Is there a convincing case for climate veganism?

Abstract
Climate change compels us to rethink the ethics of our dietary choices and has become an interesting issue for ethicists concerned about diets, including animal ethicists. The defenders of veganism have found that climate change provides a new reason to support their cause because many animal-based foods have high greenhouse gas emissions. The new style of argumentation, the ‘climatic argument(s) for veganism’, may benefit animals by persuading even those who are not concerned about animals themselves but worry about climate change. The arguments about the high emissions of animal-based food, and a resulting moral obligation to abstain from eating such products, are an addition to the prior forms of argument for principled veganism grounded on the moral standing of, and concern for, nonhuman animals. In this paper, we examine whether the climatic argument for veganism is convincing. We propose a formulation for the amended version of the argument and discuss its implications and differences compared to the moral obligations of principled veganism. We also reflect upon the implications of our findings on agricultural and food ethics more generally.
Main Authors
Format
Articles Research article
Published
2021
Series
Subjects
Publication in research information system
Publisher
Springer
The permanent address of the publication
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:jyu-202012187298Use this for linking
Review status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0889-048X
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-020-10182-x
Language
English
Published in
Agriculture and Human Values
Citation
License
CC BY 4.0Open Access
Funder(s)
Research Council of Finland
Funding program(s)
Strategic research programmes, AoF
Strategisen tutkimuksen ohjelmat STN, SA
Research Council of Finland
Additional information about funding
This research was supported by The Finnish Strategic Research Council Funding (Grant 327284). Open access funding provided by University of Jyväskylä (JYU). STN 21000045711 / Reilu Ruokamurros
Copyright© The Author(s) 2020

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