Boycotts work, but they won't save the planet

Since October the 7th 2023, masses of people have divested their consumer interest in various brands and companies around the world, due those companies’ links, both implicitly and explicitly to Israel’s Defence Forces (IDF). This Divestment from Consumers is known as “Boycotting” which is the act of protest wherein consumers collectively avoid spending money at those companies in order to impact the shareholder price and force them to change a political stance that they have taken. This ability to influence the value of a company is one of the arguments in favour of the Stock Market, because as the company’s revenue drops, as will their stock price, which will force investors to divest from shares of said companies.

In the case of Starbucks, the boycotts have worked remarkably well, with their stock price dropping like a brick on the 30th of April 2024, after Starbucks announced a 2% drop in net revenues globally, due in large part to the boycotts of Starbucks in relation to the Israel-Hamas/Palestine War. These attacks on the share price may seem somewhat inconsequential to the layman, but they actually mean a lot to those who own stock in Starbucks, most importantly banks and investors who own stock in Starbucks via Loans.

Quick aside for the layman, but most CEOs and major shareholders don’t pay themselves a salary and if they do, it tends not to be much in comparison to what you’d think ($150k to $300k) most of their income is based on the share price on the public market, since banks see that as a quicker way of gauging what they’ll willingly give you as a loan with a given % of shares as collateral. This loan is their income and because it’s a loan it’s not taxed, allowing major shareholders to make an income of millions of dollars without it being taxed nearly as much as it should be (if it were a salaried income).

So boycotting companies can work as a way of getting a company to stop a policy or reverse a decision, because it will piss of the banks that loan money to major shareholders of these companies, making it very difficult for those shareholders to sell their shares for loans in the future depending on how bad of an impact that boycott had on its share price. Because Politics is a big part of business, businesses are… by their nature Populist. They want to be seen to be progressive and align with the majority of their target demographics. However, they don’t really do a good job of this, and boycotts are a way for a majority of consumers and potential consumers to make their voices heard by those companies.

However, there is another boycott movement that I don’t think will have quite the desired effect that they think they will, and the evidence of that fact still seems to fly over their heads.

Veganism

Owing to the nature of many Vegans I should put the disclaimer here that, I agree with their entire premise. Climate change is absolutely real and that cattle as well as other meat industries have a massive impact on year-on-year heating of the planet due to the production of methane and other greenhouse gases. However, switching your diet or decreasing your consumption of meat products (including dairy products) is not having the effect that the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) Boycotts are having on Israel-aligned companies.

Going Vegan for ethical reasons is one thing, but going Vegan in hopes that it will “obliterate” the meat industry, is nothing short of delusional. The Meat industry is still seeing gains in meat consumption globally, and that is while the number of vegans continues to grow (and that’s being charitable). There are a few reasons why Veganism is not going to cause the meat industry to implode in the way the BDS movement is causing companies and academic institutions to rethink their relationship to Israel.

One of the key ones is that many of the Vegan companies that provide vegan options to vegans and vegetarians are either direct subsidiaries of Meat conglomerates or they are being invested in by the meat industry. There are 3 examples of this.

1. Beyond Meat - Beyond Meat received a $20 million investment from Tyson Foods, a major meat producer in 2016. Tyson later sold its stake in Beyond Meat, but the investment allowed Beyond Meat to solidify its stake in the Meat Alternative market in the early days

2. Impossible Foods – Impossible foods are in both Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Bill Gates’ (Microsoft) Investment portfolio… Alongside Major meat producers such as Tyson Foods.

3. Eat Just, Inc (Previously known as Hampton Creek Foods, and Beyond Eggs) – Eat Just, Inc received an investment from Cargill, which is a major Meat processor. Again, similar to Beyond Meat, Cargill sold its stake in Eat Just (back when it was called Hampton Creek) but again the investment solidified their place in the egg-less alternative market.

On top of this, the vegan foods market is hypocritically linked to the meat and dairy industry in quite a funny way. Vegan companies are incentivised to work on a zero-waste model, which for a lot of them results in them selling their soybean, oat, almond and cashew mulch (by product of making vegan milk alternatives) to cattle farmers who use it as filler for dairy cows and cattle used in the meat industry. Resulting in the by-products of the vegan industry, quite literally fuelling the industry they want to get rid of.

So, what’s the answer

Quite simply, I don’t know, but I know one thing for certain the vegan movement is not going to get rid of the meat industry and all they’re doing is acting as a means to “diversify” your stock portfolio if you are a meat industry investor, insuring that regardless of what way the public goes, you still win.

There are also ecological risks to the vegan industries that increase the demand for Soy, Cashews, Oats and Almonds. Mainly soil degradation and nitrous oxide release from the over-use of artificial fertilisers from the harvesting of crops used by those industries. The use of artificial fertilisers and factory farming of those crops also results in reduced biodiversity in the area those crops are raised in which runs completely counter to the point that vegans are advocating for.

What seems clear to me is that, if you are to be a vegan for either climate related reasons or ethical reasons. The most logically consistent you can be, is to be in favour of abolishing capitalism as a whole. You cannot be a Liberal (pro-capitalism) or a right-wing vegan who wants to get rid of the meat industry and be seen as logically consistent. Furthermore, even as a Vegan regardless of political or economic views, you cannot be militant in your view that everyone should be vegan because as I just mentioned, even if everyone became vegan. There is no guarantee that climate change would end, or somehow be fixed.

The root cause of climate change is the economic system (and the profit-incentive around food in which we live), not the cattle, not the farmers, not fisherman, etc, etc. Boycotts are symbolic for vegans, they’re not the solution and anyone who tells you otherwise is frankly, either an industry plant or completely delusional.