Offset if You Eat Meat

Don't eat meat, but if you do, offset

A friend recently suggested that the reason I have not written about offsetting on this blog so far is that I have a fear of offsetting—that I have no good replies to offsetting as an argument against veganism, so instead I just refuse to talk about it. Partly in order to show that this is wrong, and partly because offsetting is just an interesting topic, I am hereby breaking my moratorium on talk of offsetting, or should I say, offsetting my previous talk on the matter.

Offsetting involves donating to animal charities while eating meat so that the combined impact of your actions on animals is positive. People offset carbon because doing so allows one to have a positive environmental impact without stopping driving. Thus, it’s argued that instead of giving up meat, it’s cheaper and easier to just donate about 100 dollars to animal charities, which probably more than offsets.

If you eat meat, you should offset. However, I don’t think that this nullifies the case for veganism very much.

One reason for this relates to the potential long-term effects of our actions. It seems that we want a social movement where we cause others to take actions similar to our own. But no social movement has ever been successful by urging people to offset rather than stop appalling practices. We want people to have attitudes wherein they’re so appalled by eating meat that they stop doing so immediately. Though I think that this explains a good reason to talk more about veganism. Once people are already donating 100 dollars a year to effective animal charities, it makes it much more likely that they’ll be willing to vote for the abolition of factory farms, and other similar policies.

One other is that there’s good evidence that eating meat makes people less sympathetic to the plight of animals. Thus, I’d imagine that if the average vegan started eating meat and offsetted, they would donate less over the course of their life to effective animal charities than they otherwise would have.

Third, even though I think utilitarianism is true, we should have some moral uncertainty. If we have moral uncertainty then we should be very hesitant about the ethicality of eating animals and offsetting. It might be seriously wrong to eat meat and offset, just as it would be wrong to kill ten people a year but then offset by donating to the against malaria foundation.

There are some cases where offsetting is permissible, for example, in the case of carbon. But there are relevant differences between offsetting carbon and offsetting eating meat, including, quoting Bruers

1. The social welfare optimum has a positive emission rate but a zero meat consumption level

2. Carbon offsetting does not involve basic rights violations, meat offsetting does

3. Greenhouse gas emissions involve a collective harm that lessens personal accountability, meat consumption does not

4. Carbon offsetting involves the same victim, meat offsetting involves different victims

It seems like the best analogy for meat offsetting is viewing child porn. Child porn viewing causes more child porn via a complex indirect mechanism, involves basic rights violations, does not really involve collective harm, offsetting would involve helping other victims, and the social welfare optimum is zero. But it seems wrong to offset viewing child pornography.

Thus, I think that people who are eating meat should offset. However, for those who are not eating meat, they should continue to do so and also donate to effective animal charities.