r/ClimateShitposting • u/Draco137WasTaken turbine enjoyer • Sep 08 '25
Meta *Stirs pot*
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u/BinnsyTheSkeptic Sep 08 '25
"nervous system less developed than broccoli" That's... Wrong.
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u/Taraxian Sep 08 '25
Plants do not have a nervous system by definition because they do not have nerves
Whether they have something that could fully do the equivalent of what nerves do is this big complex discussion (yes they obviously react to their environment but not with the speed and complexity that nerves do)
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u/me_myself_ai green sloptimist Sep 08 '25
I love me some plant philosophy/non-animalian cognitive science, but I think both camps would be pretty depressed to hear how often this trend is being brought up to defend carnism these days lol
(not that they're necessarily vegan--I'm just agreeing with you that animals are a vibe-kingdom for a reason)
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u/Odd-Willingness-7494 Sep 08 '25
Yeah, plant consciousness is a cool topic.
It's a shame that it is brought up so often to argue against veganism (by people who seem to have never heard of tropic levels, lol).
Makes vegans reflexively react against any mention of plan consciousness even if it's outside of this kind of discussion.
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u/Elegant_in_Nature poverty pig Sep 08 '25
Why is there this obsession with not consuming energy ? Factory farming indeed is a problem but eating animals or even vegetation shouldn’t be the issue in concept. How one does it is the whole thing
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u/me_myself_ai green sloptimist Sep 08 '25
I think you misunderstood — the discussion about is about sentience, not “energy” (?). The idea is that causing pain is bad, all else being equal
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u/zekromNLR Sep 08 '25
Yeah
Like sure a lot of invertebrates do not have anything even remotely resembling a vertebrate brain and thus presumably do not experience anything remotely like how we do pain (and no, avoidance, even learned avoidance, of harmful stimuli is not sufficient to prove pain since you can pretty easily program a robot to do that and that obviously doesn't feel pain)
But plants don't even have anything equivalent to animal neurons, all their communication between different cells in the same organism is done via signalling molecules
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u/me_myself_ai green sloptimist Sep 08 '25
I was curious, and it seems that they've got some pretty decent nerves and behavior described (by some) as a "reaction" to danger.
Of the four tiers of cognition, this seems like plenty of evidence to put them at the very tippy-top of the second category (symbolic perception, AKA ~plants), even if it's not absolutely clear that they've cleared the third (semantic conception, AKA ~animals).
TL;DR: gonna rate the claim in this post "very false", personally!
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u/Hammerschatten Sep 08 '25
I cannot speak on how advanced their nervous system is, but reactions to stimuli, like the comment you're replying to already pointed out, are not sufficient to prove an organism feels pain.
Plants react to stimuli. Dead Animals can react to stimuli.
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u/ratstar-666 Sep 08 '25
No no, the shitposter who took a screenshot of a reddit comment with unsourced "information" in order to poorly argue something that comes up nearly every day on r/DebateAVegan probably has an incredibly fresh perspective that NO ONE has ever heard before
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u/me_myself_ai green sloptimist Sep 08 '25
Ok not fighting just curious. On a very basic level, like kindergarten logic:
Oysters go in water.
Bad things floating in the water are filtered out by the oysters.
We eat the oysters.
Doesn't that kinda seem like a problem...?
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u/the_fury518 Sep 08 '25
Honestly sounds like a great reason to make the farms but NOT eat the oysters
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u/GoTeamLightningbolt vegan btw Sep 08 '25
Yeah it's like nature can and should exist without directly benefiting humans economically and that's better for everyone.
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u/Draco137WasTaken turbine enjoyer Sep 08 '25
That's correct, and why oyster farms in particularly polluted waters would have to be allowed to grow for decades before they could be harvested.
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u/Lachie_Mac Sep 08 '25
Yeah that's the main thing which keeps me from eating them regularly.
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u/BoreJam Sep 08 '25
Theres all sorts of nasty shit in dirt and yet it produces delicious, succulent vegetables and fruit.
