Concern with biodiversity is not "amoral" because it "allows for" animal cruelty. My concern that my house retain its value "allows for" me to beat my wife -- in that it just doesn't say anything about it. The two are not particularly related.

The reasons behind my concern for biodiversity are largely pragmatic, though there are moral aspects too, in that human beings are immorally dooming their own prospects and removing the ability of other creatures to live.

The reasons behind my concern with animal welfare are largely moral. I believe "minimize cruelty" is a good guide to action toward any species, human or otherwise.

But I don't see them as particularly connected. I don't see how the former without the latter (or vice versa) is somehow incomplete. Maybe you can expand.

grist.org

Sustainability is, at its root, about the relationship between human activitiy and natural systems.  The destructiveness of our civilization comes from the belief that we are separate from, and superior to, the rest of the natural world.

True sustainability (as opposed to the "being less bad" that is 99.9% of what current passes for "sustainability") will require that we change our attitude and consider ourselves, once again, as part of the natural system.  This would represent a profound shift in consciouness that will take several generations to occur, if it happens at all.  But as long as humans continue to act as if they are outside of the natural world -- the life support system of Spaceship Earth -- we will continue to act in ways that damage that system.

If we begin to live within a framework that considers humans as just another tool of nature, another component in the web of life, the "moral" issues around animal welfare will become both obvious and moot.  We will continue to use animals and rely on them, just as they use and rely on each other.  But we will cease to exploit them, because we will understand that what we do to them, we do to ourselves.

Note that, in this context, moral veganism is not the epitome of an ethical relationship with nature, but is in fact its antithesis.  To live without making use of animals in any way is to try to place oneself outside of the circle of life.  No complex animal species survives without relationships to other animals, and it is arrogant for humans to believe that we can or should be any different in this regard.

I don't believe that the distinction between "use" and "exploit" is a valid one in terms of humans' use of animals.  Whatever use we may put animals to, whether it be farm labor, transportation, airport security, search and rescue, medical research or aiding the blind, we must presume that the animal had little choice in the decision.  Granted many animals are treated very well in exchange for their service; free room, board and medical care, and often love, affection, attention, regular exercise, etc.  However, since we cannot communicate with animals we cannot know whether they would have chosen this life of service, or would choose an entirely different life; in fact, we do not even know if they possess the capacity for choice at such a level.

When it comes down to killing animals, for food or other purposes, it's kind of hard to get around the argument that most animals do not want to die.  It's a pretty primary biological urge, staying alive. I am not a vegetarian - I eat meat, and in order to do so, animals are killed.  I have made my peace with this decision, yet even though I am fully aware that I am "part of the natural world" this does not give me unlimited license to "make use of animals" in any way I see fit.

Jason, I am not sure that this is such a debate amongst environmentalists.  Does davidintokyo even consider himself an environmentalist?  Although we do sometimes focus on numbers, I have never heard an environmentalist say that only the numbers matter, and can't imagine that I ever will.

I think David's is the key point, to minimize cruelty and prevent suffering in all animals, human and non-human.  When you think of it this way, the numbers are irrelevant, because really, one suffering animal is one too many.

Kaela

For that reason, it seems unjust to charge environmentalists, concerned with biodiversity, with hypocrisy.  We proponents of animal rights are indeed happy when environmentalists such as David move in our direction.  But I do not think we can fairly require that of all of them.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Right, GrEn, it seems to be a fact of life that human beings, being animals, are inevitably positioned in this network, or "web," of life-eating-life, which is one of the foundations of biology.  It is necessary to add, though, that we are moral beings too.  We have hugely, immensely imaginative minds.  When we kill, we can think about what we are doing.  We can imagine the experience of the living being whom we are killing.  And that inevitably affects the quality of our own personal lives.

The meat industry of course wants to disguise the reality of killing.  And restaurants gladly join in.

Kaela, you make some excellent points.  "Exploit" is rhetoric; it does not mean anything over and above "use," but adds a great moral burden.  Sort of like "murder," as opposed to "kill."  "Steal," as opposed to "take."

I am very happy that you join David (good David, our David, not at all to be confused with DavidinTokyo) in disapproving of cruelty.  As I wrote before, it is not clear to me that that should be acknowledged as a certain, established part of environmentalist ethics.  Nevertheless, it is a good direction to move toward.

The principal issue in animal-rights ethics, IMHO, is the relative vulnerability and passivity of beings capable of suffering equal to our own.  That is why I believe animal rights ought to be firmly linked to humanitarian moral issues, in which those same considerations are fundamental.

Captivity is an interesting issue in animal-rights ethics.  My own feeling is that many animals are quite comfortable in a stable environment, where they have what they need, they are relieved of the burden to find food, and they do not have to watch out for dangerous neighbors.  So I am not altogether an opponent of zoos, as are many animal-rights proponents.

I do not know enough about cetaceans to have a firm opinion on captive dolphins and orcas and other cetaceans.  As you know, that is a serious subject among animal-rights proponents.  In the past couple of years, two beluga whales were bought from a private owner, I think, who had them in horrible conditions in an amusement park in Mexico City, and moved to the state-of-the-art aquarium in Atlanta, where apparently they are thriving.

As you correctly observe, we cannot (yet!) communicate with animals, and so we cannot know what they really want.  Do they really want to have free outdoors experiences?  To live "naturally"?  That is a reasonable surmise, but hardly certain.

Sam Neill, playing the paleontologist Dr. Grant in "Jurassic Park," comments when he sees the enclosure in which the Tyrannosaurus rex is kept, and where a live goat is daily supplied, something to the effect of, "T. rex does not want to be fed, T. rex wants to hunt!"  Great theater, but hardly a professional opinion, and no doubt John Horner and his friends in the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology winced.  Horner, of course, upon whom the character of Grant was vaguely based, famous professor at Montana State University in Bozeman, is a principal proponent of the idea that T. rex was in fact more a scavenger than a hunter.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

I think too often issues like environmentalism and animals rights get lumped together without a real relationship between them. Why? I really don't know. I can speculate that the issue of environmentalism has much broader appeal to the general public, and it crosses many social boundaries (political, ethical, etc), than the issue of animal rights. I think the general public of tends to think of animal rights as an "extreme leftists" issue as the author stated. If a connection, perceived or otherwise, can be made between a popular issue (environmentalism) and a not so popular issue (animal rights) then the latter of the two gains some credibility. At the same time the prior loses some.

I don't know if I would consider myself an environmentalist or not. I guess that all depends on how one defines "environmentalist."  

