Today is Earth Day, a day which is not and never was about non-human animals. The only species that Earth Day is about is humans. The reason we do address this day is that the AR community tends to adopt some of the environmental rhetoric. This is of course not at all new, but it became more prominent in the last couple of years due to the relative rising awareness of climate change.
The motivation behind it is unquestionable, AR activists are recruiting ecological claims as a tactical move, trying to tap into a more consensual topic, for the sake of animals. What is questionable is whether animals are benefiting from this use.

The use of egocentric and anthropocentric arguments in veganism advocacy is notoriously popular in the Animal Liberation movement, and we have a multimedia article about that problematic issue called Even the Most Selfish Argument. This is not the main concern we discuss in this post. It is also not about the fundamental differences between Environmentalism and Animal Liberation, an issue we have broadly discussed in another multimedia article called The Anthropocentric View of the Environmentalists.

In this post we focus on the more immediate and practical effects of environmentalism and the environmental rhetoric on nonhuman animals, some of which are already happening, and others are expected in the coming years.
As you know humans excel at resisting any substantial changes in their beloved habits, and instead settle for half-baked, partial options, which are often no more than lip service. They usually recruit their ingenuity so they would have to change their ways as little as possible. When it comes to dealing with climate change and sustainability issues, some of those moves may even end up causing more animal suffering around the world. Continue reading →