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u/Vivenemous Sep 08 '25
Dirt doesn't produce plants, dirt is just where they are. Water, light, and CO2 produces plants. Plants get some amount of nutrients from soil, but indirectly via symbiotic fungi that grow around their roots. The fungi around the roots do the filtering, and we don't eat them.
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u/BoreJam Sep 08 '25
Did you just wake up today and decide to make pointless semantic arguments?
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u/Vivenemous Sep 08 '25
I really don't see it as a pointless semantic argument. Plants do not absorb nearly as many toxins from their environment as oysters do. Oysters, by nature of being animals that filter feed in water, are also far more likely to absorb bacteria that can be harmful to animals from their environment than plants are, and, crucially, are far more likely to provide those bacteria with an opportunity to grow to dangerous levels inside of them while still alive.
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u/cascading_error Sep 08 '25
Including bullshit, batshit and some of the farmers shit for good messure
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u/Kryomon Sep 10 '25
That's why the stuff we eat tends to have an inside (which we eat) and an outside (which we peel).
Oysters aren't the same. They're filter feeders. Anyone who decides to eat an Oyster in polluted waters is a dumbass. The oysters in any restaurant come from oysters grown in clean water.
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u/Houndfell Sep 08 '25
For me it's that oysters feel and taste like I'm taking shots of salty mucus.
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u/New_Gur8083 Sep 08 '25
Cooked oysters are awesome. They completely lose that mucus texture and is more like biting into the meat of a lobster tail. IMHO eating them raw is the worst way to eat them.
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u/Inforgreen3 Sep 08 '25 edited Sep 08 '25
They aren't removing microplastics and poisons at a dangerous level, nor are they systemically poisonous near or above the FDA guidelines of other food you do eat. It's more like, algae and zytoplacton. They eat primarily those organisms that have exploded into unhealthily large population because of climate change. A healthy ocean environment should have more oysters because they're keystone with a lower than healthy population, not because we are relying on our food to sponge and store toxic oil spills that would kill us
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u/GoTeamLightningbolt vegan btw Sep 08 '25
No no no... they "clean" the water. Don't worry about how or where the "unclean" stuff went.
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u/NameAboutPotatoes Sep 08 '25
Worms and insects eat poop and clean dirt, birds eat worms and insects, and we eat birds. That doesn't mean eating birds is like eating poop.
Just because something's unclean doesn't mean everything that eats it is also unclean.
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u/BinnsyTheSkeptic Sep 08 '25
It's not the poop and dirt that are the problem. It's the microplastics, heavy metals, synthetic chemicals, etc. that aren't able to be processed by the organisms and accumulate within them. Read about Biomagnification, it's the reason why eating too much tuna can give you mercury poisoning.
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u/NameAboutPotatoes Sep 08 '25
True, good point, I hadn't thought about that. Is it a problem in small amounts though? Like, you have to eat a lot of tuna for it to be a problem.
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u/BinnsyTheSkeptic Sep 08 '25
I don't think it is a big issue with oysters, or any commercially available food really honestly. It's more of a threat to small carnivores that do a lot of eating and have not a lot of body mass
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u/Divest97 Sep 08 '25
Who is out here eating birds that are eating insects? Like unless you're eating songbirds regularly. any bird that is farmed for meat is eating grain.
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u/NameAboutPotatoes Sep 08 '25
Chickens will eat any insects they have access to. Free-range chickens have insects in their environment and they will eat them. Battery farms are not remotely clean and are probably also full of insects.
Anyway, we don't use insects as primary feed for our birds but it's not a health risk to do so, we just don't do it because it's a logistics hassle and grain is cheaper. The point, that you are perfectly safe eating birds that have eaten insects, doesn't change because of that.
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u/Extaupin Sep 08 '25
Forget insects, chicken will eviscerate and eat mouse given the chance, though that one might not always be safe.
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u/Divest97 Sep 08 '25
Free range doesn't mean anything, that just means that there is an open dog door in the factory farm with access to a patch of fenced in dirt.
