Effective Activism

To choose causes, problems, and strategies, we can use criteria: how serious the situation is (the number of victims and how bad it is for each one), tractability, the size of the possible benefit, long-term effects, tackling causes and not just symptoms, and the degree of neglect.

By the criteria for prioritizing (seriousness, number of victims, neglect, and tractability), the animal cause does very well; the number of victims is so large that even people who give less weight to animals would have to prioritize it.

Within the animal cause, the most neglected and serious problems are animals raised for food (especially aquatic animals and invertebrates), animals in the wild who are victims of natural processes, and the future; that is why this is where we can make the most difference.

Using only anthropocentric or environmentalist arguments (health, the environment) to defend animals carries risks: different motivations have different consequences, they may reinforce the idea that harm to animals is not enough on its own, and they may get in the way of concern for bigger problems, such as wild animals and the future.

The total approach defends a complete ethical view; the sufficient approach shows that certain goals (such as consideration for all sentient beings) can be accepted from very different views. It is important to combine the two.

In debates, people who defend practices that harm animals often shift the focus to health, the environment, or practical details; accepting this shift prevents any discussion of speciesism, and without that discussion the situation of animals is unlikely to change.

The case of animal ethics experts who consume animals raises the question of moral motivation: perhaps they do not think it is wrong, think it is only slightly wrong, are not sincere, have a weak will, or decide not to act; no form of persuasion escapes these limits.

Sometimes people who disagree with a goal (a normative objection) present their disagreement as a strategic doubt ("it would be great, but it will never work"); the burden of proof lies with whoever makes such claims, and there are reasons to be suspicious of them.

The debate between focusing on veganism or on reducing consumption is, in general, about strategy and not about the goal, which is shared; there are arguments on both sides, and they need to be evaluated without deciding in advance by intuition.

"Welfarism" has at least seven meanings, which concern different debates; accepting or rejecting one of the positions called by that name does not imply accepting or rejecting the others.

The debate about regulating exploitation involves two causal questions: whether reforms lead to abolition and whether they reduce suffering; there are arguments on both sides, and reforms should be compared with other strategies, such as cultivated meat and antispeciesist education.

Cultivated meat could greatly reduce exploitation; the chapter examines objections from defenders of conventional meat and from animal advocates, and concludes that it has great potential, including, in the future, for reducing natural harms.