Green abolitionists

I tick most of the boxes. I have showers instead baths, I only use energy saving bulbs, I only fill the kettle with just the water needed for the tea I’m just making, I never leave a light on, I have nothing is standby, I buy organic, I only use recycled paper, I never throw a plastic bag away, I don’t buy biodiversity depleting products, I don’t smoke, I hardly use the heater and I recycle everything. Most environmentalists would tick those boxes too.

Not just that; I also do other more “idiosyncratic” things for the planet: once a week I take all my recyclables on foot to the recycling centre (which luckily is only 15 minutes away), so not to add any carbon print to my recycling; I have never been inside a running car with only one person in it (not that bigger deal really; I actually can’t drive); I keep reducing water consumption even if I already pay the minimum possible of my water bill; If I can make time, I walk everywhere within a two hours distance; ah, and I vote “green”, even when they don’t have a chance to win –because moral support helps. I guess all that may give me a few extra golden stars.

Enough about bragging, I also have a “naughty” side: I have flown far too much, I live on my own in a city flat without a garden or an orchard – so I’m missing on the compost heap and on helping local wildlife– I use many electrical devices, I don’t often buy local produce, I use far too much paper and I don’t always buy products from the most environmentally friendly companies. All and all, it could well be that the bad and good things cancel each other out... but they don’t, since I left the most important green “good” thing of all: I’m vegan.

Considering that the climate sceptics’ battle has not finished yet, while the fog of war is already dissipating, most people –and among them most scientists– are already seeing that one of the most clear “truths” that will be unveiled is that the meat and dairy industries are by far the most Earth damaging human enterprises ever– even if Al Gore infamously “forgot” to talk about it when he’d got a chance. The “social” conclusion is obvious: becoming vegan is the most beneficial direction human society can move towards, since by reducing the “demand” these industries will be forced to reconvert to harmless activities –without the need of unenforceable international policies imposed from aspirational “talk the talk” only resolutions.

I know, that’s just the theory, and in environmental issues, the theory often doesn’t count for much. In the same way that the oil companies still seem to call most of the shots, so will the meat and dairy industry; it’s likely that the destruction will continue and veganism will still fight from the minority corner for quite a few more decades to come. Even so, they may have a strong grip on today’s world’s economy and power, but we shouldn’t let them have even a feeble touch anywhere near our minds. We, as individuals, should still be able to call ourselves “environmentalists”, and keep campaigning and acting by example to protect the Earth and all its inhabitants, no matter how difficult the struggle will be. If enough of us keep doing it, the individuals become movements, and the movements will eventually change the tie.

So, this is the deal. If like me you are an environmentalist and also a vegan animal rights advocate, you are lucky because you are already doing a lot for both animals and the environment by just being vegan. But if you consider yourself “green” and still eat meat and drink milk, is time for you to reassess your lifestyle –or your self-awareness– even if you don’t care much about animals, because you may need to become vegan anyway if you want to be coherent with your “green” beliefs.

I haven’t made the calculations –how irresponsible of me– but I bet that someone flying everyday to work who decided to go vegan only for a couple of days a week would produce a lower global warming print than a regular “carnivorous” car commuter. Or possibly you would contribute more to stop global warming by eating vegan one day per week than by recycling all your waste –don’t forget that recycling industry also has a strong warming gasses footprint, especially because of transport.

Is this bad “non-vegan” effect that big? It seems so. Animal consumption produces over 50% of “the most destructive” greenhouse gases (methane, nitrous oxide), which are not only caused by the industrial processes linked to it, but simply by the very existence and proliferation of the animal sources they exploit, which constantly expel such gases from all their orifices even under the most “organic” and free range scenarios; since the 1990′s animal consumption has been responsible for 90% of rainforest deforestation –and don’t blame us vegans for the soya milk contribution since there isn’t any need to use rainforest land to grow soya beans, nor for us to buy any soya product that come from these sources; animal consumption uses up to 70% of our world’s agricultural land in a much lower food efficiency yield that if it was used only for plant production –and if you think about it, you don’t need science to check this fact out, since obviously more energy is needed to produce moving energy-consuming animals that eat plants, than to produce just the immobile plants in the first place –and therefore cut the expensive “middle caw”; in the U.S. alone animal consumption creates 335 million tons of toxic waste per year, and only one dairy farm with 2,500 cows produces as much waste as a city with approximately 411,000 residents. I could keep going; there are numbers and statistics everywhere pointing towards the same overwhelming conclusion, so even if the non-vegan sceptics would of course object to all of them, in fact they have fewer chances to win the debate than the climate sceptics have.