I am certainly concerned about issues that I consider to be environmentally related, for instance: air and water quality, natural resources conservation, and wildlife ecology. So in that respect I guess one may consider me and environmentalist. However, I am not near as concerned with animal rights, because I think the  issues that are consistently brought up are the most extreme examples. I believe individuals with a direct tie to the animal rights cause use these examples for their shock value (i.e. - "Bludgeoning baby seals for fur coats").

I mean, really: "being eaten to death," "aiming for my heart," "aiming to fell me cleanly with one blow," "eaten by something like a tiger," "I think I would opt for the bullet"!!!

I am swooning in near-orgasmic adoration!

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

dwm376s, perhaps your experience is that animal rights activists are only concerned with obviously shocking examples of brutality, but there are many who speak out every day about the incredible suffering imposed upon billions of domestic animals in perfectly mundane conditions.  Maybe animal rights do not concern you because it's a handful of battered seals to you; if that's the case, do a bit of research into factory farming.  You'll discover a world of suffering and misery that you couldn't possibly hope to comprehend, yet is utterly commonplace.  No sensationalism is needed to perceive the hopeless plight of these animals.

I spent many years working along the coast of Alaska and have seen orcas play with their sea lion prey, as I have seen sea lions toss salmon around for the apparent fun in it (and drag gulls under too). Does that justify human cruelty to animals? No. But it may help illustrate how complicated relationships between species can be, and how hard it is to define morality in absolutes.

If a twigg falls in the forest but nobody is there to hear it, it's probably best because there is bound to be cussing.

If I were to face the option of A) being shot by somebody aiming for my heart (aiming to fell me cleanly with one blow), or B) starving or C) being eaten by something like a tiger, I think I would opt for the bullet.

Well, when you are out in the forest, living off the wild, we will certainly bear your preferences in mind.  In the meantime, we should all remember that, although we (humans) share some basic biological traits with our non-human animal friends (hunger, exhaustion, the urge to mate) it is sheer anthropomorphism to think that we can pick and choose for our animal friends the "best" way to die.  

Certainly animals in the wild starve; but why do they starve?  Sometimes it is just the "natural" order of things... a species will reproduce quite effectively in a particular season, overwhelm the natural resources available to it, and the population will starve or become weak due to lack of food and subject to predation.  But oftentimes, in our world it seems, the starvation can be directly linked to human intrusion into the animal's ecosystem.  Deer are numerous in my neck of the woods, and certainly, some of them must starve throughout the winter.  But why?  Because humans have built houses, built roads, disrupted wildlife corridors, encroached onto their feeding areas, wiped out their natural predators.... in this respect, I support the annual hunt of wild deer in order to prevent overrun of the population and eventual starvation.  But to consider that an animal in a healthy, balanced ecosystem might starve and might rather be shot "straight to the heart" (Guns N Roses?  Def Leopard? Pat Benatar?  Oh, my 80's songs are all confused..) instead seems a bit specious to me.

Again, I will say that I think it all comes down to preventing suffering.  If human intervention or intrusion into a landscape is causing suffering, then I feel we have a moral obligation to do what we can do to obviate that suffering, for as many animals as possible.  Strange as it seems, the answer sometimes may be to allow a hunt.  But in an otherwise healthy ecosystem, it is simply assuaging our guilt over taking a life to say "but it's better than starving to death."

To clarify, I comprehend the fact that its not just a handful of seals and that is not how I view the subject. I am well aware of the issues that are at hand with our domesticated animals as well - you mentioned factory farming. I am well aware of the issues dealing with "factory farming." I grew up on a farm in Southwest Iowa, and so did pretty much everyone else in this region. Livestock represented the livelihood of most families, and because of that, their livestock was taken care of. I remember going out in thunderstorms, trudging through snow and ice, etc. to make sure the cows were all "okay", or to chop the ice in the pond so they had plenty of water. This is the norm in rural America - believe it or not.

As a Wildlife Biologist in the state of Florida, and formerly Missouri, I have dealt with animal rights issues on an almost daily basis, and dealt with individuals on both sides of the argument. I'd like to think I fall somewhere in the middle - "reasonable ground." I am devoting  my career to what I consider, an environmental cause - that is the preservation of wildlife and the unique habitats that enable that wildlife to flourish.

If being an environmentalist means I can't eat meat, drive my car, hunt/fish, then I'd rather not be considered one. I stick with my job title to describe myself and my interests. So for now I think its safe to "agree to disagree!"

I'm not the kind of animal welfare activist who abhors hunting, although I can't help but cringe even when I see my cat torment a squeaking, half dead chipmunk. Tom Twigg was so right to say that life is beautiful but not always pretty. Hunt if you must, and sometimes it is a useful tool for population health, but if you hunt do it humanely and sustainably.

My concern for animal welfare stems from a visceral repulsion towards suffering and the philosophy that callousness towards any sentient being hardens our hearts towards all.

Before I get carried away, let me give a couple of examples of the crossovers between animal welfare and environmentalism:

-pollution of our ecosystems poisons all of the resources we glean from biodiversity, and the health of individual animals figures into this
-the push away from factory farms towards smaller, local farming enterprises favors more humane treatment of livestock raised for meat

carry on this great discussion,
~Ruth

To answer your question, I consider myself an environmentalist in the "conservationist" sense of the word.

Conservation in the dictionary means exploiting resources, but at levels that will not prevent our future generations from also being able to exploit those resources.
Another phrase often used is "sustainable use".
http://www.iucn.org/themes/ssc/susg/

I am not an environmentalist of the "animal rights" type. I believe the animal rightists actually tried to take over the term "environmentalism" to make themselves sound more mainstream. This is a common tactic. Anti-whaling people call themselves "conservationists" when in fact they argue not for conservation but for blanket protection.

I think almost all people on earth would consider themselves environmentalists of the type I represent - far fewer currently support the animal rights version, which has little to do with conserving our environment.

I'd add that I would associate with much of what GreenEngineer said with regard to how humans see themselves in nature. Nature is not a zoo - we are just one species in the massive web.

I'd associate myself with the comments of GoodCheer, who notes that humans with our technology do have quite efficient killing ability. Of course, we can always look to improve, and this is because we strive to be "humane".

dwm376s, Tom Twigg also made points that I can associate myself with.

