PETER SINGER: Great philosophers have tried to understand the world we're living in and
have tried to think about how we ought to live. And I think these are really fundamentally
important questions that any rational being ought to be interested in trying to find the
answers to.
What are the fundamental principles about how we ought to act? Ought we to be looking
at moral rules that we ought never to violate? Ought we to be trying to work out what rights
beings have? Should we be looking at the consequences of our actions and use that as the ultimate
criterion for deciding what's right and wrong? These questions are still questions we face
today. They have no scientific answer; They're not about the nature of the universe in that
way. They're about how we ought to live, which is a different type of question. And so I
think it's particularly relevant to look at what philosophy and what philosophical discussions
have contributed to our reflection and our thought about how we ought to live.
So my top three current ethical issues would be global poverty; climate change, which is
clearly related to global poverty; and the way we treat animals, which I think is a hugely
neglected issue that affects tens of billions of animals every year.
I think a question that you might use to shape your thinking around the issue of global poverty
would be: What ought I to be doing to contribute to helping people in extreme poverty? Each
person who asks that question, of course, is in a somewhat different situation, but
I'm assuming that you're living in an affluent country and within that country you're not
among the poorest in that country, so you're middle class in that country or above, so
you have money to spare after providing for your all your basic needs and making some
provision for the future. You spend money on luxuries that you don't need, if it ranges
from buying a bottle of water when you could drink water that comes out of the tap and
is free or maybe it's taking vacations or buying clothes when you've got plenty of clothes
to keep you warm and decent. So if you're in that situation, then you can ask yourself:
What ought to I be doing to consider myself an ethical person? Is it okay for me just
to be living my life in my society and not doing anything for people who, through no
fault of their own, are living in extreme poverty. And if the answer to that is no then
you need to think about, well, what should I be doing? How much should I be doing?
With regard to climate change, perhaps the most pressing question is what can I do about
this situation? I'm assuming that, like the overwhelming majority of scientists, you accept
that climate change is real, that it's happening, that it is largely caused by human activities
emitting greenhouse gases and that it's going to be catastrophic—if it's not checked it's
going to have catastrophic results for billions of people on our planet. I believe there are
two ways in which you can contribute. We can each contribute by trying to reduce our own
greenhouse gas emissions, reducing activities that use fossil fuels and release carbon dioxide
into the atmosphere. We all know about that. Perhaps riding a bike rather than driving
a car or walking more or using public transport. Those kinds of things help. Not having your
air conditioning on too low, too cool, when you don't need to and so on. But also we need
to think and people are now thinking more about what we ought to be eating because meat
is a major contributor to climate change, and so that's led a lot of people to become
vegan or to become reducitarian, to reduce the amount of meat they're eating so they're
only eating meats say two days a week rather than seven. And all of those things can help.
But, it's still true that it's a bigger problem that I don't think will be solved by the action
of individuals, so we need to act politically. We need to come together and put as much pressure
as we can on our political leaders to take serious steps about this.
The most basic question that you can think about with regard to animals is: What should
the moral status of animals be? What is it now? I think we all know that: Essentially,
animals are things. Legally we own animals, they're property. The farmer owns the animals
he or she raises. The laboratory, the corporation running the laboratory, owns the animals that
they're using to test on. The fur farmer owns those animals. And they don't really have
rights of their own. They don't have a moral status that says it's wrong to lock them up
in small cages. It's wrong to raise them by whatever method will produce their flesh or
their eggs or their milk most cheaply for humans to consume or to perform painful experiments
on them or to slaughter them for their fur. They don't have that moral status. And so
the first question is: Is that wrong? And I believe it is wrong. I think we're guilty
of speciesism which is the analogy at the species level of racism at the race level
and sexism at the level of relations between men and women. And just as we are trying to
move past those long-lasting traditional prejudices against some races and against women, so it's
time for us to move past the prejudice against beings who are not members of the species Homo
sapiens, and to say if they can feel, if their lives can go well or badly, then we
ought not to be ignoring those interests. We ought not to be sacrificing their interests
just for our convenience or just to get animal products that we eat a little bit more cheaply.
And then after that you need to think about: Should I be participating in these industries
at all? Am I complicit in the suffering that's being inflicted on animals, especially in
factory farms but in other forms of farming as well? Am I complicit in that when I buy
those products? And, if so, does that mean that I need to stop buying them? That I need
to move away from a lifestyle that consumes animal products and move closer to a vegan
lifestyle or move all the way to a vegan lifestyle, if you can do that, which will mean that I'm
no longer supporting these industries that are based on the cruel exploitation of animals?
And, of course, will also mean that I'm contributing less to climate change.