steakhouse restaurant with signs, and began repeating phrases relating to the treatment of animals in slaughterhouses. The aim: to show the diners what had happened to the food on their plate while it was still sentient.

I wanted to weigh in on this, but not for the same reason many other animal advocates are. There has certainly been a general divide among the animal advocacy community regarding whether this was an effective way of achieving our ultimate goal – reducing suffering and/or exploitation of all sentient beings.

I actually don’t know whether this was effective. It has been a good platform for raising awareness and may show that a lot of people take this seriously (pros), but it may backfire, as it seems to have already done, and make people think those who care about all non-human animals are ‘crazy’ (con). Both sides are true. Which one outweighs the other? I don’t know.

The point I want to get to here is this: I think that a lot of non-vegans who are opposed to this protest aren’t actually opposed to the means as they say, but to the message behind the protest. Let me give you a thought experiment.

Suppose a new restaurant opened up in your neighborhood, and you find out they serve human. Humans who did not want to killed for the enjoyment of others. You might feel compelled to go and protest at this restaurant. You might feel a duty to educate the diners there on what the humans went through during their final days; the pain, the fear. I’m willing to go out on a limb and suggest that you would feel comfortable with the exact same peaceful protest that took place in Melbourne. If not you personally, you would surely be in support of the protest.

This is why I believe that many people opposed to this protest are opposed to it for different reasons than they claim. Not all, of course, and maybe not even most. After all, there are many vegans who opposed the protest. But I would ask you, dear reader, to make sure you ask yourself exactly why you are against the protest. Is it because you think the protest was harmful, or disrespectful? Or is it because you don’t really agree with the message behind it?

2017 Per Capita Young Writers’ Prize 1st place: Effects of Livestock Industry on Climate Change and the Environment

I’m pretty chuffed to have won equal first prize for the 2017 Per Capita Young Writers’ Prize. I was hesitant to apply at first, as I didn’t think an article about the livestock industry would be seen as relevant enough to do well, but I’m glad I tried. Below is the essay in full.

The question was: “If you were a Federal Cabinet Minister in a leading portfolio (Environment, Health, Education, Housing, Transport, Industry, Science, Treasury) what would be your principal policy priorities, taking account of the long-term national interest? Explain the reasons for your priorities and outline your strategies for implementation.”

As the Minister for the Environment and Energy of Australia, I have decided to focus my policy priorities on animal agriculture. This is based on extensive research and understanding of national priorities and risks, which will be outlined below. I have also presented a list of policy actions which I will seek to undertake over my term as Minister.

Effects of livestock industry on climate change and the environment

The 2006 report Livestock’s Long Shadow by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations discusses the environmental impact associated with animal agriculture. The livestock industry is responsible for 14.5% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Despite this, there is a disparity in where climate policy focuses. Climate debate and policy, both in Australia and internationally, rarely acknowledges the role that animal agriculture plays. There is a disparate focus on the energy and transport sectors.

Globally, the livestock industry produces around 130 times more waste than the global human population. This waste can contain a host of diseases, and if water ways become contaminated, can be a serious risk for human health. If the waste reaches the ocean, it becomes a source of major environmental degradation. The Australian livestock industry also uses a disproportionate amount of water resources. In Australia, there is a substantial level of protest around the expansion of fossil fuel extraction, especially the practice of hydraulic fracturing and its impact on water. Given the high water use of industrial animal agriculture, it seems likely that protest and attention will also turn to this industry.

Effect of the livestock industry on human health and animal welfare

Not only does this industry affect wild animals and environment, it also creates an immense amount of suffering for the animals used as food. Undercover investigations have revealed excessive cruelty and suffering as standard practice, particularly in industrial Australian pig and chicken farming. Many Australians are already against animal abuse. While we mitigate the environmental issue, we can also align government policy with the ethical preferences of Australians. The proportion of people who completely eschew animal products, vegans, is also a growing population, and will become a considerable voting force in its own right.

The health impacts of a diet high in animal products are non-trivial. Notably, the World Health Organisation announced in 2015 that they have listed processed meats as a Group 1 carcinogen (carcinogenic to humans), and red meat as a Group 2A carcinogen (probably carcinogenic to humans). While processed meat does not pose as much of a risk to cancer as tobacco, studies have suggested that a diet high in plant-based food leads to lower blood pressure, a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes, and a reduced risk of mortality from cardiovascular disease. As the Australian Government, we have a duty to protect the health of Australian citizens.