People interested in environmentalism versus the animal rights movement might enjoy Eugene Lapointe's book "Embracing the Earth's Wild Resources". It's available from the IWMC site (www.iwmc.org). Eugene Lapointe formerly headed the CITES organization, but anti-ivory trade "environmentalists" campaigned to have him removed, and he was (although a UN tribunal subsequently found that he had been wronged). Lapointe currently heads up the IWMC, which supports sustainable use / conservation of wildlife, as opposed to animal rights. I'm not financially related with IWMC, although I did buy Lapointe's book :-)

===

you said, "the production of animal products is contributing significantly to global warming, widening water shortages, deforestation, rapid species extinction and many other societal threats"

I agree that is if by the production of animal products, you mean the re-production of more humans than this planet can support? I agree whole heartedly. Face the facts its human actions that are causing the VAST majority of the problems you listed above. Sure animal production is contributing, but minimally at best.

How about the fact that we are absolutely dependent on the automobile, as the main reason for global warming. Or booming human population and urban sprawl for the main reason we have water shortages and deforestation (which causes loss of habitat = loss of species/biodiversity).

Gimme a break!

Sustainability is correctly stated as seeing ourselves as an irrevocable part of the natural world, not as above it.  Our past included small villages which were examples of sustainability where each worked for the good of all; only when there is sufficient 'wealth' in the form of excesses (and only can there be excess wealth if there is excess people) do we separate ourselves from our integeral part of the natural world.

you and Ruth, and others, have great things to say.  We should all do what we can, to learn from your suggestions.

<<native American spiritualism in thanking the animal's spirit for sacrifice>> is a fascinating concept.  I wish I knew more about it.  Clearly, this is a most valuable spiritual direction for us to follow.  Of course I have read about it, but do not really know how Native Americans apply the concept.

Remember the scene in "Dances with Wolves," right after Dunbar / Kevin Costner locates a big bison herd, and communicates that information to his Lakota friends.  Or rather, not-yet-friends.  Anyway, they seem pretty much to fall in love with him in the course of the bison hunt.  It does not hurt at all, that he has the opportunity to save a cute kid from a charging buffalo.

So by all means, comment further, on what goes through the minds and hearts of Native Americans, when they kill something.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Like you, I come from a rural environment (small down Wisconsin).  My hometown was primarily agricultural, and I spent my summers in high school working on friends' family farms.  I DO believe that most family owned farms do value the animals on which they rely, because I've seen it first hand.  Every life and death mattered.  This is a sidestep, however, from the issue of factory farming - perhaps we have a difference in definition.  

From my perspective, a factory farm is a CAFO, or a warehouse with battery-raised debeaked chickens, or any other similar environment that puts large quantities of animals in compressed, inhumane and unhealthy surroundings.  I've been in these environments, too, and every life and death did not matter, not by a long shot.  In poultry sheds it's a fulltime job finding and removing dead birds - these birds do not die from having too much fun or from predation.  They die because stress kills them.

If industrial 'farming' as described above is your idea of a humane environment where the animals are okay, then I must agree - we have no agreement between us.

Otherwise, I don't think this conversation is about asking anyone who drives a car or likes to hunt to renounce their title as environmentalist.  I think it's to foster a conversation about how bettering the lives of animals that rely upon us goes hand-in-hand with an overarching ethic of bettering the environment upon which we rely.  No need to jump ship quite yet, eh?

I think you made an important distinction between a typical family farm in rural-mid-america, and what is being termed in this conversation as a "factory farm" with your chicken house example.
And I would agree with you that there are a lot of cases in which animals are treated poorly, as a commodity.

However, I think there is a lot of gray area in between, the two of those types of farms. I know of families that operate what I would consider large poultry operations, several thousand birds a year, in which a lot of birds die via stress, birth defects, etc. However, I think it comes with the territory. Even on small farms animals die. I would bet that in situations as the two described above they have very similar death rates (% of animals that die for every 1 animal that lives to market size)for their livestock.

That being said I am well aware of corporately owned farms (Tyson, Butterball, etc) in which the employees of that farm have little incentive to "care" whether or not they are losing animals, because they have far less connection to the well being of said livestock, than if they actually owneed the farm. And I would bet that these types of farm operations have much higher death rates than those described above.

All that being said, the point of all this is what does any of this concern for animal welfare have to do with the "environment;" the woods, streams, prairies, etc. I am failing to see the connection, other than people who are concerned with one, may be emotionally/cognitively predisposed to be concerned with the other.

Now if one wants to talk about factory farms and stress how affect they affect the environment, I would be much more agreeable. The large amounts of waste, often high in heavy metals, that pollutes streams and groundwater. This represents a direct connection. Animal rights proponents would argue that the pollution is ocurring because the animals are being inhumanely treated. I would disagree to the point that the water is being polluted from high volumes of waste in a concentrated area. The animals on the particular farm could be treated like kings, but they are still going to produce the same amount of water polluting waste, than if they were treated like dirt. Actually they may produce more waste if they were treated like kings, because they may have better diets, long lives, etc.

whats your take?

It changed the meat packing industry for the people who work in it. Now we need to find ways to improve conditions for the animals in that system.

I would like to see PETA and ALF remain separate from the environmental movement. They focus on the "rights" of animals. They emphasize a little too much, assigning feelings and thoughts to your average cat, chicken, or rabbit that just is not there. Admittedly, everything is related by some degree of freedom to the environment, but the treatment of lab animals, dogs, cats, and farm animals, has next to nothing to do with the preservation of biodiversity. Hunting and fishing on the other hand tend to be very effective. There are huge cognitive differences between human beings and all other animals. There are also huge cognitive differences between animals. Whales dolphins, and chimpanzees are a world apart from fish and lobsters.  The sudden death of a dear by a bullet is not worse than a natural death. The harpooning of a whale is another story.

Some people have a tendency to wrap the preservation of biodiversity in with the treatment of domesticated animals. That is pretty fuzzy thinking. They are about as unrelated as two things can get.  

The extremists in the animal rights groups sure have not helped the image of environmentalist. I would prefer that they were kept out from under the generally tolerant and accepting environmentalist umbrella, not that you can't be both. I guess that makes me a segregationist...


In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

Is this a factory farm?  Not in my mind.  But a few miles away, there is one.  And it's a world of a difference.  It's noisy, the smell is astonishing and the birds simply look like crap (even if you ignore their mutilated heads).  There are at least 10x the number of birds crammed in a similar space.  It's depressing.