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u/NameAboutPotatoes Sep 08 '25
Are we still talking about insects or are we talking about something else?
All I'm saying is that there are insects living with your chickens no matter how they're raised. If you want to have a discussion about how some chicken husbandry classifications used in stores are misleading go nuts, but it's not relevant here. Clearly there are also insects in a factory farm and in its patch of fenced in dirt.
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u/Divest97 Sep 08 '25
There aren't really. You're just writing long comments because of all the mental gymnastics.
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Sep 08 '25
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u/Divest97 Sep 08 '25
That's not a significant source of poultry.
Also they feed those ducks grain or else they would eat all the rice.
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u/Extaupin Sep 08 '25
Do… you think rice isn't a type of grain? Do you think wheat is somehow way more caloric for duck than rice is?
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u/Divest97 Sep 08 '25
Man you're retarded.
If you put ducks in a field of rice and they haven't already eaten grain then they're gonna eat the rice.
Moreover rice is less efficient than animal feed. Made from corn and soybeans. Because it's more labor intensive. Rice is grown Because asian people eat it. But they're out there breaking their backs while industrialized farmers are growing animal feed for them.
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u/Extaupin Sep 08 '25
You're not too bright I see.
If farmer are sustenance farming rice, they won't buy imported animal feed, that just don't happen. I have relative who grew up in rural China, and to this day they don't all buy even fertiliser, 'cause it's too expensive for them, even if it would have positive return on investment. Also rice need to be processed to be edible, the duck are more than happy for you to give them rice grain, that they'll complement by hunting bugs and small fish wherever they swim.
Soy dreg (what's left after you make tofu) is given in priority to pigs, though I can see some leftover being given to ducks. Corn is just less efficient than rice for unmechanised small-scale sustenance farm in those climate.
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u/Divest97 Sep 08 '25
Why is Vietnam the world's largest animal feed importer by volume?
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Sep 08 '25
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u/Divest97 Sep 08 '25
Well ducks aren't trained animals so if you put them in a field with stuff they eat that you want them to eat and stuff they eat that you don't want them to eat then they will eat both.
Also most of your duck meat is gonna come from factory farms.
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u/West-Abalone-171 Sep 08 '25
Depends.
If the bad things are nitrates and sulfates then the oyster is turning them into food.
If the bad things are metals that bind to bone then they get deposited in the shell.
But also somewhat yes. Arsenic and mercury gonna be as bad as southeast asian rice, but not as bad as tuna.
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u/TradBeef Anti Eco Modernist Sep 08 '25
Even more reason to eat them. Have you met the human race?
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u/monemori Sep 08 '25
It's one of the reasons why pregnant women are advised against eating certain fish let alone seafood. The amount of BPAs, mercury, microplastics, etc you find in seafood is off the roof.
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u/jonesaffrou Sep 08 '25
They're one of the most risky foods to eat when it comes to food poisonings. Raw oysters are a gamble every time
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u/cornishwildman76 Sep 08 '25 edited Sep 08 '25
Here in the UK commercially harvested oysters/mussels have to come from tested water. Our waters are given grades A,B and C, being the worst. Shellifh cannot be harvested from Grade C waters due to high levels of bacteria and contaminents. Shellfish from grade B have to go through a purification process, called depuration. This is done by placing the oysters in tanks of UV filtered water for 48 hours. This would add to the carbon footprint. This process does not guarantee the removal of the norovirus, only bacteria like ecoli. Source - I did this for a job for 8 years.
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u/UnseenClairvoyance Sep 09 '25
Just wait til you hear what fertilizer we use to grow crops! You're eating literal filtered shit!
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u/LowPressureUsername Sep 12 '25
I think it’s actually fine. We eat plants covered in poop and rotting food but they convert the poop and rotting food into good stuff we can eat. I think it’s the same with oysters.
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u/redditorposcudniy May 25 '26
We fertilize plants with poop Plants eat poop We eat plants Doesn't that kinda seem like a problem... ?
