Planet Debate 2011 September/October l-d release Animal Rights
Animal Rights Focus Trades Off with Efforts to Improve Animal Welfare
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- Animal Rights Focus Undermines Environmental Movements
Animal Rights Focus Trades Off with Efforts to Improve Animal WelfareSPLIT BETWEEN ANIMAL RIGHTS/WELFARE MOVEMENTS AND ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENTS Kate Rawles, Lancaster University Lecturer in Environmental Philosophy, 2008, The Future of Animal Farming: renewing the ancient contract, eds. M. Dawkins & R. Bonney, p. 56 The attempt to prioritize climate change at the expense of animal welfare is in fact symptomatic of a spirit between animal welfare and environmental issues that precedes the climate change scenario. Concern about environmental issues and animal welfare issues is often pursued separately, by different groups of people working for different organizations. Campaigning groups, for example, are often focused on either environmental issues such as habitat degradation and loss, species extinction, pollution of various kinds, climate change or animal welfare ones. They do not always have much familiarity with the issues on the other side. At times there has been downright hostility between the two kinds of movements. I have been to animal welfare conferences at which many delegates had barely heard of climate change. And I have been at environmental campaigns where concern with animal welfare is marginalized or dismissed as a luxury or an irrelevance. This split is understandable in various ways. The practical campaigns are underpinned by very different philosophical positions which have, amongst other things, a different ethical focus. Animal welfarists are concerned with sentient animals, especially domesticated ones. In their view, all sentient beings are ethically significant and should be treated as such. Environmentalists are typically concerned with the well-being, not of individuals, but of habitats, landscapes, species, and ecosystems – of ecological entities of various kinds. Whether or not these entities are sentient is considered irrelevant. And they are especially concerned with natural or semi-natural entities rather than domesticated ones. In their view, these ecological entities rather than individuals should be the primary focus of our ethical concern – whether this be for shallow or for deeper reasons. A further factor is the respective relationships between environmental movement, the animal welfare movement, and science. The environmental movement has very strong links with science. Concern with animal welfare, irrelevant from a conservation perspective, has been viewed with suspicion as presupposing subjective mental states in animals – imagine! – within (some) scientific communities. It has sometimes been dismissed as sentimental and anthropomorphic. Given that many of the different elements within the environment movement draw heavily on science for their authority, being associated with animal welfare might, in the past at least, have been resisted for fear of a loss of credibility. Animal Rights Focus Undermines Environmental MovementsSPLIT BETWEEN ANIMAL RIGHTS/WELFARE MOVEMENTS AND ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENTS Kate Rawles, Lancaster University Lecturer in Environmental Philosophy, 2008, The Future of Animal Farming: renewing the ancient contract, eds. M. Dawkins & R. Bonney, p. 56 The attempt to prioritize climate change at the expense of animal welfare is in fact symptomatic of a spirit between animal welfare and environmental issues that precedes the climate change scenario. Concern about environmental issues and animal welfare issues is often pursued separately, by different groups of people working for different organizations. Campaigning groups, for example, are often focused on either environmental issues such as habitat degradation and loss, species extinction, pollution of various kinds, climate change or animal welfare ones. They do not always have much familiarity with the issues on the other side. At times there has been downright hostility between the two kinds of movements. I have been to animal welfare conferences at which many delegates had barely heard of climate change. And I have been at environmental campaigns where concern with animal welfare is marginalized or dismissed as a luxury or an irrelevance. This split is understandable in various ways. The practical campaigns are underpinned by very different philosophical positions which have, amongst other things, a different ethical focus. Animal welfarists are concerned with sentient animals, especially domesticated ones. In their view, all sentient beings are ethically significant and should be treated as such. Environmentalists are typically concerned with the well-being, not of individuals, but of habitats, landscapes, species, and ecosystems – of ecological entities of various kinds. Whether or not these entities are sentient is considered irrelevant. And they are especially concerned with natural or semi-natural entities rather than domesticated ones. In their view, these ecological entities rather than individuals should be the primary focus of our ethical concern – whether this be for shallow or for deeper reasons. A further factor is the respective relationships between environmental movement, the animal welfare movement, and science. The environmental movement has very strong links with science. Concern with animal welfare, irrelevant from a conservation perspective, has been viewed with suspicion as presupposing subjective mental states in animals – imagine! – within (some) scientific communities. It has sometimes been dismissed as sentimental and anthropomorphic. Given that many of the different elements within the environment movement draw heavily on science for their authority, being associated with animal welfare might, in the past at least, have been resisted for fear of a loss of credibility. 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