The two farms offer a complete contrast not only in how the animals are treated, but in environmental impact.  The former uses the chicken manure (composted) to feed the corn field.  The corn is harvested and fed to the chickens.  There are still huge fuel inputs, but the farm's footprint is relatively small.  The factory farm's waste goes... somewhere.  I would gather from the stench that a good deal of it leaches into the soil, but the rest is simply considered waste.

I don't believe you have to be a vegetarian to care about animal rights (though it certainly helps) but I do believe that you can respect life even while you act your part as a predator.  And while having that respect and acting on it is a worthy goal unto itself, I also think that this respect results in benefits to the environment.

(I think we've gone afield from the original post, but wanted to follow this one to its end)

As many have pointed out, there are many examples of things that would seem bad for individual animals, but are clearly good for the population as a whole: it is bad for an individual rabbit to die, but if none of them die, most of them die of starvation.

I would say the same remains true of groups like PETA; while PETA is certainly tone deaf and clumsy at times, they're often the only ones that seem to care about a particular animal welfare issue.  It's not like there's a mainstream animal rights movement they're stealing the thunder from - they're all we've got in many cases.

At any rate, I understand why radical groups aren't welcome under the umbrella, but maybe these groups wouldn't have to exist if the more mainstream environmental movement did their jobs for them.

I don't believe you have to be a vegetarian to care about animal rights (though it certainly helps) but I do believe that you can respect life even while you act your part as a predator.  And while having that respect and acting on it is a worthy goal unto itself, I also think that this respect results in benefits to the environment.

Well said.

All this is a question of our experience as real beings in an illusory world.  If we look at the universe as matter, then the objects have no real value.  A living thing would simply be a brief reaction of chemicals.  Its coming into existence would be of benefit, and there would be no loss when it perished.  Just as a stone cannot appreciate the company of another stone, there would not even be any sentient being to experience these changes.  So materially, living or dying make no difference.

Taking the opposite perspective, seeing the world as a manifestation of spirit, there is also no difference.  Each spirit soul is eternal and has no real connection with the body, this world, or anything material at all.  So again, there is no difference between death and life because neither pertains to the spirit soul.

Looking at our daily situation, we find that our existence is a combination of these opposite realities.  We are sentient but surrounded by matter.  The sentience is life (or real), and the matter is death (or unreal).  Thus we are always alive, and the body is always dead.  While there is absolutely no gain or loss in this world, we project and then experience all sorts of happiness and distress due to our mistaken identification with matter.  The result is that we are trapped in an illusory struggle for existence.  That is animal life, and humans are more or less affected in the same way.

The root cause of our suffering is our desire for enjoyment, which attracts the mind to the world.  It is based in ignorance, and perpetuates ignorance.  Constitutionally our position is to give service, but due to the influence of material nature we want to be served to increase our enjoyment.  This error binds us to the illusory struggle through all sorts of combinations and permutations of nature, all of which is more or less suffering.  

Looking at the topic of discussion from this perspective, the environmental ethic can either be subtle sense gratification or it can be a development of compassion.  The same is true of helping animals.  Both are forms of service more or less under the influence of the illusory identification of the body with the self, but they are two steps on the path to greater realization.  This development of compassion softens the heart, so to speak, and makes us more sensitive to the real needs of the living entities.  Gradually our service becomes more direct as we come to understand the real needs of the living entity (rather than the needs of the material body), and our lives become more sublime.  Others become inspired, and gradually we all move toward freedom and happiness.  It is actual evolution.

I am an activist for both causes and have worked for both environmental and animal rights organizations for nearly 20 years. As my own awareness grew, my circle of compassion expanded, and my understanding of the inter-relatedness of the human animal with other animals, and with our planet's life sustaining systems, I came to my own personal realization of the impacts that I was having by driving a car and consuming animal flesh, blood,ovum and lactates produced in a morally bankrupt and inefficient industrial food system controlled by the petro/chemical/agri-business conglomerates on the sustainabilty of all life on the planet and my own health and spritual well-being.

Everyone is on their own path of awakening and in an attempt to shed a little more light and generate a little less heat, that these environmentalists versus animal rights debates typically spark, I offer these links for your consideration and contemplation.

Eat plants and ride a bike! You can do both, you will feel better and we might even be able to all get along a little better, and perhaps even have a future on this planet together with all life. Hey but whadda I know, here's what some 'experts' say. Peas!
KC

Diet, Energy and Global Warming
Univ. of Chicago study:

http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~gidon/papers/nutri/nutriEI.pdf#search=%22university%20of%20chicago%20esh el%20martin%22

http://www.emagazine.com/view/?3312

Another Inconvenient Truth: Meat is a Global Warming Issue

And see also the author's site:
http://www.brook.com/veg/

And E Magazine's issue devoted to the topic.
So You're an Environmentalist. Why Are You Still Eating Meat?

http://www.emagazine.com/index.php?toc&issue=7&sr...=
Volume XIII, Number 1
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2002

COVER STORY
ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE - Environmentalists and Animal Rights Activists Battle Over Vegetarianism
Environmentalists and Animal Rights Activists Battle Over Vegetarianism
By Jim Motavalli
THE CASE AGAINST MEAT - Evidence Shows that Our Meat-Based Diet is Bad for the Environment, Aggravates Global Hunger, Brutalizes Animals and Compromises Our Health
Evidence Shows that Our Meat-Based Diet is Bad for the Environment, Aggravates Global Hunger, Brutalizes Animals and Compromises Our Health
By Jim Motavalli

SIDEBAR: BODY OF EVIDENCE
By Sally Deneen

SIDEBAR: THE GRADUAL VEGETARIAN
By Jim Motavalli

World Watch Magazine: July/August 2004
Worldwatch Institute

GLOBAL MEAT CONSUMPTION HAS FAR-RANGING ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1670

I consider myself an animal activist, yet I learned that to be an animal activist I must be an environmental activist and human rights activist as well. They are all connected. Humans are animals. To be vegan we must also cosider the rights of HUMAN animals. To buy sweat shop shoes or condone sex slavery in asia we can not call ourselves vegan.

The way we treat our environment effects the lives of animals and the way we treat animals (human and non-human) effects our environment. All too often I see animal activists tossing cigarette butts on the street. I see environmentalists eating factory farmed meat and eggs. They are directly related. Animals need environments and environments need animals. It's all about balance and the bigest inbalance we have today is a human overpopulation problem. We have 6 billion people on the earth and that is due to double in 40 years at the current rate. This overpopulation I believe is the root of environmental, animal, and human rights issues.

