Astrophysicist and author Neil deGrasse Tyson has publicly criticized vegans and their “hypocritical” beliefs while appearing on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
Released on November 30, the episode covered a number of topics, but focused largely on deGrasse Tyson’s new book, Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization.
In the book, the lauded scientist includes a chapter called “Meatarians & Vegetarians.” He uses it to launch his theory that vegans are “species bigots” and cherry-pick which animals to advocate for.
Speaking about the chapter, Joe Rogan agreed. This spurred on conversation about how hypocritical vegans are for not appearing interested in the lives of bugs or parasites. According to the two, vegans only prioritize “cute” animal species.
“If you’re really into animals and don’t want to kill them. If you heard that ticks were endangered, would you start a movement to protect ticks?” deGrasse Tyson asked. He then suggested that most vegans wouldn’t.
His comments have led to ridicule from the vegan community, with some questioning if he really understands the definition of veganism as a movement and belief system.
Ryan Lum from the Happy Healthy Vegan blog posted a reaction video to the podcast. In it, he explained that the astrophysicist appears to be confusing protesting against animal exploitation with protecting endangered species.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson on sentience
In the increasingly bizarre conversation with Rogan, deGrasse Tyson starts comparing mice to trees. He states that the latter are more essential to our world, but vegans prioritize mice because they have a heartbeat.
Lum retorted that this indicates a lack of understanding surrounding sentience as a driving motivation for plant-based food choices. Animals can feel pain and experience suffering, whereas plants cannot, hence plants are eaten, he says.
The YouTuber confirmed that he had never heard the heartbeat explanation used as a justification for choosing a vegan lifestyle.
The podcast spiraled into a discussion of how viruses, as well as animals, want to live, and deGrasse Tyson’s perceived hypocrisy of humane rodent traps and more. Rogan happily encouraged his guest to make increasingly outlandish statements.
‘Kindness is a virtue’
Previously, deGrasse Tyson has talked about the validity of expressing empathy towards non-human animals and how humans underestimate their intelligence. This led to suggestions that he saw value in veganism, despite being a meat-eater himself.
In a 2011 interview with animal rights organization PETA, the scientist said: “Humans aren’t as good as we should be in our capacity to empathize with feelings and thoughts of others, be they humans or other animals on Earth.”
He went on to be featured on a PETA poster that included the strapline “you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that kindness is a virtue.”
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I mean he isn’t wrong
NDT should take a long walk off of a short pier
I love Neil deGrasse Tyson. I didn’t read what he wrote, but I am also very critical about Vegans. I cultivate endangered native bees. Doing so, I increase their chance to multiply themselves, to pollinate the forest and the organic cultivation I grow, increasing food source (fruits) for the fauna and increasing productivity of my agriculture (agroforestry). The same Vegans that criticize beekeeping, exchange leather for oil industry materials (climate change kill animals) and eat non organic food that kill bees. Furthermore, there is no agriculture that do not kill animals (insects are animals). When we work with soil there will be some worms killed accidentally. Among the organic plant producers like me there is no one (except me) that avoids using bone powder or chicken or cattle fezes, supporting animal ranching. Yeah, I avoid unecessary killing, I avoid contributing to climate change avoiding bone powder and animal fezes. And you Vegans? Do you kill bees and insects unecessary eating non-organic food? If someone asks me, I say I am not vegan, but on wholefood organic plant based diet, because it is healthier, it is better to the planet.
Very objective and another way to look at this issue. Less hypocritical and ridiculous in nature…to say the very least. Though I do eat meat at times, I don’t even like killing spiders or scorpions. The so called vegans are so smug and love To sniff their own farts…worst people to hang out with or go to eat with. Somehow they always take over the conversation discussing how great they are because they don’t eat meat or cheese. I get the feeling this gossip columnist is one of them.
Once again Neil shows us his arrogance and complete lack of understanding about the environmental, health, and ethical priorities that the veganism movement holds. Go ahead Tyson, you clearly eat a lot of dead animals – keep contributing to poor health, environment, and treatment of living creatures but learn to stick with astronomy, you ignoramus.
Sounds like seething and projection to me. Somehow his misconception of veganism is our problem? It’s literally carnists who pick and choose which animals to care about – hello domestication?
There are some issues outside of Dr. Tyson’s expertise l, where his opinions land with a resounding ‘thud’. This is one of them, of course. He’s brilliant, but should really stay in his lane here. Not wanting to eat animals is perfectly understandable and ethnically reasonable. On some level I have to believe that Dr. Tyson knows that, but he’s either being deliberately argumentative or he can’t bring himself to stop eating animals. As for Joe Rohan, he’s just weak minded, in my opinions and provocative for entertainment purposes, so who cares.
You sound like a vegan apologist. Why dont you try being objective one day…Are you just another opinion/gossip column writer or a journalist??