Therefore, for an “I don’t care about animals” environmentalist, going vegan is indeed the way. Imagine then how far from the “right way” would be a “green abolitionist” that has not yet switched to a vegan lifestyle.

But what about the “non green” abolitionists? Do they exist? Sadly yes, and I say sadly not because I object to their existence, but because I feel that they could easily be fighting for two good causes at the same time with no extra cost, but they have chosen only one. Why did they do that? Perhaps as a reaction against the “non-abolitionist” green people, or perhaps because they let themselves be influenced by clever “ethics thieves”.

Let me explain. People without morals or scruples that exploit the environment and slave animals for profit, or in the name of national or even “human” progress (depending of their audacity), are not stupid. They know that ethics do have an effect on some people’s decision making, and they can also read history books and realise that, not that long ago, the ethical guys beat them outright in a battle that they ought to have won. The abolitionists deprived them of human slaves, and now they only have animal slaves, which is unfortunately less “profitable” and convenient. So, the best way to prevent that defeat to happen again is to “steal” some of the enemies’ “weapons” –i.e. their “ethics”. The hunters become “conservationists”, the oil prospectors became “environmentalists”, the meat producers became “freerangerists”, etc, etc. Many of the environment movement’s concepts created by the science of ecology or the ethics of “the Enlightenment” were stolen by the exploitationists and used them as their own, till the point that some of the guys in our side may consider giving up trying to get them back. These “disillusioned” animalists may even go as far as renouncing environmentalism altogether, and becoming “non-green” abolitionists.

In some occasions such “thefts” did not really work. For instance, despite the fact that hunters often claim that they are not in fact unscrupulous blood sportsmen but are instead conscientious “conservationists” that help to “remove” individual animals that the “ecosystem” does not really want or need, most people didn’t fall for it –certainly the parliamentarians of the United Kingdom didn’t fall for it during the Hunting Act debate in the beginning of this century. However, in other occasions such “thefts” did indeed work very well, and the perfect example to illustrate this is what happened with zoos.

When I first came to London decades ago I remember seen some street maps which had written in brackets under London Zoo the sentence “soon to be closed”. That was when the perception of the British public had changed so much due to the abolitionist work of the animalist movement that London zoo –which had been the first “modern” zoo in the world and as such was the “model” to follow which lead to the spreading of this new form of slavery euphemistically known as “zoological garden”– ended loosing many visitors and was no longer financially solvent. This movement had already achieved important milestones, such as actually eliminating all cetacean captivity in the UK, or the creation of concepts such as “zoocosis”, which allowed people to understand that wild animals in captivity suffer greatly psychologically because of their confinement, even if they still breed and survive behind bars. But the zoo industry, and among them the owners of London zoo, quickly realised that there was a way to stop the closure: burrow from us environmentalists some of the “conservation” concepts we so naively left unguarded, so they could use them for attracting back the ethically minded visitors, or at least for making them forget about their concerns and enjoy the “freak show” visit totally “guilt free”.

So, London zoo started to use the example of former zoo dissidents (such as Gerald Durrell and his Jersey’s zoo experiment) as an inspiration to “spin off” their existence, and instead of “selling” to the public “exotic beast to be behold”, they would now sell “conservation, education and research”. The zoo began to stop keeping animals whose suffering was too obvious –such as polar bears– started to move their big mega fauna (such as elephants and rhinos) to Whipsnade Zoo (its other zoo in the country where it would be much more difficult for the abolitionists to use the argument of “enclosure size” against them), and started to fund conservation and education programmes. The parenthesis disappeared in further editions of London maps, and this seemed to have worked so well that others began to imitate such successful “burrowing”.

