Are fossil fuels vegan?

Gelato isn't vegan?!

... Chicken isn't _vegan?

Yes. No animal was intentionally harmed or killed to be turned into oil. This puts it in the same category as foraged deer antlers or cicada wings, or I guess compost where you found a squirrel carcass and added it to the pile.

You could argue that animals are harmed by the process of extracting and burning fossil fuels, and thus it's not vegan. But this isn't very convincing to me, since that's a secondary effect and not necessary to the process of consuming fossil fuels. (Or at least not necessary in the same way that killing chickens is necessary in order to make chicken sandwiches, for example.) And if you start worrying about a big web of consequences of your actions, then it seems like you're mostly just adding stress to your life without actually making the world a better place.

So if a vegan has a pet chicken and treats it well, can the vegan eat the eggs?
- Imo "backyard eggs" are really small potatoes, especially when like 98% of eggs globally come from factory farms. But even in that case, egg-laying hens are basically bred to suffer. They lay an egg every 1-2 days, compared to like once a month in the wild, which takes a huge amount of energy and nutrients. And we've bred them to produce eggs too big for their bodies, so that even when they're treated really well, the vast majority of hens have bone fractures.
  That's why animal sanctuaries will usually either feed the eggs back to the hens, or give them medication to stop them from laying at all.
  Of course, this is on top of the fact that 100% of egg-laying hen breeders, everywhere, kill the males shortly after birth because they can't lay eggs. See this for more information.
Bees aren't intentionally harmed or killed to make honey but it isn't vegan.
- I mean I think bees are harmed in the production of honey, it's just that most people don't care about bee welfare. Commercially they're bred by crushing the male to extract semen, and any operation above hobby scale will clip the wings of the queen so that the hive can't escape.
  Then you necessarily need to replace their ideal food source with something that is nutritionally much worse for them (basically sugar water), and then hope that they survive on that long enough to make more honey for us to take.
- This isn't entirely true. Sometimes queen bees have their wings cur off to insure they stay in the beehive, and thus make the beehive produce honey. Also, the queens can then often be discarded/killed at the end of the season. So no harm being done in the production of honey is not always the case.
  I feel like there should be an option to certify honey as being vegan if no harm is done to the bees in the process though.
Same argument could be used for Eggs and Milk then, those are not considered vegan, but in the end the animal does not get hurt.
- Cows need to be impregnated by introducing an arm in their anus and holding their cervix so they can introduce a rod with semen in their uterus.
  Male cows and chickens are useless to the industry so they usually get killed soon after birth.
  Chickens usually are kept in cages the size of an A4 paper, cows also usually are very badly treated in order to be milked. Check out https://3minutes.wtf/ so you can see that even what the industry calls the "best animal treatment" is still very inhumane.
- Isn't this just vegetarianism at that point

No processed foods, true vegans eat crude oil and raw uranium for their daily calorie intake

That's a crude joke

The definition from the vegan society is:

Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.

Is climate change cruel to animals? It's not intentional harm, but it causes suffering. People will weigh that differently based on the ethical framework (deontology - utilitarianism spectrum).

Going on vacation by plane arguably isn't vegan from a utilitarian perspective. Deontologists might still see it as vegan.

If someone needs to drive a car and can't afford an EV, it's not practical to avoid fossil fuels in this case. So that would be vegan either way.

I think the "avoiding as far as possible and practicable" principle also makes a lot of sense for the use of fossil fuels by environmentalists.

Wouldn't this mean that if someone derives a sufficient number of utils from eating meat (enough that not eating it would be "impractical"), then eating meat is vegan?
- If someone is literally starving and there's only meat available, it can be argued that it would be vegan to eat it in that situation.

They're pretty much all made of plant matter, but that's irrelevant. What makes it vegan or not is whether you cause harm to the fauna by using it and creating demand for it.

So is it?
- depends on the person, their motivation, environment, and lifestyle choices i guess. you could argue either way.

Coal is made from plants.
Oil is made from plankton and algae.
Natural gas is made from microorganisms.

I believe all three have a small chance of also being made from an animal. But I wasn't able to verify that part.

I mean, even if they do contain animal, does it matter? Are vegans not allowed to pick up old buffalo skulls from the ground from buffalo which died of natural causes?
A large part of plankton consists of animals like crustaceans and jellyfish (zooplankton). Though IDK if that was also true back when the current oil deposits were formed.

No, they release harmful gases into the air which harm animals.

If you mean carbon dioxide, then I hate to tell you, but you make that as well. You existing isn't vegan.
- But they are also an animal. So they can't kill themselves, since that also wouldn't be vegan.
- For millions of years oxygen was a toxic and corrosive pollutant building up.
- Did I ever say it was?
So do I.