How exactly do you know plants don’t feel pain? They must suffer, and you do for the most part, have to kill them to eat them. I’m not equating eating plants with eating a mammals, but you really can’t escape that reality as well.
Another meat eater in denial…
Cows, pigs, and chickens can’t be compared to mice, tapeworms, and ticks.
Until doctors are trained in nutrition, and chefs are trained in plant-based foods, and children are taught the truth about their food (and how it impacts their health, the environment and the billions of animals killed each year) we’ will continue to hear VERBAL VOMIT like this. These guys are rationalizing eating animals because it’s still too inconvenient. They are addicted to immediate gratification and will put anything in their mouths.
This site should be called “Plant Bases Opinion” not NEWS. News is objective.
Agree with degrades Tyson
Vegans will never have optimal health without pills in plastic bottles.
Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson is using the “appeal to perfection” fallacy or the Nirvana fallacy to justify his continued consumption of animals and the resulting food poverty, world hunger, chronic diseases and the destruction of the planet, not to mention the intense suffering of the animals in the food system.
Other possible uses of the Nirvana fallacy: Why bother to free slaves since we cannot free everybody? Why bother to stop genocide since we cannot stop random murders?
I’m shocked that a renowned astrophysicist like Dr. Tyson would resort to such arguments.
Is there a way to know if Neil DeGrass received money or was somehow financed by the meat/dairy industry to write his book? I would bet they are behind all this and the sudden attack by Neil to veganism.
Neil continues to expose his ignorance on a host of issues that bear no resemblance to the enlightenment and intellect he so desperately wishes to profess. He is far more interested in being irreverently relevant and vapidly “edgy” rather than shutting the eff up and perhaps learning something. Forever in the shadow of a true pioneer and intellectual giant he so wishes he could be compared to yet I refuse to place their names in the same sentence!
He is just trying to understand life on earth. Maybe he should just stick to outer space. I throw away mouse and rat traps and give pigeons the right of way.
Tyson lost credibility a long time ago and Rogan never had any to begin with.
First, I am starting to despise NDT because he wants to put personal “opinions” into everything and then turn around and tell people to follow the science. He went from 100% Scientist who stayed in his area of expertise to 50% Scientist 50% Politician. I now also see he is likely better suited to being a High School Science teacher whos actual job is to coach football. lol
Secondly, on this particular topic I somewhat have to agree. A majority (not all) vegans are two-faced hypocrites. They do it more as a political statement (agenda) or as a self marketing ploy. Then they become so involved they take it to far and get lost in themselves and become arrogant D-bags.
If they did take it seriously they would do much more to help animals than just not eat meat. There are FAR better ways to advocate for animals, but this one thing is bad because it makes most people feel like they are saving the world. It is also quite true and hard to refute that if you cared in general about animals as much as they claim to…they would give far more care to insects or any living creature. It is easy to get caught up in the “cuteness” and “innocent” factor of animals. Many (me included to a large extent), go as far to care more about animals than humanity. In many regards they are far more deserving of life on Earth than we humans, ill give ya that.
But it is also true that in many ways the Vegan lifestyle does more harm to Earth, Climate, animals and etc.
For example:
1) It is true that plant-based and grain-based diets have a smaller environmental footprint than meat-rich diets.
2) Growing plants uses up large amounts of water. This is negative in quite a few different ways. Avocado irrigation uses LOTS of water and has caused lots of water shortages around the world. Some other plants cause major issues with ground water shortages and natural wells, which in return causes massive sinkholes.
3) Lots of fruits and vegetables are transferred from thousands of miles away, like mango to the USA from other countries. This creates lots of climate changing Greenhouse gases. Whereas a lot of meat products are produced more locally. Lots of this shipped produce is shipped in much higher quantities and is more perishable aka spoils faster. Lots of this shipped food is no good by the time it reaches its destination.
4) Perhaps the biggest issue and/or concern, is of course deforestation. The entire world (no matter the country) will remove thousands and thousands of acres of woodland to make way for commercialized farming (yes this includes meat farming, but a much higher plant based production).
In Mexico alone, avocado farming and exportation generates the most income than any other form of export. However, the great demand for land has led to a high rate of illegal deforestation in the country. In return these commercialized farming projects create tons of greenhouse gases using the heavy farming equipment.
5) Soil pollution – simply plowing fields over and over again is a much larger issues than cows crap. Soil traps and contains tons of greenhouse gases and plowing up the soil repeatedly releases the gases into the environment over and over and over again. Then let us not forget about pesticides and chemicals used to shew away pests and make the plants grow faster and larger at the expense of the environment.
6) Which I wont go into much detail about here is the “meat substitutes”, which are also terrible for the environment due to the sheer amount of energy that is needed to create the product. Much less we not forget considered how highly processed the substitute meat has to be. This extra processing makes it no different than meat production when it comes to greenhouse gas creation.
Needless to say there are many factors people simply do not consider, when “claiming” to be the better person.