For instance, the Royal Society of Scotland, owner of Edinburgh zoo, also followed these steps, and opened the Highland Wildlife Park, where only autochthonous species would be kept, so the “non exotic” abolitionist argument against them could no longer be used –the very cold winter was indeed one of the main weakness of the zoo. The conservation “trick” was quickly taken by the whole zoo industry itself, making it a compulsory “mission statement” in the several federations of zoological gardens that exist in the world. This even became part of the EU Zoo Directive, which now forced all EU countries to have this holy trinity as the only justification acceptable for the existence of their zoos –but in practice zoos did not really need to do many changes other than cosmetic or symbolic ones, since the point was not to conserve, research or educate, but to “justify” their activities under these three concepts, which to be honest is not that difficult (i.e. if you want to, war and genocide could also be justified under them with a little of imagination: it helps to reduce the biodiversity problem caused by human overpopulation, is what leads to technological advances, and is a good “life” lesson about good and evil, survival of the fittest, national pride, cooperation, etc). The “burrowing”, which had become “theft”, was a complete success.

They had it all figured out. Zoos now looked like “conservation” organizations, so people could now keep visiting them “guilt free”, and the abolitionists could now leave them alone and concentrate on other issues. But they did not. It soon become apparent that in most occasions the “Education, Conservation and Research” flag was a claim that most zoos could not defend with facts. Visitors seem to believe the claims and not ask for any proof, so most zoos opted to use the PR version of it, not the “real thing”. When pressed by the abolitionists, they sometimes did react and try to do a bit more, but in general the strategy that seem to work for them was only to “claim” conservation, talk a lot about it, and spend very little on it. The true nature of the zoo industry can still be seen if you look close enough. For instance, the “only-autochthonous” Highland Wildlife Park started to acquire animals from species “extinct” in the British Isles –such as wolves and bears– but which they used to be local in prehistoric times (so they can still claim the “autochthonous” badge). Even now their owners are trying to acquire pandas so their zoo in Edinburgh becomes the only one in the UK keeping them, which clearly reveals that the “behold the exotic beast” is still the main “business” that runs behind the conservation facade. Another example is when some public aquaria in the UK were recently bought by a multinational corporation that still keep cetaceans as exhibits in other countries, so clearly showing that there did not have any moral objection to such captivity, and therefore captive dolphins could well return to the UK at any time.

But how did they manage to “con” their visitors so successfully? Well, because they didn’t only change the zoo’s PR, but the issue went deep into the environmentalist movement itself, where the concept that species are more important than individuals became deeply “engraved”. The idea that the most important thing for the conservation of biodiversity is the preservation of its species was something that really found its home in many conservation organizations, which started to develop programmes for protection of the species that were considered more vulnerable. Some animal protection organization became gradually “species protection organizations”, without even realising they had changed. Some become the archetype of species conservation, such as the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) which still used images of individual “cute” tigers or “smiling” dolphins to “appeal” their donors, but don’t deal with individuals, only with species. This meant something. This meant that you could now sacrifice some individuals for the benefit of the species. This was a goldmine for the exploitationists, which now could keep exploiting individual animals claiming that they did it for the benefit of their species, and ultimately the benefit of the entire Universe.

I’m not saying that this was a conspiracy theory where the “bad guys” orchestrated this massive “brain wash”, and everyone fell in their traps. No, it was a matter of “opportunism”. When well-intentioned biodiversity environmentalists (in other words, “conservationist”) started to push the protection of species concept to tackle the depletion of some animals and plants, the “opportunity” arose. The general public didn’t notice that much this transformation, but the animalist and environmentalist movement did, which made them drift apart gradually from each other. And this difference of perception still occurs today, when you can still find many members of the public calling the WWF or Greenpeace to inform them about an animal abuse case, to be quickly sent away with replies along the lines “we don’t do animals, please call the RSPCA”. In other countries, this “divorce” has not happened yet, and both environmentalists and animalists are still lumped together in an “ecologist” marriage, but as their movements mature it is likely that they will get “infected” with this “splitting” affliction in the same way.

