Comment by micheljones | Hacker News Reader

Comment by micheljones | Hacker News Reader

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I do not want to be a rich person, nor live a rich lifestyle. I lead a simple life, have simple and inexpensive hobies, and don't really spend money on things. Eating animal products is one of rare things where I cannot accept a compromise, simply because I believe it is very unhealthy to do so.

'You are taking choice away from future generations' is a very meaningless statement that can be applied to everyone, and comes off simply as a concern troll. Most of us Westerners can improve the future in many more significant ways than not eating meat. You are taking choice away from future generations simply by existing and spending resources; by living a cushy western urbanite life and participating in online forums instead of living an isolated rural subsistence life without modern life comforts.

Another poster here wrote that just 5 minutes of driving daily is worse for environment/climate than any possible diet style one might be following. So a vegan that drives 5 min daily affects the environment and climate worse than a meat eater who cycles to work.

As for me, no, I do not have a moral duty to be honest about my values, and your concern troll did not work. I feel I have a moral value to take care of myself and my health primarily, and that's why I switched from ideology I followed (veganism based on ethical issues - resource use and animal abuse/suffering) when the ideology proved to be supported by lies about how veganism is healthy and meat-eating is unhealthy. Instead of an ideology, I went with what proved itself to be correct. And I am glad I did.

> You are taking choice away from future generations simply by existing and spending resources; by living a cushy western urbanite life and participating in online forums instead of living an isolated rural subsistence life without modern life comforts.

You are right that by existing we are consuming precious resources. In fact, life (i believe) feeds off of some other death, somewhere, in the grand scheme of things. That said, i don't think we'll convince many people to stop existing for environmentalist causes. We'll have to find a compromise. One of those, i believe, is living a life with a small footprint (cycle don't drive, avoid air travel, go veggie where possible, eat local produce as much as possible). However, and i can't go into as much detail here as i'd like, it's not always practical to convince people to become vegos, only cycle, etc. I suggest interested people read the 98% Environmentalist [1], an essay i thought quite insightful.

However, regarding your second point, i think it is a misconception that an urbanite lifestyle is more wasteful of resources than a rural one. In fact, if we as a species are to become less environmentally impactful, i believe (perhaps mistakenly) that we should live in cities as much as possible: this allows us to use public transport (as opposed to wasteful single occupancy ICE cars), work from home or cycle to work, live more densely (= easier to centralise recycling, insulation and heating of buildings is more efficient in apartment buildings, etc.). As opposed to the rural existence where one is probably forced to drive to a nearby city for supplies one cannot grow (building materials perhaps).

Of course, i may be completely wrong. I encourage everyone to live as mindfully of the environment as possible, in their own way, without claiming to have a one-size-fits-all answer. I hope we don't, however, stick our heads into the sand and hammer the final nail into the climate's coffin during our lifetimes – i worry it may already be a lost battle [2].

1. still looking for the link :( help me HN?

2. https://xkcd.com/1732/

I made a slight mistake in the post, in "I feel I have a moral value to take care of myself and my health primarily" It should be 'moral obligation' instead of 'moral value'.

I also feel deeply about helping to preserve our planet - I don't drive, I don't buy useless stuff that has traveled thousands of km on a container ship burning terribly dirty bunker oil, I don't support wasteful services. Like I said before, the only thing where I won't compromise is eating animal fats, because of health reasons. I also felt very, very cheated after realizing I've been lied to about how veganism is healthier than 'meat eating', when it was making me ill instead.

I'd like to clarify that I wrote 'rural subsistence lifestyle', not 'rural lifestyle', so I don't mean what is considered a typical rural lifestyle these days - commute to work for an hour or more, have a large farm operated with gas-powered machinery and such. That is equally wasteful as urban life.

What I meant was a simple rural life - having a small home that is optimally designed to need a minimum amount of heating and cooling, raising your own food on a couple acres without help of machinery (vegetables, chicken/ducks and a small flock of sheep or goats, possibly also fish with recently popular aquaponics). And with the rest of necessary income coming from working online, remotely. Not easy to pull off, but I know a couple people that managed to do it, and I hope that I'll manage to do it soon too.

PCs have come a long way, and a modern ultrabook spends so little power that it can easily be recharged from a solar panel/battery combo, and won't need to be replaced for quite a few years because the CPU development mostly stagnated these days. So an internet router + an ultrabook is the extent of 'modern luxuries' in the 'rural life' I talked about.

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