If not for human overpopulation we would not be competing with deer, bear, and cayotes for land. We would not even consider hunting as humane population control. To condone hunting as humane pest control is to condone human hunting for population control. It's not the answer. We do not have deer, bear, and seal overpopulations, we have human overpopulations. The earth functioned in balance long before we arived. It is us who threw this out of balance and it is up to us to fix it.

I disagree entirely with GreenEngineer. Ethical veganism I do not believe is he antithesis but the synergy. Humans are the only being on this planet that exploits every "resource" we can. We turn oil into plastic, silk into clothing, wood into furnature and paper, leaves into tobacco, plants and animals into food, etc. To abandon meat eating an animal wearing is far from seperating us from the natural world but actually adopting a grander world view in the sence of balance and compassionate living.

We will always contine to utilize a host of other resources. Meat eating and animal wearing are unecessary and therefore can be eliminated without major sacrifices and serve to give us a better understanding and respect for the animals whom I consider kin.

Casinandida mentioned captive breading. Let me just say that captive breeding serves no purpose if there is no environment to reintroduce the animals into. In this case we are only preventing extinction for human interstest, not those of the environment or animals. Bengal tigers have no future in the wild. They will be extinct in India in 7 years, yet captive breeding exists in zoos all over the world. I ask, why? So our grandchildren can see tigers in cages or zoos? Does it not make more sense to let the bengal tiger slip away in peace and learn from our mistakes? I am torn on this one believe me. Personally I would rather my child see bengal tigers in NG magazine than in a zoo.

One of the funniest arguments against veganism I've heard came from friend of mine the other day. He said it's ethically wrong to be vegan because cows and chickens would go extinct. This train of thought only serves the quantity of life rather than quality. If cows go extinct then at least there will be no more cows suffering in slaughterhouses and no more factory runoff.

As for Casincandida's coments on captivity in zoos and aquariums let me just say that most animals in zoos are caught in the wild, effecting the environment. They are broken of their wild habits and serve to teach children that it's okay to donimate and jail wildlife. And it is psychological torchure. If you have seen monkeys, cheetahs, and dolphins pace and display repeditive behavior then you know what i am talking about. Lolita at the Miami Seaquarium is a perfect example of this. I made a doc about her (www.slavetoentertainment.com)

It is also common for zoos to trade animals through the AZA website. When zoo animals become liabilities they are often sold to canned hunts in exchange for a younger prettier animal.

Also to clarify, it is not a handful of seals that are slaughtered every year. Three hundred thousand 2 week old pups are slaughtered on the ice in Canada every year for fur. Fur is uneccessary. What does this do to the mother seals? Any feminists out there want to answer this one? How does it affect the fish and whale populations? Again we humans claim we are culling the heard but in fact I believe we are only adding to the problem.

I also belive the term "sustainability" is tossed around very losely without regards to the consequences. Ivory can be harvested sustainably but does that make it ethical or responsible? Is the pain of a young elephant watching his father's face ripped off inconsequential? How does that effect the environment of the herd let alone the suffereing of the individual?

I do believe that meat eating is the number two problem next to human overpopulation which by the way is a result of mass oil production; not just because 50 billion animals suffer for our cravings every year but because it takes 7 pounds of grain to raise one pound of beef or pork. That grain could feed millions of humans with no added effects to the environment. Are you listening human rights activists? How many antibiotics and hormones drain into the soil and water from factory farms? Any environmentalists care to field that one? The pork, beef, dairy, and poultry industries are some of the biggest polluters in the world and can be elimiated by making simple ethical choices.

And it is after all about choices. I encourage us all to build coalitions and bridges between people in these movements. Feminists need to know that to drink milk is to commit rape. Dairy cows are artificially inseminated repeatedly until spent, then discarded. Their offspring are taken away for the veal industry. The pain is obvious. I've heard the cries.

Animal activists need to undertand the relation of  globalization to wildlife. Enviromentalists should learn the issues related to factory farming or exotic pet trades. And we all need to work on reframing the labels that have been cast upon us all. We are all tied and we can propel our movements forward together.

Together we can make a difference.

love and revolution,

~tim

That said, I rather agree with PBrazelton, that the protests and publicity that these activists engage in are on balance good, even though they can be shrill and "tone deaf," and sensitive souls such as Biodiv find them embarrassing.

I entirely disagree with what Biodiv has written, by way of dismissing the sensitivity and capacity for suffering of animals.  

What animal-rights ethicists call the "sliding-scale model" is to some extent a useful tool, but I think it is not yet nuanced enough to be simply applied.  David DeGrazia summarizes it thus (in "Animal Rights: A Very Short Introduction"): "Humans deserve full, equal consideration.  Other animals deserve consideration in proportion to their cognitive, emotional, and social complexity.  For example a monkey's suffering matters less than a human's suffering but more than a rat's suffering, which matters more than a chicken's suffering."

But we really do not know enough about those forms of "complexity," and are not in an adequate position to make estimations and comparisons.  Also, we naturally and inevitably have a greater empathy for mammals, perhaps especially primates, above other taxa.  We seem to recognize something that we can identify with in the experiences of most mammals, which it is much harder to do with birds, reptiles, fish and so forth.

In fact there is accumulating evidence that such birds as corvids, parrots and gulls are at least as "complex" as many mammals.  I think the most prudent ethical position is to have consideration for the suffering of all vertebrates, as well as the more intelligent of the cephalopod mollusks, and many arthropods, e.g. lobsters.  (But not mosquitos; sorry; still, I recall the Dalai Lama once saying in an interview that he will not swat a mosquito, but will try to "persuade" it not to land on him.)

The long and thoughtful comments by Pandu, KevCon and TimGorski are all much appreciated.

Tim, I agree with what you write on captive breeding programs and, mostly, on animals in captivity; I was not committing myself to any position, earlier, merely examining competing interests.

Thank you for your story on Lolita, which I shall look at in a bit.  While I do not know enough about cetaceans in captivity, and the different ways in which they are kept and treated, I strongly suspect these marine entertainment places are not at all a good idea.

It is certainly true that cats and canids are more often than not kept in horrendous circumstances, leading to the neurotic behavior that you refer to.

That is not always the case, though, at least in the larger zoos.  The cheetahs at the National Zoo in DC can (sometimes) be seen in the three live cameras installed in different places in their enclosure.  There are two mothers, with  two recently born litters of cubs, so there is an impressive degree of familial socialization.  They seem to have been given a lot of space to move around in -- no, not enough to pursue a gazelle, but still they do not exhibit neurotic behavior.  So it is not clear that they are suffering solely on account of their confinement.  Now, whether they should be confined in the first place is another question.