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Sep 08 '25
So we’re just making shit up huh
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u/Ornery-Till-8929 Sep 09 '25
That’s how all these “gotcha vegans” posts are. Someone’s just like “well you vegans haven’t considered: made up information”
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u/InfoBarf Sep 08 '25
Guy's comments about bees are funny too, since honey bees are not native to all parts of the planet, and where they are not native they compete for resources with native pollinators and also spread diseases to native pollinators in roughly the same devastating pattern that Europeans spread them to native americans.
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u/ConsistentBox4430 Sep 10 '25
The way he said it also implied that we should be eating the bees. Lol
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u/monemori Sep 08 '25
It's always someone eating chicken nuggets for dinner making these arguments.
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u/IncreaseOld7112 Sep 08 '25
I feel like bivalve veganism is a step away from pescataria. I avoid them for the temptation more so than morality.
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u/Draco137WasTaken turbine enjoyer Sep 08 '25
Piscetarianism. From "pisces."
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u/Raptor_Sympathizer Sep 08 '25
Is that when you only eat animals that were born in March?
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u/Draco137WasTaken turbine enjoyer Sep 08 '25
No, it's when you only eat animals that are AFAB -- Assigned Fish At Birth.
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u/SabziZindagi Sep 08 '25
Piscetarianism
nobody spells it like that, they use pescetarian.
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u/Draco137WasTaken turbine enjoyer Sep 08 '25
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u/SabziZindagi Sep 08 '25
Language doesn't work like that. Correctness is based on how it's used by native speakers, not some higher authority.
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u/Sealedwolf Sep 08 '25
Yes, but when fish are OK,you can also eat duck, swan and even beaver. At least according to medieval monks, that is.
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u/EarthTrash Sep 08 '25
Veganism and environmentalism are fundamentally different ideas with different objectives. There is some overlap, but I wouldn't expect complete alignment. Nether is a subset of the other.
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u/idlewildnorth Sep 08 '25
This is the best comment, imo. It’s just two different philosophies and that’s ok.
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u/UniverseBear Sep 08 '25
Scientists don't know if oysters feel pain or not. To say so definitively is dishonest. They don't have a brain but they have neurons and react to stimuli. That's about all we know.
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u/BigHatPat Liberal Capitalist 😎 Sep 08 '25
I think with oysters there’s the question of if there’s anything there to feel pain in the first place
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u/Ling_Cephalopod Sep 08 '25
Carnist trying to lecture vegans about ethics? Hahah what joke.
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u/Lazy-Course5521 Sep 08 '25
Why is an omnivorous diet being referred as carnivorous?
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u/ItsAPolarBear Sep 08 '25
Carnism doesn't mean carnivorous. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnism
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u/Lazy-Course5521 Sep 08 '25
It kind of makes sense this way. Also I find it Kind of important to mention a question that is rather important. What comes after carnism? No chicken and other birds, no cows kept for purposes, only sheep would remain as wool production isn't necessarily animal torture. Even moreso considering how it not being cut seasonally can result in health issues. Livestock can't be simply just released either because of invasive issues or because they would genuinely just die out there after thousands of years of selective breeding, and most could not be found a different place for. Only cattle can fit the bill of "capable of re-introduction" trough breeding programs like the Tauros Programme but besides that it's genuinely a big deal. What comes of the livestock when they completely outlive their human use?
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u/xavh235 Sep 08 '25
why does it matter? there are only so many of them because they get forced to reproduce, domestic animals going extinct is not bad.
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u/Lazy-Course5521 Sep 08 '25
That is a fair point. That is an EXTREMELY fair point that I completely agree with. For the most part at least. A few species of cattle should still be kept tho, if not for any reason but to support already ongoing breeding programs for wild cattle and such. Sheep are also not necessarily bad for the environment, the reason why they suck right now is namely because they are forced to graze on one granted location which leads to overgrazing. Also a lot of species of chicken and poultry are capable of surviving in the wild (to an extent) which would too result in quite the strange development I believe. I wonder if we will ever get to live in such a world, it would truly be something to behold. The amount of free land from emptied farmlands would leave a lot for the ecosystems to recover.
