As I’ve noted before, Steve Wise and the Nonhuman Rights Project is just about the most powerful campaign out there that is trying to change the way humans relate to animals.
Wise really gets it, and has started a series of video interviews exploring the issues at the heart of humanity’s immoral treatment of nonhuman animals.
First topic: the degree to which humanity is deeply involved in the exploitation of animals (and therefore resists giving animals rights that would change that relationship).
As Wise points out, it is almost, or simply flat-out, impossible for a modern human not to be involved in the exploitation of animals.
That is probably true, and something I am acutely aware of in my own life. But there are degrees of complicity, and the biggest step anyone can take to greatly reduce their complicity is to go vegan. After that, you need to pay attention to details like: products which use animal testing, or medicines which are developed with animal testing (a very complicated issue).
Beyond direct exploitation, there is the vast question of all the many ways in which humans indirectly exploit animals by lifestyles and choices which destroy habitat.
How far can you go to balance your life with the lives of nonhuman animals? What is the most difficult form of exploitation, direct or indirect, to reduce or eradicate from your lifestyle?
(Thanks to JV for tipping me to this video series).
The Earthist Chronicles 