I am not so sure about that zoo's two Asian elephants.  They seem fairly well kept, I guess; you can watch them getting bathed every morning, and having an exercise session later; presumably there is a fair amount of stimulation.  Still, there are increasing concerns about issues regarding both climate and socialization, with elephants in North American zoos.  And I think the day is not that far off, when elephants will no longer be kept in zoos in this country, at least not in Northern states.  The Elephant Sanctuary, in Tennessee, might be a not too bad alternative, for those elephants already here.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

If such a scale is applied (which I do not agree with) it should run on the importance that creature plays in the whole world system not their cognitive, social, and emotional dispositions. In this case humans would deserve the least rights as we contribute the least and are by far the most destructive. But that is speciesism too.

Zoos - I'm not too familiar with the Zoo in DC but I can almost guarantee they trade animals on AZA's website, exotic animals that were trapped in the wild or breed in captivity. Many of their older "liability" animals may have ended up in canned hunts or circus sideshows but I would have to research this further.

The bottom line environmentally is Zoos are freak shows for human entertainment, they are not eco-friendly, they are not natural local habitats promoting conservation, and they are excuses for people to make money from captivity. There may be some education at the parks but that education is minimal at best.

As with your earlier submission on whaling, I am troubled by what you've written.  In part, this boils down to the assertion that environmentalists are somehow bound to accept in toto your personal moral objections to the slaughter and consumption of animals. If that were all you said, perhaps your posting could be safely dismissed or ignored.

It is one thing to say that environmentalists should feel morally obligated as individuals to examine the ethical aspects of killing and consuming  animals or the more general issue of how our fellow creatures are treated.   It is a different matter to conflate the campaign to end cruelty to animals with environmentalism itself; to exalt this conceptual mishmash as a higher (or "more expansive") form of environmentalism, and then to slam  ny environmentalism that does not incorporate your own conception of animal rights as "morally bankrupt."

What you suggest here is wrong and also dangerous, not least because it threatens the openness and inclusiveness with respect to motivation that has been a crucial factor in the few tentative successes that environmentalism can claim so far in its short, flawed history.  In your comments, you sneered at environmentalists "who try to court hunting or fishing groups" - I applaud them.

Environmentalism's "big tent" - the facts that the movement does not impose rigid ideological or religious tests, that individuals can cooperate in pursuit of common goals without being required to adhere to common systems of belief or morality - has been a crucial strength.  Efforts to hijack the environmental movement in service of other agenda,  as you have done here  - however laudatory or benign your intent may seem in your own mind - threaten our ability to achieve our most important objectives.

The environmental movement is indeed amoral (not just "almost" as you suggest) in the technical (but important) sense that it neither assumes nor prescribes a unitary set of moral beliefs as the sole basis for environmental action or for association with other environmentalists.  People may be motivated to try to save a stand of redwood trees or a population of whales for many different kinds of reasons - moral, aesthetic, religious, scientific, philosophical, or combinations of all the above.  They may be moved by practical considerations, such as diverse biological communities' potential utility as future sources for new pharmaceuticals, or the benefits of maximizing financial returns from habitats managed as economics assets, or the need to ensure continuing stocks of animals for hunting subsistence, commercial and sport hunting and fishing.  

You wrote that excessive tolerance of animal cruelty underlies a "key weakness" of the environmental movement in our time, one which you characterized as excessive focus on sustainability and populations but insufficient concern with the well being of individual animals.  {At several points in this paragraph I'm quoting your earlier email draft, not the final edited submission to Grist.}   This led you to libel those who believe in an inclusive, open, science-based environmentalism as holding a "minimalist view of environmentalism ... which favors avoiding tough moral questions", and which you slam as "morally deficient".   In its place, you have proposed a new environmentalism that "take[s] a more expansive view of environmentalism [and] recognize[s] that while conserving biodiversity is a necessary condition for an environmental ethic, It is not sufficient."

Since it would be premature to voice confidence that environmentalism will actually achieve significant levels of biodiversity protection of over meaningful scales of time (centuries), it seems fatuous in the extreme to suggest that the environmental movement today is overly concerned with sustaining populations and should therefore divert scarce resources to support your own pet schemes for alleviating animal misery.

Perhaps you underestimate the immense challenge of moderating the accelerated loss of habitat and extinction of species and genera currently underway due to human activities (including development, pollution, population growth, over-exploitation of resources, etc.).  At the moment, the estimated rate of extinction exceeds normal background loss of species by a factor of at least 100, possibly a faster rate than any of the five previous "mass extinctions" over the past 550 million years. (Andrew Dobson, cited in Colin Tudge, The Variety of Life, Oxford University Press (2000)).

For many (though not all) practitioners, environmentalism essentially is biodiversity conservation - the effort to protect as many species and habitats as possible.   We have entered a "demographic winter" which is likely to continue for 500-1000 years while the the human population approaches or exceeds 10 billion persons, anthropogenic climate change accelerates, and the risk of planet-wide ecological collapse remains intense. A modest success, defined as the survival of even a significant fraction of the genera and species and their habitats still left on the planet right now 5 or 10 centuries hence - would be an immense achievement, much more than "sufficient".    

I do not mean to minimize the moral implications of actions that directly or indirectly cause intolerable pain or death to one or to many animals, nor would I ever want to limit your efforts to proselytize on behalf of animal rights.  

I do insist that the local disappearance or global extinction of an entire species or genera represents a disaster and threat of a much greater magnitude and scale than the pain or death even of many individual animals. (One reason is that an a single extinction can have multiple, complex cascading effects on many other species, transforming or even bringing about the collapse of entire ecosystems.) And I ask that you refrain from trying to conflate the animal rights agenda with environmentalism, or indeed from any action intended weaken or undermine environmentalism now or in the future.

By its nature, the core mission of environmentalism - protecting populations and species from disappearance and extinction - is qualitatively different from the moral campaign to eliminate killing and consumption of animals and prevent other forms of animal cruelty.  Responsibility for promoting animal rights lies with animal rights activists, not environmentalists.