The zoo industry is the one that benefited the most from this “species” business, so quickly they developed their “captive breeding programmes” run precisely in their zoos, claiming that they were “vital” for the survival of the animals they bread. Of course hardly ever they tried to reintroduce the products of these programmes back into the wild –and when they tried it normally didn’t work since the key thing for conservation will always be to prevent the causes of the population depletion, not to breed the animals away from their habitat. They never grew tired of saying that these animals would be far better kept in the zoos far away from their “threatened” habitats, so people could pay to see them in a “save” environment, and get educated at the same time while the animals wait for their reintroduction into the wild, sometime in the “very distant future” when the overlords would parachute brand new ecosystems down to Earth –well, I got a bit carried away there. All legal, all sanctioned by international treaties and laws, all good for their images and pockets. They did encounter opposition from the abolitionist movement, but the “species” issue also affected them “internally”, creating inconvenient divisions. For instance, some organizations kept defining themselves as “welfarists” and seemed mostly happy with the new mainstream zoos’ style, others became “hybrid” between conservation and animal welfare and tried to deal with species and individuals with a kind of schizophrenic approach to zoological collections, and others remained pure abolitionists campaigning for the zoo’s disappearance, all clashing with each other from time to time. On occasions, several groups agreed on common abolitionist campaigns –such as the one aimed to abolish the keeping of elephants in zoos– but overall, the zoo industry has been managing to keep all these at bay, and survive the impact of the wave of “animal awareness”, which by now should have abolished them.

This “species” problem went far beyond the issue of wild animal captivity, reaching unexpected explotationist heights. The bullfighting industry claims now that banning bullfighting will cause the extinction of the “species” they call “bullfighting bull”, and the disappearance of the “ecosystems” they call “bullfighting bull’s farms”. Ridiculously, it seems that now species and ecosystems are just “invented” when convenient by anyone, not waiting for any “scientist” to support any half-decent argument to support their existence. Do you want more? the Japanese whalers hunting whales for conservation “research”; the culling of hedgehogs to protect autochthonous fauna in some Scottish islands; the culling of feral cats to protect wild birds everywhere, etc, etc.

It’s not only the biodiversity issue of “species” versus “individuals” that has been used by the “other side”. The issue of “energy” is the other one. These days many people confuse Nature with Countryside, or simply with “landscape”. No long ago I saw a documentary in which you could follow a “war” between the developers and supporters of a windmill farm project in the English county of Devon, and the local residents who opposed to it. It was interesting to see how those opposed used arguments that sounded like advocating for the preservation of Nature, when actually they advocated for the preservation of landscape –their own personal landscape, since they objected that the view from their living rooms would be ruined, or that the noise they would hear from their gardens would be unacceptable. Notwithstanding the actual merits of their individual cases and whether there are more friendly versions of alternative energy technologies than inshore wind farms, it did give me the impression that the ecological benefit to the nation and the planet were pushed away in favour of a narrow-minded view of Nature as a “leisure” commodity equivalent to a good “alive” painting hanging on people’s walls. And they all cried on camera for their lost showing how much these “ecological” evil corporations were wronging them, and how much their rights as “individuals” had been trampled. It really looked like a reversed role scene from those days when brave Davidians tree huggers protested against evil Goliathians logging companies.

