One common argument made by vegans and vegetarians (and one that frequently annoys their friends who don’t share their diet) is that eating vegetarian or vegan, all by itself, is good for the environment because animals release methane in the form of cow farts. Okay, I’m being unfair here: the real claim is that eating animals is bad for the environment because it releases excess carbon into the atmosphere. Animal foods, they argue, are intrinsically worse for the environment because animals must be fed food that humans could be eating instead, thereby inevitably increasing the ecological damage done by consuming animals for food.
This argument makes vegetarianism or veganism not only a dietary choice an individual makes for their own health, but also adds yet another reason for vegetarians and vegans to believe that their way of life is morally superior than those who choose to eat animals and …