Contrary to your claim, environmentalism does not "need to confront directly the treatment of animals and issues of animal rights, no more than it needs to confront directly many other pressing and important issues which nonetheless remain external to the environmental movement's core concerns (such as childhood blindness, female mutilation, ending terrorism, or finding a cure for malaria).  It does not demean any of these causes, including yours, to say hey are not intrinsic parts of environmentalism per se, however important they may be,

In the first sentences of your submission, you endorsed the charge of  hypocrisy against people "in the environmental movement who oppose whaling while at the same time tacitly supporting other forms of animal slaughter, which in essence are no less morally offensive."   Hypocrisy is a very strong word in my lexicon, one I hope you would reconsider, along with relevance of your science fiction allegory about space creatures hunting humans with harpoons.  (Harlan Ellison did this sort of thing better.)   In fact, you have failed to articulate any coherent arguments supporting your assertion that killing and eating any animal is intrinsically (and equally) immoral, nor have you addressed the obvious questions raised.  

One question relates to the ubiquity of predation as a life strategy among living creatures over millions of years.  Do lions sin when they hunt and kill?  Sharks?  A single-celled protozoan? What about a well-fed domestic tabby cat, whose killing of "wild" game in your backyard is no more "necessary" than the sport kill of a weekend deer hunter?

Alternatively, if animals (or at least animals other than hominids) are not morally reprehensible for killing their prey, then do we, as humans, bear responsibility for allowing animal predation in the wild to continue?  Could a moral case be made that environmentalists are ethically bound to facilitate the rapid extermination and extinction of predators everywhere in the wild?  One hopes not, but an environmentalism that uncritically absorbed the moral tenets of the animal rights campaign might find that it isn't easy to dismiss absurd arguments such as this.  

Our own history as a species over the past 200,000 years is an evolutionary success story inseparable from the extraordinary capabilities we acquired as cooperative, skilled, tool-using hunters.  Among our first and most revolutionary tools were weapons designed to kill at a distance.  We may decry the transformative effects these and other human inventions had on the world if we so wish, but predation was never really an option or a moral choice for our earliest ancestors on the African savannah.  If predation was ok for early hominids and remains ok for lions, but not for modern humans, then when in our evolutionary history did meat eating suddenly become morally wrong?  

I raise these objections not to denigrate the campaign against animal cruelty (some concerns of which I personally share)  but simply to emphasize that its issues are its own. The animal cruelty movement does not share common issues with environmentalism, nor does it participate in the movement's scientific, philosophical or even its moral underpinnings.  An unthinking impulse to inject the moral tenets and the agenda of the campaign for animal rights into environmentalism can only narrow the base of support for environmental objectives and damage our necessary efforts to protect habitats and biodiversity.

Robert Delfs

    I absolutely agree with your take on the distinctions between environmentalism and the animal rights movement.

    FWIW, I am an environmental vegetarian.  As such, when I attended vegetarian events (when I lived in the States, and was somewhat active in the vegetarian movement), I rarely found any common ground except the vegetarianism itself with animal rights activists.

    Thanks for writing such an eloquent explanation of the differences and why they matter.  I usually stay away from these debates (been there done that! (smile)), but wanted to chime in here and agree with you.

    Interestingly, when I spoke about vegetarianism at a festival at a local college (Beijing), there were animal rights activists as well.  Students who were interested tended to gravitate to one of us, not both.  They could clearly see the differences, and understood that we were talking about very different things.

patrick

thanks very much for this thoughtful statement.

No doubt I did not read the words of dear young Professor Jason Scorse as carefully as you.  I do not think he quite committed himself to so powerfully, morally uncompromising a pro-animal-rights challenge, to all environmentalists, as you read him.  But I could be wrong, and you could be right.

Anyway, he will no doubt respond himself, before long.

As I hope you have observed, I rather agree with you, that environmentalists ought not be compelled to adopt a pro-animal-rights moral agenda.

Nevertheless, I find what young Jason has had to say on this issue, as well as many of his correspondents, most inspiring.

And I am glad you are open to a morality that opposes cruelty to all sentient beings.

I would love to pursue the subject that you raised, on how the subject of environmentalism is, in your opinion, associated with "biodiversity conservation."  It would be great if Grist could run an opinion survey, exploring such matters.

From my own observations, I think that most writers in Grist, both the regular bloggers and the respondents, are rather more interested in such physics-department and economics-department and poli-sci-department subjects as global warming, politics, electric cars, wind and solar energy, the will of the people, how to change the will of the people, and the big-phallic-wormy Pacific Northwest ecosystem, than we are in such biology-department subjects as, say, tigers, tarpons, tanagers, toads and tortoises.  To say nothing of terrapins.

Exceptions include Sarah van Schagen, Andrew Sharpless, and the ever lovable, ever unpredictable Biodiversivist himself.

But what do I know.  Plenty of Grist people are obviously interested in biodiversity.  Perhaps most.  And I certainly do not mean to overlook them.

And that is why I think an opinion survey is in order.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

It doesn't even matter if you have enough of a moral compass to be opposed to torturing others (debeaking factory-farmed chickens, improper slaughter practices, castration without anesthesia, etc) so that you can enjoy a tasty dinner.

If you're an environmentalist, here's the bottom line:  Every step up the food chain loses an order of magnitude of energy.  You get one-tenth the energy from a steak that you could get from the grain it took to produce that steak.  A world where every human was carnivorous would be a world with one-tenth the carrying capacity for human population as a world where everyone was vegan.

Yeah, it'd be fantastic to reduce our population.  Want to?  Don't have kids.  In the meantime, don't eat meat, and your footprint will be ten times lighter on the earth.

Thanks for your comments.  Clearly I do believe Jason's posting amounts to an uncompromising insistance that environmentalism adopt a strongly pro-animal-rights agenda (the phrases "morally bankrupt" and "environmentalism needs to confront directly..." both come to mind, though I might be over-reacting.  I believe Jason does plan to respond on these points himself.

Regarding environmentalism vs biodiversity conservation, what I actually wrote was: "For many (though not all) practitioners, environmentalism essentially is biodiversity conservation..."  My own view certainly reflects my interests and experience, including extensive consulting work on a large-scale GEF-funded biodiversity conservation project here in Indonesia. The "big tent" approach to environmentalism that I would like to defend itself requires that the scope be defined as openly and inclusively as possible.

Edward O. Wilson's new book (The Creation: An appeal to save life on earth, Norton (2006)), may exemplify this approach. I've only read a review, but I understand book to be an attempt to build bridges between religion (specifically Conservative Christians) and science in defense of the world's ecosystems, cast as a "letter" to an imaginary Baptist minister in the American South. Wilson puts forward a deceptively simple objective - "to raise people everywhere to a decent standard of living while preserving as much of the rest of life as possible" - which he believes all of us can accept and work toward together. The point, of course, is that we don't need to resolve (or even address) disagreements on other matters (creationism vs. evolution, property rights, or indeed animal rights)in order to work together on this core mission.