The same “opportunism” that the zoo community showed was indeed shown by the petrol and coal companies, who seem to “embrace” new energy sources to a great extent. Of course that, like the zoos, it was mainly a PR exercise, since they didn’t abandon their oil and coal production and their multibillion global warming business, but juts added a few green “dimensions” to their personalities. It didn’t help that the environmentalist movement also began to split on the most abolitionist campaign they had been involved with since their creation: nuclear energy. Now you would find that the once young nuclear abolitionists in the movement had become much older, and some started to lose the taste for abolitionism and began to accept nuclear energy as a good solution to the now new global warming threat. Luckily, though, the Fukushima disaster seem to be railing back some of the strays, as you can see with the fact that the German government (perhaps the government with more “green files” buzzing around), announced the closure of all their nuclear plants soon after.

It’s not surprising, then, that many animalists don’t feel conservationist anymore. It does now seem that the animalist movement and the environmentalist movement are going in different directions. This may be so, but it should not be like this. I remain both environmentalist and animalist –yes, the inescapable “theme” of this blog– and I honestly think that both attitudes are not incompatible. We should try to create some sort of reconciliation between them, because they in fact make us travel towards the same direction of no exploitation and respect for “your neighbour”, whoever or whatever it is. It’s true that some ethical concepts were stolen from us, but I think it’s not too late and we can take them back if we really want them.

We should be arguing more that “species” don’t really exist, because in fact they don’t. They are just an “invention” we humans use to classify types of animals. If we change our criteria of classification, the numbers of species will change –some being instantly created while others instantly extinct at the whim of taxonomers and experts on Systematics. What do exist are animals, plants and other types of “individual” beings, so the only way to preserve all the species regardless of which type of classification and definition system we use, is to preserve all the individuals that exist in Nature today.

We can use other arguments to support this anti-species approach, such as the “butterfly effect”. Sprouting from chaos theory, we all have already heard about the fact that it’s perfectly possible that a hurricane in one side of the world may ultimately have been triggered by the flapping of the wings of a butterfly in the other side. We know now that this is how the world works, but we have failed to “milk” this concept further by asking the question of what would have happened to this hypothetical hurricane (if it turned out to be a benign natural phenomenon that would “readjust” a climatic or ecosystematic unbalance) if the hypothetical butterfly in question would have been caught, killed and added to the collection of the hypothetical entomologist that claimed that had killed that individual to study its species for its ultimate “preservation”. So, we already have theoretical and mathematical models that show us how important are individuals for the ecosystem as a whole. Surely if a butterfly has such powerful effect, imagine the effect that a tiger, a gorilla or a dolphin can have.

We can –and we should– claim back conservation as a “genuine” environmentalist concept that is perfectly compatible with being abolitionist respect the exploitation of individual animals. We can demand that zoos should be abolished and genuine conservation initiatives where all ecosystems, with all their species, with all theirs individuals, are developed instead of them. We can advocate for sustainable energy sources at the same time that developing them carefully so they don’t affect negatively the lives of animals in the wild, not necessarily the lives of humans who could perfectly cope with a bit of noise or change in their window’s views. But most of all, we can use the recent discovery of the global warming crisis to show all environmentalists that the vegan route is the best route for everyone, so not only can we recover our stolen concepts, but we can “recruit” new people into the animalist abolitionist process who otherwise would not be inclined to join us in our journey – Ironically, the global warming threat which may be one of the current biggest causes of division within the green movement may be the opportunity to make it bigger and wider, and return it to its original “holistic” interpretation.

We all can be “green abolitionists”, and help both the butterfly and the planet she/he is so modestly affecting, because the individuals, the species, the ecosystems and the Earth matter equally, and they all can be helped with the same abolitionist approach of respect and non violence.

True Green abolitionists should be the greatest abolitionists of all, because they should embrace all other abolitionist causes at the same time. They should advocate for stopping activities that breach the rights of man, woman, sentient being, animal, plant, mountain, lake, continent and planet. They should be the defenders of “Natural Rights”, not just of human rights, animal rights or woodland rights. A green abolitionist should fight for the abolition of any human practice that breaches the rights that every natural entity has to behave and evolve freely by natural processes according to its nature. These are important rights. These are individuals’ rights. These are global rights.

Choosing carefully what we eat or wear, or how much water we put in our kettle, don’t seem significant enough choices to stop the cataclysmic tsunami humanity is inflicting upon the world, but in fact they are.

