Wide-angle View of Animal Rights
When I went vegan, my entire focus was on the animals. It took a while for me to understand that animal rights is a lot bigger than just the consumption choices that directly impact non-human animals. It is true that being vegan is better for the environment on many levels, but just because veganism is the planet-friendly choice doesn’t mean we can ignore the consequences of other decisions we make daily. I strongly believe that vegans must be serious about their environmentalism, rather than seeing veganism as the only action needed. Animals are dependent on their ecosystems for life; if we don’t protect the environment, if we let their homes be destroyed, are we actually working towards our goal of saving animals?
If you read about the garbage patch in the ocean, you will see how directly connected environmental issues and animal rights concerns are. If you read about the baby albatross, on an atoll in the middle of the ocean, dying of starvation with their bellies filled with plastic, your heart will break and you’ll understand that buying plastic products might be killing animals, and more directly than you thought.
It is hard to understand what the full effect the plasticization of the ocean has on marine life. Sea birds often mistake floating pieces of plastic for fish or eggs, and regurgitate this to their offspring as food. Baby Laysan albatross of Midway Atoll are literally starving to death. Their carcasses litter the beaches, stomachs bursting with plastic bottle caps, cigarette lighters and other recognizable plastic debris. Jellyfish, which thrive on plankton, ingest tiny bits of plastic along with their food.
If you read Silent Spring, you will want to take a hard look at the poisons that are being added to the ecosystem and killing animals in order for you to get your non-organic cotton t-shirt, or your weed-free garden or your green lawn. If you read Food Not Lawns you’ll think about the social and environmental implications of that green lawn. If you watch Story of Stuff, you’ll think hard about everything you buy, always, and how it will impact this closed system we’re stuck on, this third rock from the sun. Read “Diet for a Dead Planet” and you’ll get a brief view of how social and racial privilege forces the poisons from animal agriculture into communities who don’t have the money or political influence to fight it, and a much bigger view of how animal agriculture is killing the planet. Read “Price of Fire” and you’ll gain a new perspective on what it means to buy bottled water.
Veganism is obviously important to this wide-angle view; it’s the cornerstone, the baseline, but more accurately it is the starting line. As a vegan, I’m against exploitation. Exploitation, the issues of power and privilege and all the -isms that cascade from it, is where I draw my line. I don’t care about just a subset of the -isms, I fight against their common root. I’d feel like the worst kind of hypocrite if I tried to convince myself that exploitation of animals is wrong, except when it’s human animals. Or that killing animals is wrong, except when they are killed by pesticides added to the cotton fields for my t-shirt. The connections are there, and I can’t unmake them.
Of course it is a path, and no matter where we are on this path, there’s more we can do. That can be frustrating to contemplate (aren’t we done yet?) but it’s also an exciting challenge. Exciting because what I’ve found so far is that everything I thought would be incredibly hard…simply isn’t. Going vegan, in retrospect, was the very first lesson in doing the right thing and finding out that what I thought would be hard wasn’t, and what I thought would be a sacrifice on my part was enriching instead. I still have a lot of things I’m working on with regards to the environment and social justice, there’s no doubt I have a lot of room for improvement. Lot’s to learn, and lot’s of action to take, changes to make.
In truth: we’re never done.
Stephanie Ernst
Marji
Kelly G.
Deb
Mary Martin
Thanks for this. Pre-leaving Change, I had a draft titled “You Can’t Be an Animal Rights Activist and Not Be an Environmentalist,” and that idea is something I’m glad we can explore here. And the images and descriptions of those baby albatrosses? No matter many times I see or read them, the next time still makes me cringe.
Now I remember you mentioning that draft. Hopefully we explored different aspects! It’s such a huge topic, and blurs naturally into all kinds of social justice issues as well. I’m glad we can explore it here too. Looking forward to building off each other’s posts as time goes on!
The baby albatross really get to me too. Every time.
I actually love it when we (by “we,” I mean all of us, here and elsewhere) end up writing or saying things that reflect what the others among us are thinking (or thinking about writing) too. It brings a nice sense of connection and hope! :) And indeed, the potential for these posts to become and lead into discussions across multiple posts is part of what I’m excited about.
Also, regarding this — “When I went vegan, my entire focus was on the animals. It took a while for me to understand that animal rights is a lot bigger than just the consumption choices that directly impact non-human animals”: This is sort of how I feel about my environmentalism and social justice positions pre-vegan. Realizing how my eating habits had been in conflict with — and in a way, canceling out — my environmentalism and social-justice beliefs (and even what I thought were my animal rights beliefs, as a vegetarian) was quite an experience. I absolutely went vegan for animal rights reasons, but I learned about a lot of the environmental implications (and more, including the exploitation/endangerment of workers, environmental and health harm to communties, etc.) at the same time that my animal-rights lightbulbs started going off, and realizing all of it at once felt like being hit by a truck. And had I somehow not been exposed to, or opened up to, the animal issues, there’s still no way I could have kept eating the way I was eating as an environmentalist and supporter of human rights.
A couple of years ago when Deb came to visit I was volunteering at a sea turtle rehabilitation center across the street from the beach about two miles away. (She took some gorgeous photos, of course.) The number one danger to our endangered sea turtles is us, and there’s a list of things we do that harms them. Two are direct: boating (propeller hits can be fatal, and there are also collisions) and fishing (meaning they get caught in fishing line or swallow it along with a hook, or they get hooks caught in their flippers or face).
But the other items on the list are things we do to the ocean that directly affects them. Fishing tops that list, but because we’re eating the shrimp and lobster that they need to eat. And the little guys make coral reefs their home. They hide from predators while they eat and grow strong enough to venture out away from the protection of the reefs. But the reefs that are dying (due to overfishing, climate change and even the effects of anchors). Then there’s what we do to the shore (construct giant buildings with lots of lights on them that confuse the turtles, sending them onto the streets).
The most disappointing part of this particular experience for me was that volunteer-educators were not permitted to have an opinion about our direct and indirect effects on the sea turtle population. Because I live in a beach town, most of the people who go to the center either have boats and/or fish for sport. And nearly all eat fish and lobster and shrimp. To compound my disappointment was that if the people were going to take a stand on anything, it would be to curb shoreline development. And that’s great, but far, far easier and faster and a guaranteed aid to the turtles (real estate development is virtually inevitable in South Florida), would be to tell people to stop what they personally are doing to contribute to the devastation of sea turtles.
@Stephanie – I was the same way about environmental issues and social justice issues. I cared about them in the vaguest possible way, but it was going vegan and getting into animal rights that made me understand how connected they all were and how important to each other. This is going to be fun to explore!
@Mary – that’s a little crazy that they’d be trying to save the turtles, but refused to address the issues that were putting the turtles in danger too. (And isn’t it something like 50% of the “ocean’s catch” that is fed to land animals being raised for human consumption? They’d have to advocate veganism to avoid stealing the turtle’s food, when it comes down to it.) And I think that they are wrong to not bring up the difficult issues. It’s something I’ve come to see at Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary (using them as my example because I know more about how they approach the issue), that even though the vast majority of their guests (and donors!) are omni, the rule that PSAS has that no one is allowed to bring animal products to the sanctuary (let alone eat them there!) helps people make the connection between their food choices and the animals they are about to spend time with. I think the same would be true of the turtle rehab center.
What a fantastic post! You really can’t be an environmentalist if you aren’t vegan.
And like many of us I always thought I was doing great things for the environment when I recycled, or said no to plastic bags, or reduced/reused, etc, but now I realize I was canceling out all of my efforts every time I ate a cheese pizza or hamburger.