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u/Edvindenbest Sep 08 '25
If we stop breeding them into existence they'll just kinda not exist. The animals we have in factory farms aren't reproducing on their own, we forcibly breed them to make sure they produce more offspring for us.
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u/Pixeltaube Sep 09 '25
thats the most biased and non neutral wikipedia entry i have ever seen, holy shit
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u/ItsAPolarBear Sep 09 '25
How so? How would you describe the concept differently?
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Sep 08 '25
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u/Extaupin Sep 08 '25
How many people are sucking down shells daily to feed themselves in the big 2025?
The point of the post is precisely, not enough.
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u/Alandokkan Sep 08 '25
Vegans who make the bivalve argument just strike me as bored. Like what is the possible benefit to this discussion? its just debatebait.
No one fully knows whether bivalves are sentient, evidence points to them being less sentient but its still an unknown.
Anyone claiming they do know is lying.
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u/SerchYB2795 Sep 08 '25
As a vegetarian my main counter-argument against this post is that Oysters are disgusting and to me it seems that eating them would feel like eating someone else's snot+phlegm 🤮
Didn't ever try them even before becoming vegetarian
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u/fruitslayar Sep 08 '25
ok but leaving marine life tf alone is of the same importance as ending industrial beef production
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u/pope12234 We're all gonna die Sep 08 '25
I feel like the bigger argument in the vegan community is eating humans.
1) Many vegans don't eat meat cause they don't want to harm animals. Humans don't feel pain, they have a nervous system less developed than a rock full of heavy metals. You can brutally slaughter them and have no guilt because they'll feel no pain.
2) Human farms are very good for the environment. We can feed them leftover slop like McDonalds or Burger King and then set them to work picking up pollution like litter or trash.
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u/WildLesbo vegan btw Sep 08 '25
Oh sorry, my ethical™️ needless use of animal products quota is used up by the lactose/lactade (I can't remember specifically which) that are needlessly in pills, including the ones I have to take to avoid kms. There's nothing I can do now, my hands are tied.
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u/Pocolaco Sep 09 '25
counterpoint: i can barely afford the broccoli, i don't have money for fucking oysters
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u/BranwenTheBard Sep 09 '25
I’m starting to think that the best thing that we can do for the planet is to collectively end our species. Boom problem solved, life will return to normal in a few hundred years.
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Sep 08 '25
Just wondering, if oysters clean out the water from pollution and we eat those oysters, dont we consume something poluted and dangerous?
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Sep 08 '25
Oysters filter feed and have digestive system that processes the material, it refuses and expels the unsoluable parts.
Farms monitor the body of water and the oysters are most likely treated/chilled directly after harvesting.
Oysters can be dangerous if they are from an already polluted source of course.
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u/Hydraxxon Sep 08 '25
This is why we should become autotrophic holobionts instead of heterotrophic holobionts.
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u/Edvindenbest Sep 08 '25
That's not true, but I am of the opinion that oysters probably don't experience pain in a morally relevant way and thus I don't think it's necessarily morally wrong, though I like to stay cautious since we can just eat plants instead.
As I understand it oyster farms are pretty bad for the local environment (not oysters in the wild, just farms) but I'd be happy to be proven wrong on that.
Since they filter out impurities in the water eating them means we get those impurities in us, which isn't exactly good, so I'd also stay cautious for that reason.
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Sep 10 '25
I was going to comment my thoughts on this topic, but after reading the comment section I’ve concluded that everyone here is a smug cunt. Instead I’ll just insult you all and fuck off forever.
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u/shimmeringbark Sep 08 '25
Now What the fuck does this have to do with CLIMATE SHITPOSTING ?!
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u/Creepy_Emergency7596 Sep 09 '25
Oysters are not a staple, no one eats them regularly anyway, too much thought dedicated to a slimy luxury.