After all, it was the butterfly who chose to flap her wings. It was her choice.

Jaysee Costa

Neoclassical abolitionism

Let’s get straight to the point; “new-welfarism” doesn’t’ exist. There, I said it.

Well, it doesn’t exist in the real world, but it does in the imagination of philosophers and social theorists, in the sense that they talk about it, and accuse others to practice it, as inquisitors and theologians used to accuse midwives of witchcraft. I suppose that one can find welfarists that are newer than others, so their welfarist activities are therefore “new”. For instance, a social worker whose job is to train disadvantaged people to used the Internet could be consider a new-welfarist, if we accept that access to the information highway is today one “need” that the oppressed can lack of. But I am being facetious; the term is never used referring human welfare, just animals’.

No long ago the “hot” debate among animalists was “animal welfare” versus “animal rights”. It was relatively easy to understand. Animal welfare people support the improvement of animals’ lives, while animal rights people oppose to the exploitation of animals on the bases that society did not gave them the rights they deserved. In other words, critics of either side saw it as the former only interested in helping individual animals by welfare reforms, while the latter only interested in the “long term bigger picture” utopian issues changing the paradigm of the human animal relationship in a fundamental level. In the English speaking world, this apparently opposite attitudes are well known, but funny enough in the Spanish speaking world this dichotomy did not really exist until very recently, among other things because people still used the term “ecologist” to lump together anyone concerned by Nature, animals and the environment. The term “animalist” (“animalista”), which I am kind of forcing in this blog, has existed for decades in Spanish, and everyone in Latin countries knows what it means. Primitive? I should think not.

I’m a cultural hybrid that has hopped through both English and Spanish speaking countries, so when I need to I can observe this sort of things from a certain distance, and benefit of the luxury of objective comparison. It’s true that organised animal protection started much earlier in the English speaking world, which could explain the fact that more time created more diversification of ideas, but in today’s world each country does not longer need to pay all its dues and endure the same long evolution in isolation. Because of modern communication, now one country can quickly learnt from another, and in this way save a lot of time and energy. Therefore, this classical dichotomy has spread, and now is more or less present everywhere. But curiously enough the effect of globalization works both ways, so in the same way that one world influenced the other in “dividing” the animalists with opposing approaches, the other might have influenced the one by uniting them a little bit. How? Some animal welfare organizations began to act as animal rights groups, and some animal rights groups began to act as welfare organizations. And I, for one, am the perfect example.

As many people I started my journey by being just another explotationist, gradually “awaking” to the reality of my actions and trying to “change my ways”. I was what Tom Regan calls a “Muddler”. I was not born in the journey; I was not push into the journey; I just gradually started walking in it. My first steps in the abolitionist process were very much within the classic animal welfare approach, but it did not take me long to find the first important milestone; by boldly jumping across it I became a vegan and an animal rights advocate. I never was a vegetarian; I made my first significant jump all the way to vegan, which I must say it really pleases me (although I very much regret I didn’t do it earlier). But here is the twist: I never left animal welfare behind; I simply added animal rights to my beliefs, as anyone adds a new skill or experience to their CV without deleting any previously acquired. I used to say that I followed the philosophy of animal rights and the morality of animal welfare. I helped to improve the lives of those animals that came across mine, while campaigning for a bigger change in society where animals would no longer be exploited, and those that transgressed their rights would be properly punished. I never found both approaches incompatible. For instance, I can look after myself by ensuring that I eat, drink and dress, and not because of that I am being selfish and wasting time with an “individual” (in this case, “me”) and a short term improvement (avoiding hunger and cold today), without fighting for the bigger social picture of “the collective” in a long term revolution. Equally, I can eat, drink and dress “veganly”, to ensure that I’m also sending the right political message to those that observe me surviving perfectly well. One can work simultaneously for the small and the bigger picture, or do it alternatively. The end result is the same. I never saw –and I still don’t see– any real and genuine reason of why animal rights people should heavily and constantly criticise animal welfare people, and vice versa, unless we are talking about some extreme “beyond the fringe” cases on either side.

