Animals, pandemics, and climate change

Abstract

This chapter discusses the relationship between animals, pandemics, and climate change. In the Anthropocene, human activity is increasingly responsible for harm in the world. For example, factory farming, deforestation, and the wildlife trade are all killing trillions of animals per year unnecessarily. They are also contributing to global threats such as pandemics and climate change. These global threats are, in turn, contributing to biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and animal suffering, both directly and indirectly. In light of these impacts, we should reduce our use of animals as part of our pandemic and climate change mitigation efforts and increase our support for animals as part of our pandemic and climate change adaptation efforts, and we should do so holistically, structurally, and comprehensively.

Towards A Multispecies Population Ethics

“…1). The Multispecies Repugnant Conclusion raises questions regarding multispecies evaluations of populations to the fore, even if it may be disputed whether that really is a repugnant conclusion, and if so, to what extent (see, e.g., Sebo 2022). The questions concerning the value of different (human and non-human) populations will necessarily become acute as the human impact on populations, especially through climate change, increases massively.…”

“…But the average view also has highly implausible implications. It implies, for instance, that a population of a single individual at a high level of wellbeing would be better than a very much larger population that has the average wellbeing only slightly below that high level (Sebo 2022). More dramatically, as Arrhenius, Ryberg, and Tännsjö (2017) note, the average view also implies if that single individual population leads a life at a very negative level of well-being, a life of constant torture, for instance, there is another population that is better even though it contains millions of lives at just a slightly less negative level of well-being.…”

“…To begin with, consider the real-world natural circumstances in which wild animal populations are in constant dynamic interaction between each other, predators functioning as a natural limitation on their prey but at same time causing a number of prey individuals to fall below the sufficiency threshold. Moreover, think of a possibility, discussed in the literature, that as a result of this "natural fight for survival" a significant number of nonhuman lives are not worth living at all, or, at least, they remain below the sufficiency threshold (Ng 1995;Gosseries and Meijers 2022;Sebo 2022). For instance, many animal species are socalled r-strategists who have high birth-rates but also high death-rates of new-born babies.…”

“…Non-anthropocentric population ethics has received more attention recently, however. Specific questions related to animal population ethics are discussed in Gosseries and Meijers (2022) and Sebo (2022). This paper contributes to this emerging discussion and puts forward a non-anthropocentric sufficientarian account of population ethics.…”

Centring individual animals to improve research and citation practices

“…For example, The Belmont Report of 1979 (National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1979) outlined specific expectations related to human subjects research, stipulating ‘that individuals should be treated as autonomous agents and … that persons with diminished autonomy are entitled to protection’ (National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1979, part B1). Modern researchers such as Sebo (2022) argue that it is time to take these steps with non‐humans, too. Furthermore, Ferdowsian et al .…”