Beyond thanking you for writing this paper (which I have been waiting for for months), I need to thank you for summarizing and disseminating it. I think moral and political philosophers hardly ever do this, which often leads to their work not being read outside academic circles.
Now, I’m curious to hear your view on the main bottleneck preventing these solutions from being implemented. I.e., if you were to start an organization, what would you focus on? Policy, actionable research, targeted attitude change...?
Yea, I largely disregarded political/cultural tractability in this analysis, as well as cost. So while I would LOVE to see ecological islands created for animal welfare, this would be prohibitively expensive for activists, and it’s hard to imagine governments deciding to do it anytime soon. I think the main purpose of the paper was to show that positive WAW interventions are feasible (and desirable) in the near-term future, even if still all-things-considered unlikely.
That said, I think the other interventions would be easier on this dimensions. Most ordinary people do sympathize with animals suffering particularly severe diseases or nasty parasites. We don’t place as much value on these the way we do for other species. So if this could be shown to be cheap, I think people might support it, particularly if it were part of a rewilding project (where people think they have more responsibility for the animals) or also affect farm animals. So to be clear, I do think the work of Screwworm Free Future is a great idea and totally worth pursuing!
Similarly, people seem to sympathize with urban animals a lot more, and we already see urban planning projects taking animal welfare into account (I think that dovecotes used to reduce urban pigeon reproduction, for example, are very likely to improve welfare).
And for promoting high-welfare ecosystems… this would be tractable if it was something people were tempted to do for other reasons. For example, if desert greening improves welfare, then we should encourage desert greening. If it doesn’t, then we can leverage reasons for opposing it e.g. it not being natural.
At the end of the day, I think the main bottleneck is just that we’re not trying enough things (but I think Rethink Priorities is looking to change this).
Beyond thanking you for writing this paper (which I have been waiting for for months), I need to thank you for summarizing and disseminating it. I think moral and political philosophers hardly ever do this, which often leads to their work not being read outside academic circles.
Now, I’m curious to hear your view on the main bottleneck preventing these solutions from being implemented. I.e., if you were to start an organization, what would you focus on? Policy, actionable research, targeted attitude change...?
Thanks Diego!
Yea, I largely disregarded political/cultural tractability in this analysis, as well as cost. So while I would LOVE to see ecological islands created for animal welfare, this would be prohibitively expensive for activists, and it’s hard to imagine governments deciding to do it anytime soon. I think the main purpose of the paper was to show that positive WAW interventions are feasible (and desirable) in the near-term future, even if still all-things-considered unlikely.
That said, I think the other interventions would be easier on this dimensions. Most ordinary people do sympathize with animals suffering particularly severe diseases or nasty parasites. We don’t place as much value on these the way we do for other species. So if this could be shown to be cheap, I think people might support it, particularly if it were part of a rewilding project (where people think they have more responsibility for the animals) or also affect farm animals. So to be clear, I do think the work of Screwworm Free Future is a great idea and totally worth pursuing!
Similarly, people seem to sympathize with urban animals a lot more, and we already see urban planning projects taking animal welfare into account (I think that dovecotes used to reduce urban pigeon reproduction, for example, are very likely to improve welfare).
And for promoting high-welfare ecosystems… this would be tractable if it was something people were tempted to do for other reasons. For example, if desert greening improves welfare, then we should encourage desert greening. If it doesn’t, then we can leverage reasons for opposing it e.g. it not being natural.
At the end of the day, I think the main bottleneck is just that we’re not trying enough things (but I think Rethink Priorities is looking to change this).