It has taken a climate crisis caused by our own profligate behavior to begin to grapple with the consequences of industrial farming and deforestation, two of the most serious consequences of speciesism.
ELIZABETH RENZETTI: ‘Unthinkingly, most of us follow a belief system that could be described as human supremacy. Well, except for the half-million or so vegans in the country. Animals exist at our pleasure. We hunt them or raise them to be slaughtered, gawk at them in zoos and test mascara on them to make sure it won’t burn our eyes. The lucky ones live beside us, on our couches, and we sprinkle their ashes under their favourite tree when they die… What if the era of human supremacy is coming to an end? What if, a century from now, we look back on the idea of keeping animals captive and eating their flesh with revulsion?…
The inability to recognize the inherent value of other sentient beings, apart from the use we can extract from them, is a fundamental people thing. “Human beings are speciesist,” writes the moral philosopher Peter Singer in his seminal 1975 book Animal Liberation. Not only that, we’ve been trying to justify our place on the apex from toga-times, from Aristotle’s argument that nature “has made all animals for the sake of man” to the Old Testament fable about God giving his favourite creation dominion over all things…
Speciesism has had a remarkably long run, and has rooted deep in Western consciousness. Only recently is it being seriously challenged by some biologists and legal experts. It has taken a climate crisis caused by our own profligate behaviour, as we gaze over dying ocean reefs and the prospect of a million extinct species in the coming decades, to begin to grapple with the consequences of industrial farming and deforestation, two of the most serious consequences of speciesism…
If the human race survives, that is. Intensive animal agriculture is one of the leading causes of greenhouse gas emissions, and consumers’ desire to reduce meat consumption in the Western world has led to the explosive growth of plant-based meat alternatives. At the same time, there is a growing movement toward giving animals legal rights, so that they can be represented as individuals in court… One day those of us who live in the Western world may realize the need to achieve some kind of greater harmony with our fellow species, one that does not rely on dominance and exploitation’. SOURCE…
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