Thursday, May 29, 2014

Environment and Animal Rights

1066: 

Environmental concerns potentially bring us all closer to agreement with each other.  Who in their right mind doesn’t think the environment should be cared for, especially since it has been so badly damaged.  We all love this planet.  We want a future for our grand children.  We all want to save the forests and rivers, whereas Animal Rights isn’t in the same league of importance.  It doesn’t sound like a planet-saving matter and it isn’t obvious how saving animals (from humans) can be ‘good for us’.

If giving rights to animals brings no benefit to ‘me’, then all we see is inconvenience.  We might want to do ‘the right thing’, but we’re likely to let ‘animal issues’  fade into the background - we put the issues on the backburner.  It isn’t urgent, like ‘the environment’.  We may feel some sympathy. We may feel our nice side coming out when we do something against cruelty, like supporting giving hens larger cages. Nothing more.  It’s as far as empathy-for-hens and animal-welfare goes. It’s as far from ‘the abolition of animal slavery’ as you can get.  


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