Just one note. I think you assume wild animal welfare is negative, but this is unclear, so it is arguably better to avoid pursuing actions which assume it is negative/positive. People may get attached to the horse fields, and converting these to dense forests could be good if they turn out to have higher wild animal welfare per area. Besides improving farmed animal welfare, I would focus on understanding wild animal welfare and building a movement around it, as Wild Animal Initiative (WAI) as been doing.
In any case, I believe it is good to have a vision of what to do conditional on wild animal welfare being negative/positive.
thanks Vasco! Good comments. I added some things about people preferring a world with fewer higher welfare animals above a world with many more animals that have a higher probability of having a very negative welfare. Many people are risk averse, favor an asymmetric population axiology, favor avoiding suffering over creating happiness.
I also added that we should do more research on wild animal welfare and turn the grassland into forests if research shows that animal welfare in forests is sufficiently higher.
Wild animal welfare research and movement building is surely very good, but here I wanted to present something specific that people could actually choose to do right now, instead of “looking for what we could do in the future”.
Thanks for the post, Stijn!
Just one note. I think you assume wild animal welfare is negative, but this is unclear, so it is arguably better to avoid pursuing actions which assume it is negative/positive. People may get attached to the horse fields, and converting these to dense forests could be good if they turn out to have higher wild animal welfare per area. Besides improving farmed animal welfare, I would focus on understanding wild animal welfare and building a movement around it, as Wild Animal Initiative (WAI) as been doing.
In any case, I believe it is good to have a vision of what to do conditional on wild animal welfare being negative/positive.
thanks Vasco! Good comments. I added some things about people preferring a world with fewer higher welfare animals above a world with many more animals that have a higher probability of having a very negative welfare. Many people are risk averse, favor an asymmetric population axiology, favor avoiding suffering over creating happiness.
I also added that we should do more research on wild animal welfare and turn the grassland into forests if research shows that animal welfare in forests is sufficiently higher.
Wild animal welfare research and movement building is surely very good, but here I wanted to present something specific that people could actually choose to do right now, instead of “looking for what we could do in the future”.