A friend just asked me this. Might as well write it down.

I stopped eating meat when I was 17 because my girlfriend at the time was vegetarian, and I knew that it was one of the remaining ways I could significantly lower my carbon footprint.

A year or so later I made the switch to veganism because of the same logic.

After a few years of being "outside" of meat consumption, it became possible for me to be able to think more critically about the moral aspects of breeding/farming/eating animals.^🧱

So now I stay vegan both to reduce emissions and habitat loss, and to try and absolve myself somewhat from the suffering.

The cruelty and pain is greater than anyone can comprehend. It is one of the most evil atrocities humanity continues to commit. I desperately hope for its end. I want children to grow up in a world where they're truly horrified to learn what we did to trillions of animals for hundreds of years.

Veganism is not a movement that has flattened the curve of animal suffering - I believe that will come from in vitro meat (which is decades away from being economically viable) and medium-term animal welfare reforms - but I cannot in good conscience participate in the system in the meantime.