The idea that writers in Grist would consider the "big-phallic-wormy Pacific Northwest ecosystem" to be a physics, econ or poli-sci dept subject but not (also?) a matter of biology is somewhat surprising to me, but I'm not well informed about territorial demarcations in American academe. In any case, matters such as global warming are certainly central to biodiversity conservation, at least from practitioners' points of view, as are the numerous points of intersection with political issues such as human rights, the interests and "will" of peoples and communities.  I certainly hope (and believe) there may be matters of common interest among us.

But who is Batrachichthys (aka Pseudis paradoxa?)?  Me, I'm Antennarius pictus.

Robert Delfs

      It will be interesting to see if any of the meat eaters here engage you in this discussion.  It has been discussed before on Grist, without anyone changing their mind (that I can see) (another reason I don't usually discuss this!).

      My own preference is finding those who are interested in environmental vegetarianism and talking to them. (Smile).  I don't have the energy for much else (the 4th and 5th graders were wonderful, the 6th grades, I love them, but they are out of control!  Any sixth grade teachers out there?)

     I certainly agree with your basic premise, it is central to my vegetarianism.  I also exclude fish on the grounds that the oceans are in serious trouble and I need to give them a break (I used to miss sushi, but it's been too long now (smile)).

Dear Frogfish,

     There are some intersections where animal rights and environmentalism cross at least briefly, but they are often not the same (which is not to say that some people can't hold the contradictions between them perfectly in their minds, it may be a Jedi thing (I speak  here of CanisCandida, for example)).

     I spent some time at one point listening to Audobon Members and folks from the animal rights movement try to find common ground (they didn't).  So, I have some appreciation for the complexity and difficulties involved.

     Having said that, I  have some sympathy for those who hold dissenting viewpoints (I am often one on other issues (grin)), and feel that their environmental credentials are questioned.

     Can we "big tent" environmentalists bring in the PETA, ELF, hunters and Sierra Club members all into the tent, then drag in the new evangelicals and some businessmen to sit next to the socialists?

     If it seems impossible, we should remember that it has been done from time to time in an emergency.

     Do we realize we are in an emergency situation in regards to global warming?  If the tipping point is in ten years, we must NOW begin to get serious or it will be too late....

     Momentum is our enemy.

patrick

Even disregarding that, the ten to one conversion rate does not mean that you can go out and eat grass or leaves or plethora of other biomass, simply because it is indigestible by you. That's enough reason to eat grass/leaf/cellulosic biomass-fed meat from an environmental standpoint.

A side note: chickens have a conversion ratio of about two to one (some breeds in particular), for two units of energy input you get one unit of meat energy. The diet would have to be rich in protein, but that should be obvious anyhow. That makes them particularly good little 'meat-making machines' if you want to look at them that way. If not, think of them as Gaia's gift to us, just as we are Gaia's gift to something else (to be determined later).

Willa,

I was going to make this point, but atreyger made it for me:

Even disregarding that, the ten to one conversion rate does not mean that you can go out and eat grass or leaves or plethora of other biomass, simply because it is indigestible by you. That's enough reason to eat grass/leaf/cellulosic biomass-fed meat from an environmental standpoint.

I don't actually eat beef, but I have no moral objection to doing so, in fact, I can understand how cows can be worshipped in some societies - they take grass, which is useless as a form of food for humans, and turn it into milk, meat protein, leather (not to mention lye to make soap, bones to make glue?.. lots of things I would guess if we were truly using all of the animal).  Quite an amazing feat.

As humans we are at the top of the food chain; we cannot avoid that.  We evolved to the point where we do not need predation in order to survive, but we have not devolved to the point where we can convert pure sunlight into energy, or subsist soley on algea or grass or carrots. Humans need protein - granted there non-animal sources of protein (soy, legumes, nuts) but it is certainly more difficult to get an adequate supply of protein (including the right combination of all of the essential amino acids) without eating any animal products, especially if one is an active individual with a healthy supply of muscle mass to support (believe me, I know - I've tried!).  [Please believe that I am not arguing against a vegan or vegetarian diet here - if one can sustain it and maintain health and well-being, I say good on you!  Simply stating that it is not necessarily the "craving for flesh" as oft quoted by our vegan/veg friends, that keeps us omnivores in the hunt for meat.]

At any rate - the ratio of energy to food calorie is not the only thing to consider.  In pure energy terms, a steak may equal 10 ears of corn (to a grain-fed cow, of course) in caloric content, but that 10 ears of corn will not give a human the equivalent in "usable" food energy (i.e. carbohydrates, protein, vitamins, etc.).

Kaela

there are indeed some lovely photos of Antennarius pictus that I just saw at edge-of-reef.com.  What an excellent choice to identify yourself with!

Batrachichthys is just Frogfish in Greek.  I did not know it was "preoccupied" as a genus name.

Of course you are right about the Palouse giant worm.  I inadvertently and sloppily left it in the wrong category.  What I ought to have said is that while a few Grist writers, such as Biodiv, Sarah v.S. and Andrew, turn their attention to zoology-related subjects, such as the rediscovery of the Palouse giant worm, most offerings have little or nothing to do with the conservation of biodiversity.  And moreover, it probably helped the worm get mentioned, because of some regional interest on the part of our friends in Seattle.

And even then, you went on with some very good observations about global warming, etc.  So I stand corrected.  Correct me whenever you like; I am honored to be in your debt.

Dear Patrick,

how I wish I had been present at that debate between the Audubon people and the animal-rights people!  What a wonderful occasion, to practice my Jedi skills!

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

A cow mows my yard.  She gives manure, which we appreciate very much for our garden.  She's not giving milk yet, but next year we hope to breed her and then the milk will come.  When it does, there will be more than enough milk for her calf and my family.  Then there's yogurt, butter, ghee, cheese, and so many things to make with these.

One who gives me milk from her body, can I deny that she is a mother to me?  Once accepting her as my mother, can I then cut her throat?

www.mothercow.org/oxen/cow-protection.html

If we're going to emphasize protein availability over morality, then maybe we ought to promote cannibalism.  We could solve the food problem and the population problem in one stroke.  Instead of expensive nursing homes and funerals for our old and dieing mothers, we could just have a barbeque and call it Gaia's gift.  Wouldn't that be efficient?