Case study – Impacts of climate change on the Pacific Ocean

Global analyses show the upper Pacific Ocean warming. Sea temperatures on the Great Barrier Reef have increased by about 0.4°C over the past 100 years (Lough, 2000). The Great Barrier Reef is an important Australian landmark. It brought US$4.48 billion to Australian businesses in the 2004/2005 financial year, and resulted in the employment of 63,000 individuals (full-time equivalent). It also plays a critical role in biodiversity.

The GBR is most under threat from rising sea temperatures (resulting in more intense and more frequent coral bleaching events), and ocean acidification (reducing the ability of corals and other organisms to calcify). The 2007 IPCC report on climate change outlines the risks to the Great Barrier Reef and likely outcomes in more detail.

Policy recommendations

A multi-level policy is proposed to achieve long-term national interests. We should gradually replace the livestock industry with plant-based farming. This is a trend we expect to occur globally regardless of our involvement, and it is in Australia’s best interest to start laying the groundwork for this transformative shift early. This can be done by reducing livestock subsidies and raising a small tax on animal products, creating disincentives for consumers and producers.

We should assist farmers as they shift from livestock to more sustainable produce. The revenue from the animal product tax can be used to facilitate this support, and may come in the form of grants for land use change or subsidies and tax breaks for producing plant-based foods. Arid land in Australia typically used for grazing livestock can be used to grow other foodstuffs such as almonds and dates, or be used for carbon sequestration.

We should support the Australian food tech industry to develop plant-based and cellular agriculture alternatives to animal products. Already we are lagging behind as USA and Europe develops this technology. We should provide the industry with subsidies and research & development credits. We should host international collaborative events to facilitate technology transfer, particularly with USA and Europe, and also aim to encourage new food tech businesses and partnerships in Australia.

Australia can become a respected leader in this space whilst much of the world lags behind in action on animal agriculture. Whilst Australia’s net emissions are relatively small for the region, our greenhouse gas emissions per capita are amongst the highest in the world. One of our greatest tourist attractions, the Great Barrier Reef, is in danger and relies on a healthy Pacific Ocean.

We should promote a plant-based, whole foods diet through national public health campaigns. Whilst also reducing the public-health burden of Australia, this will have the added effect of reducing the consumption of environmentally damaging animal products. This type of public health campaign has already been demonstrated to work through anti-smoking campaigns, and may result in savings based solely on the public health burden reduction. Our current national health guidelines do not reflect the latest body of evidence on the impacts of animal products, and the healthfulness of a diet high in unprocessed plant foods, and should be urgently reviewed. Other countries, including China, are already beginning to alter their dietary guidelines to reflect the latest evidence on health and environmental impact, and Australia is, once again, lagging behind.

Australia is also well poised to supply Asia with a range of healthy, environmentally friendly and cruelty-free food. As Asia moves out of poverty and demands more luxury foods, we can provide them with high quality meat alternatives. Vegan Australia is developing a series of recommendations for moving to an animal free agricultural system in Australia, which may be beneficial in formulating our own policy.

This is a multi-disciplinary issue, and it requires multi-disciplinary action. A committee of agriculture reform should be formed to facilitate these changes. The policy recommendations outlined here fall under the portfolios of the Minister for the Environment and Energy, the Minister for Health, the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment, and the Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, and thus each of these ministers’ offices should be directly involved.

Respected individuals, including Bill Nye, CEO of the Planetary Society, and Tom Hayes, CEO of Tyson Foods, are making public statements that they believe plant-based foods are the future, and they have good reason to think so. Through these policy recommendations, Australia stands to benefit financially both in the short and long term, ensure the long term sustainability of our agriculture and tourism industries, and align government policy with public values.

Interview with Dr Melanie Joy on the psychology of eating meat

Yesterday I interviewed Dr Melanie Joy on the psychology of eating meat for LiveKindly. Jodi was kind enough to allow me to display the video on my website as well, so here it is and I hope you enjoy. Please also consider checking out LiveKindly, it’s a great resource and read for vegans and non-vegans alike.

https://youtu.be/dn4wRyxPEu4