Renewable vs non-renewable sources

[strider]

Currently i know alot of vegans, now they are also getting to annoy me, because i cant have my meat eating opinion and their opinion keeps getting forced upon me, they try to convert me every day, now in my eyes this is wrong, converting people is completely wrong, as soon as i sat "am off home now yum yum beef curry," i get met with incensitive etc comments.
Anyways this sint the nature of my debate, but the things i try and inform them about why the things that they are doing isnt completely "innocent" they just wont believe me.

This debate is about renewable sources vs non renewable.

Now one of my friends has thrown all of his "animal product" clothes into the bin and is replacing his entire wardrobe with synthetic materials, namely polythene, nylon and other synthetics. He believes this is ok because no cows etc died for his clothing.
BUT this isnt neccisarily true is it? NO.

Heres why: Synthetic materials are made in long complex processes using oil, yes that ever depleting non renewable source.
So where he will refuse to buy a garment made from a renewable source, he will buy loads of clothes made from oil in the first stage of the porcess, This is bad because he seems to firmly believe that it is ok to take resources away from the planet itself, resources which took trillions of years in long and complicated processes which due to geographical processes, it will not ever happen again on our planet, so these resources are getting ever more diminished, we will see the end of oil in our lifetime.

Also to refine this oil, thousands of tonnes of smoke a day are pumped into our atmosphere building up toxic chemicals in the air we breathe ourselves.
To transport this oil, we need MASSIVE ships dedicated to the transportation of oil, these themselves use up rediculous amounts of fuel, and put pollutants into the sea. And every once in a while, one of these ships will crash, sending hundreds of thousands of crude oil into thousands of miles of the environment, killing countless thousands of animals, in slow and painful ways.

So between all of the stages of sucking oil away from the earth, transporting it, refining it and creating it into non-animal clothing, MUCH more pollution has actually made it into the planet, more animals have been killed and the earth itself has become irreparably damaged.

But to my friend this is ok, because a cute furry animal "didnt" get hurt

Now im not coming onto here to raise arguments and tell people that they are wrong, i came here to ask this debate and see what the opinions of others are because in the eyes of my earth polluting vegan friend, he can never be wrong. just because he doesnt chow down on a bit of meat.

In the circumstance of my friend, he would rather burn up precious natural non-renewable sources, rather than wear a garment made from a renewable plentiful source.

Cows dont do anything, sheep dont do anything, they reproduce as we well know, they are just a renewable source of many things.

Pls debate with me and not just cast dispersions like my "friends" all seem to.

[Glen]

Hey there...

The first thing I will say is that your Vegan friend seems a little misguided in throwing away his old clothes. I know of no Vegans who would say that wearing their old leather clothes is not 'Vegan'. It is simply wasteful to throw away perfectly good clothes.

Re pollution: Leather itself is just as polluting as synthetics. Leather is essentially skin, flesh. Skin rots very quickly, thus to make it last, it is treated in a tannery with a number of harmful chemicals that are known POPs and contribute to soil erosion, eg. Formaldehyde.

As for the transport, this is the same with leather; the cows are transported to slaughter, the carcasses are transported to be cut up, the skin is transported to a tannery, the 'leather' is transported to a clothing manufacture, the clothes are transported to shops... it goes on. Not to mention the transportation of the chemicals that make skin into leather.

I would be suprised if oil and petro-chemicals were totally absent from the production of leather also, but you will have to find out about that as I am not sure.

Your argument for sustainibility seems weak to me. The fact is, leather is a by-product, albeit a profitable one, of the meat industry. On its own, leather is not sustanible. If nobody ate meat, leather would not be in production. That is very much hypothetical, so let me focus on the meat industry. The production of meat is by no means sustainible; the massive amounts of excrement produced by cattle pollute our water systems and contaminate soil. Cows also produce massive amounts of the greenhouse gas Methane, thought to be the second largest contributor to global warming after cars. As leather rides on the back of meat, and meat is by no means sustainible, it is fair to say that leather is also non-renewable and unsustainible.

However, I do agree that neither is anything made using oil. Our very nation is built on oil, everything you buy will have contributed to oil usage, so it is not a stable argument to say that using oil makes a product any worse than any other process that uses oil. In my opinion, Leather is worse tham synthetics, as the pollution is roughly equal, but leather involves a significant level of cruelty to animals who deserve better.

Maybe you could read up on the philosophical and moral reasons why Vegans are compassionate to animals? Then you might understand why we would not consider cows a renewable resource!

Cheers, Glen x

[chickendude]

Currently i know alot of vegans, now they are also getting to annoy me, because i cant have my meat eating opinion and their opinion keeps getting forced upon me, they try to convert me every day, now in my eyes this is wrong, converting people is completely wrong, as soon as i sat "am off home now yum yum beef curry," i get met with incensitive etc comments.

That's so true. I wouldn't try to convince slave traders that their business is immoral, as it's not my place to proselytize.

[Korn]

Cows dont do anything, sheep dont do anything, they reproduce as we well know, they are just a renewable source of many things.

Hi strider,

Just like humans, cow's aren't 'renewable. When a cow dies, it dies, and if another cow is born next morning, it's another cow. If you have a car and it collapses, and you get a new car the next day, it isn't right to say that using car's are good choices from an environmental point of view: like cow's and sheep, they are not renewable, and the 'industry' that 'produces' animal requires a lot of water, electricity etc. to exist.

The produced/required food for these animals also cause a lot of pollution; these animals normally don't get organic food, even when they eat grass they eat grass that has been fertilized with synthetic products.

Raising a cow also means transportation of fertilizers, synthetic food, transport of materials to create all the buildings and machines used in agriculture, a lot of water and electricity including the extra water and electricity it takes to make the facilities needed to provide extra water an electricity... the list is endless.

You talk about animals as a "renewable plentiful source" - cows are plentiful because humans have arranged it that way.

It takes a lot of extra effort and resources to raise an animal and kill/eat it compared with producing food based on the plants that could have been grown in the same areas where animals currently are kept/eat.

Some people who are not against killing animals avoid meat for environmental reasons alone.

According to you your friend is replacing his entire wardrobe with polythene, nylon and other synthetics... personally, I don't know of any vegans who choose polythene or nylon over natural materials like cotton. I don't even like the word 'synthetic'. If we should generalize, it seems that vegans as a group in general prefer organic, fair trade, environment friendly products - more than any other group I'm aware of.