New-welfarism doesn’t exist. There are not Universities where you can “major” on it, there are no organizations that accept this term or use it in their “who we are” web pages, there are no activist’s manuals that include this “type” of animalist in their mantras, and there are no tick boxes for this concept in any form aimed to asses people’s ideological makeup. If there are groups that accept being defined as “welfarists”, these have not changed enough their core campaigns and methods to justify the attribute “new”. What does exist is the need for a “new” animal-rights/animal-welfare dichotomy. In a world where this dichotomy has been smudged by animal rights people doing more welfare stuff, and animal welfare people doing more animal rights stuff, those that need the division, those that need to justify the difference, needed to invent a different concept, a different issue to differ from the others.

There always will be “others”, even among “us”. That is not bad in itself, since it keeps us all fresh and on check, forces us to be awake and non complacent, and gives us ideological variability, which at long term is very useful –since natural selection works as well with genes than with “memes”. I like the fact that one group can question the effectiveness of the other, because this can drive to self-evaluation, which may lead to better tactics. I like the fact that those that end up just asking donations to be used to ask for more donations, can be forced to “do something” by just asking them “what do you actually do?”. I like the fact that some activists are taking upon themselves to constantly remind us that the most significant change that anyone can make to help the world is becoming vegan, because it’s absolutely true (we ethical vegans sometime forget that it is our abolitionist “duty” to spread veganism in the world as much as we can, and it’s good that someone remind us about it from time to time). I also certainly like the fact that when one of us clearly stops walking the journey and starts going backwards, this can be flagged out with the aim of correction. But all these “good” things that come from this debate don’t come free of charge, especially if they are overdone. There is a price to pay, which I wonder if it could be reduced: the uncomfortable division, the unproductive defensiveness, the endless arguments, the unfair disfranchisement, the lack of collaboration, and, in the end, the bitter taste in your mouth and a feeling or having been left “alone”.

Much a do about nothing, really. Those that accuse others of being new-welfarists define them as kind of in between animal welfare and animal rights. They often define them as “abolitionists” that turned into single-issue-welfarists, accepting some reforms with the excuse that these would lead to a future abolition. And they use precisely the term “new-welfarism” possibly because this, for an old fashion animal rights defender, may sound a bit “offensive”. What they perhaps don’t realise is that there are as many “new-welfarist” that come from animal rights people moving towards animal welfare, as animal welfare people moving towards animal rights. There are examples of both individuals and organizations in this situation, from “vegans” starting to get prominent positions in animal protection organizations where they used to be regarded as a bit “odd”, to clear abolitionists messages and campaigns run with coalitions where animal welfare groups pay an important role. For instance, the RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) joining the campaign for the abolition of hunting of mammals with dogs in the UK, or WSPA (World Society for the Protection of Animals) joining the campaign for the abolition of bullfighting in Catalonia. I know; some may claim that in these examples no actual “good” came from theses “changes of approach” –they may say that neither hunting nor bullfighting have in fact been abolished in either country. Time will give justice to these cases since they are still a bit too “tender” to expect seeing them complete –although for me they already “count”, since I know them very well – but as long as some particular animal abuse practices begin to be abolished somewhere in the world (no matter how geographically small that part of the world is and how specific such abuse is), it’s a step in the right direction, which is better than no step at all. It doesn’t really prevent that other animalists take more, bigger or better steps (I don’t buy the theory that new-welfarist campaigns “steal” a big piece of the “resources pie” so others don’t have anything left –there is a different pie for each issue/region). I don’t think that it “slows down” either the “big causes” such as the promotion of veganism and anti-speciesm, since it could be argued that you may “attract” some people’s interest with specific achievements than you might not get with general goals –and once “in”, there is a chance to “go bigger for good”.