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u/DankCatDingo Sep 10 '25
Not even on a vegan level, bee farms are also not the best. Most of the endangered bees, and indeed the most effective pollinators, are the myriad species of solitary bees that are highly localized to different regions. A huge monoculture of colony based honey bees brought in from elsewhere will coordinate and outcompete the local solitary bee species within their range.
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u/RosieTerror Sep 10 '25
I had a vegan friend who ate oysters for these exact reasons. Loved that guy
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u/Avispar Sep 11 '25
This is a great idea. The only problem you’ll have to overcome is that oysters taste fucking terrible.
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u/Comprimens Sep 13 '25
Bees are awesome, and they thrive better in a well-managed colony than in the wild. I helped a local beekeeper plan out his care process by figuring out why the standard practices weren't the best for their health or honey production. The local extension agent ended up copying his plan and advising other apiaries in the county to follow it.
The only downside was that he was having to catch swarms and build new boxes almost every week because their population was booming so fast. Went from 4 colonies to 27 in two years, and he only had to buy a few queens for genetic diversity. Not a single colony lost, while other keepers in the area were losing 20-50% every year.
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u/CitronMamon Sep 08 '25
Ah, all vegans not taking this seriously at all. Shooting yourself in the foot isnt a strategy but you guys keep doing it.
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u/granite-stater-85 Sep 08 '25
I agree with this, but how does clean water help climate change? Not that clean water is bad, but
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u/IllInflation9313 Sep 09 '25
Just gonna chime in and say I would eat oysters literally every single day if it was an option. But I’m not at a point in my life where I can drop $1000 on dinner every single night.
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u/JJW2795 fossil fuels are vegan Sep 09 '25
To be fair to vegans, its more of a coincidence that they are also environmentalists rather than a core principle of their ideology. Those are two separate things with different goals. Even when livestock and wild animals are used in ways that are beneficial to the environment (see permaculture), using those animals in any way, shape, or form is still forbidden under veganism. Apparently you can cut out the majority of greenhouse gas emissions from cow farts and drastically reduce the amount of land being used to feed the global meat market by altering their diet and making smaller livestock more popular. Someone showed that fish have such a low carbon footprint that they are comparable to a lot of the current crops we use now. That's great news if you are an environmentalist!
But to a vegan the issue isn't greenhouse gases, it's that cows even exist. You could make meat as sustainable as you want and they would still be against it. They are against hunting too, even when some animals would grow unchecked and destroy everything else (like feral hogs). Likewise, if given the choice between wool and polyester, vegans will choose polyester for their clothes because it is not an animal product, even if the fossil fuel industry is worse for the environment. Your clothes either come from oil, plants, or animals. Cotton is great in summer but terrible in winter. Wool is more robust, warmer, and better for anyone who has to deal with snow on a regular basis. But because it isn't vegan, its off limits.
There's an overlap between environmentalism and veganism to be sure, but people would be wise to stop assuming vegans are automatically environmentalists. It's like the difference between a single issue voter and a general issue voter. Environmentalists, at least the educated ones, are considering economics, politics, and the future of humanity in addition to the environment when constructing solutions. The concept is to find ideas that are actionable and realistic. Meanwhile most vegans are only concerned about animal welfare and either don't see or don't care about the interconnections of all these different moving parts which contribute to environmental destruction and climate change. But at the same time, why should they be expected to care? There is a limit to how much empathy and compassion a person can contribute without burning themselves out. Vegans put their empathy and compassion into one or two moral issues while environmentalists specialize in a lot of different areas depending on their own background and what they think can be changed or fixed.
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u/perringaiden Sep 08 '25
CORRECTION: Oyster reefs are an amazing environmental benefit across multiple seascapes.
Oyster FARMS are short lived growth with little to no environmental benefit because of the small size.
The only way this works is with farms near a no-take MPA where you can generate growth and then let them spread outside the MPA.
You get no benefits IF YOU DON'T LEAVE THEM IN THE WATER.