Raw vegan cyclist: "Hold my raw vegan gluten free kombucha!"

I am reminded of the biker gang that protects abuse victims. Just posting a pic of someone and deciding everything about them seems wrong. Nevertheless, I agree with you

Lastly on the bike- just as we do not know wether this person is worthy of hate we also don’t know what their carbon foot print is let alone their social and environmental impacts. We don’t know that they do t ride for fun and fitness and have a huge car or boat etc. sure- on the bike they aren’t doing as BAD as they could be at that moment by say- driving a 1979 Kentworth semi solo everyday as a commute vehicle- but that’s like saying I’m an environmentalist because I’m not lighting a forest on fire right not just to watch it burn.

Well maybe that's just the name of their group or something

As for diet- nothing inherent to a vegan diet implies is it good for the planet or carbon foot print or even better than an intelligently sourced diverse diet. In fact- it can be worse. The #1 use of slash and burn rain forest land is... farming. The transport of exotic items from grow areas to far away markets, the fallout out of mass agriculture and commercial farming... etc etc. one of the largest environmental threats is the frivolous waste of consumer goods- especially electronics. Items replaced due to being obsolete technology or a passing fad. Electronic items consume 90% of their resources in their construction vs. lifespan. Meaning to “pay off” their respective cost they must be used a long time. Consumer electronics change often year by year or faster.

Not just heavy metals and ozone and anything else, not just e waste and the impact of that and it’s likely improper disposal- but the mining and refining of materials for batteries and circuits etc. we have no idea about his consumer choices or his lifestyle so this man might have a HUGE carbon foot print and could be a Captain Planet villain.

How dare you assume that persons gender

Here’s a fun fact since his being vegan and electronics has come up. if a computer or electronic device or plastic isn’t labeled otherwise- it probably has animal products in it. Many plastics, many types of metals, most batteries such as cadmium cells? Animal derived products are used in chemical treating and or manufacture of the substance to get the desired properties. What’s more? Let’s talk leather. Leather is worth maybe 6% of a cows value. When demand is high and price is high it’s worth it for ranchers to sell leather. When it’s low- they may not even bother and just let it go to waste. When prices for leather go up, more cows are bought. When they go down- those cows are killed and liquidated in another market like meat to recoup costs.

Ok- so why mention this? Demand for batteries and computers and plastics and LCD touch screens isn’t going down world wide. So even if people refuse to eat meat- the byproducts used for electronics that are being supplied as non edible parts from animals slaughtered for food or hide etc. still are needed. So they’ll still kill loads of animals. In fact- this drives a cycle. If an animal costs $200 and is worth $300 when processed- you own 100,000 heads- and the meat is worth $100 of the total value. If everyone stops buying meat- do you lose all that money or do you dump the meat cheap and have cushion the loss?

World meat demand is rising because now people can afford meat. If the animal sells for less the price per head drops from $200 to $150 and you buy more- or it stays the same so you charge less for meat and more for the rest. Either way if you can turn a profit killing the animal as a business you’ll still kill it. You’d rather not throw any away but if no one wants it you will because profit is still profit.

And what’s the danger there? People may give up leather, they may give up meat- are they going to give up computers? Smart phones? Cars? Not if they’re reading this. So they’ll still raise massive herds to fill the need for those products, and if they have to raise the cost of fat for treating battery Metal $1 an lb they will, and you’ll pay $5 more for whatever hundreds or thousands of dollar toy it comes in and they’ll still make money. And the animal still was raised and killed, just one more went to waste. Likely not though. Someone somewhere in the world will likely always be hungry enough that the poorest people would buy and eat cheap meat.

So really- does his “vegan diet” help the environment in any way at all- or offset the waste and additional resources of it? Hard to say. So case in point- all we have on this guy is generalization. We can’t say he’s doing good or bad.

Well- I’m not debating that the original posts doesn’t come off as weak in its argument- the notion that one can’t compare trees to animals follows a similar logic to the idea that one can’t compare animals to people. While pigs and humans are mammals and share many similarities- we are also very different. Now compare a lizard or a bird to a mammal and things are even less similar. An insect or invertebrate to a mammal... so on. That changes the whole philosophy from one about not harming living creatures- to just moving the distinction of how similar to us or how simple we must view a life form as before it’s acceptable to use it as a resource and not treat it as an equally living thing.

The argument follows- how can you prove an animal feels pain or discomfort or emotion as we do? We can’t- but the rebuttal has to do with scientific or other indications that an animal posses similar responses or processes to us when distressed. Ok. So if one asks “what about plants? Many plants show a distress response or “awareness” of damage or unfavorable conditions.” The rebuttal being that plants lack a consciousness and are only acting on instinct- they don’t have the capacity to process the information on any other level. But science has t proven animals do either. That beyond the same instinctual drive possessed by most any living creature to survive- there’s no indication. That plants or animals contemplate or are even aware of their mortality let alone a clear concept of death

Keeping in mind I’m not saying I believe animals are so simple or aren’t capable of such emotions- I’m saying there is no proof for it. In science the question of emotion in animals remains unanswered- do humans simply apply our perceptions of animal behaviors to anthropomorphize animals- are such behaviors simply instinct or based in practicality or pattern behavior? We can’t even discern at what point, if any, human emotion is not simply some form of survival instinct versus being actual consciousness. We are left with “I think therefore I am,” but what is “thought” but a communication between cells which is influenced by and influences chemical changes? Can we not say that plants exhibit communication between cells and chemical changes?

If you put a brush in a monkeys hand or an elephants trunk it may paint. To what degree is that intentional or is it aware of what it is even going? Will a plant not paint slowly if you attach a brush to it and lean it against paper as it grows?

So I mean- the whole “plant vs animal” distinction isn’t a distinction of life- and scientifically we can’t prove anything on the front of emotions or etc- we can say that some creatures have what we call a “brain” and some show more activity- but if brain activity indicates intelligence why aren’t schizophrenics or ADHD people considered the smartest of all humans by default? There isn’t a direct causal relationship but a correlation. What’s more- theories abound that plants form a networked organism- with some plants being shown to do exactly this- and if some of those theories are true then plants as we know them wouldn’t be a singular entity but a smaller component of a larger entity- making the statement that plants aren’t equal to animals akin to saying Its ok to eat any part of an animal which doesn’t contain the brain.

People have their own reasons for being vegan- that’s their business so long as they keep it their business. But upon examination it’s simply a choice- Not buying iPhones because you don’t agree with apples treatment of workers and local populations in China is surely a nice gesture of symbolic support. But claiming a moral absolute on the issue doesn’t pencil out if you’re still fine with such labor and practices and use products like nestle or from other sweatshops not in China. That’s a distinction between “I don’t support slave labor...” and “I don’t support slave labor for Apple in China.”