But we should not forget either the “sins” of some of “the other side” of the animalist spectrum. It is very difficult to accept as “good enough” excuses for not becoming vegan or for not actively supporting a much wider and long term animal rights campaign, the fact of either really really really liking cheese, or that some newspapers really really really like to put the “terrorist” label on anyone not wearing a tie –or wearing a turban instead. You are welcome to join us in the journey, even if you arrived late and are very much “behind” (we all were once). But don’t expect us to slow down and wait for you if you decide to stop walking and have a long nap.

On the other hand, there are indeed examples from animal rights groups acting “welfarestly”, which have been the trigger of the new-welfarism banter. For instance, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) campaign on slaughter methods, or Animal Aid’s campaign on CCTV in slaughter houses. What all this shows us is that it would be equally accurate to name these “new-welfarist” as it would be to name the others “new-animal rightist”. It would be equally accurate as it would be actually meaningless. Because what is “new” is not what one side is doing, but what both are doing. They are both getting closer to each other without actually renouncing to their core identities, and this is bound to be good at some level (especially if the “net” result of this “closing the gap” situation is more specific abolitionist successes than before, which could well be the case if a consequence of this is more collaboration). If we have to call them something different, perhaps it would be better we call them “new-abolitionists”, because their shift of attitude does show us something they all have in common: the recognition that the abolition of animal abuse is their common goal that can be achieved from different angles.

If some insist that “new-abolitionists” as something qualitative different do exist, and are going to judge them, they will need to do it on the basis of how much these are advancing in the abolitionist process, how many people “from outside” is being attracted to this process because of them, and how much “abolitionist value” they are adding to the animalist movement. Otherwise it all sounds a bit weak.

I must be a new-abolitionist myself, since I am equally engaged in animal welfare, animal rights and pure abolitionist campaigning. Always ensuring that I filter out any campaign that has nil abolitionist intrinsic value, I find myself comfortable switching from one to another, continuously refocusing my abolitionism to be sure I cover as many animals as possible, as many animal issues as possible, as many single and multiple issues as possible, and trying to achieve as many short, medium and long term goals as possible, for the individual animals as well as for the Animal Kingdom as a whole. All towards the same direction: the abolitionist direction.

But not everybody may have the chance to try such a multi-tasking strategy. That’s OK, each of us chose the path of the abolitionist process that fits them the best. It’s good that some try new routes and others follow the most established ones. We’ll never know what we will encounter in the future, and if we find a big bolder in our way, we want to have options to avoid it. But what has become a little funny –especially if you try to look at it from outside– is that in some occasions rather than opening new paths by removing obstacles and macheting away impenetrable growth, it seems that some are just cropping tiny dandelions from a perfectly transitable road.

What I mean is that often this debate started being about strategies, about the things different animalists do, but ended up being about semantics, about the things that different animalists say. In a nutshell, something like this:

-You are wasting our time, with you tiny single issue regulations.

-It’s not your time, it’s ours...besides, it’s not a regulation, it’s gradual abolition.

-Don’t make me laugh, you “welfarist”!

-I’m not a “welfarist”, I’m just a “pragmatist”!

-Yes you are, you are a “new-welfarist”

-Ah yeah, then you are a “fundamentalist”!

-I am not!, I’m an “abolitionist”. I know what you mean, take it back!

-I will not. In fact, I will go further. You are a “Francionist”!

-You can’t say that!

-Yes I can

-Sztybelist!!

-Bless you

And here is something ironic: Many people don’t know that one of the greatest abolitionists that ever existed was one of the founders of modern animal welfarism –as we know it. William Wilberforce, the 18^th century British Parliamentarian who successfully achieved many important milestones in the human slavery abolition process, happened to be one of the founders of the RSPCA, the archetypal animal welfare group (recognised as the first animalist organisation in the world, which still exists). He is not remembered as the great “reformist” of slavery, even if he spent most of his life trying to abolish only the trade of slaves, and only in the British Empire (“steps” that were instrumental in the global abolitionist process, but by no means were the only ones made before or after). The ironic bit is that being indeed a very “old” member of “the process”, his communion of abolition and welfare, and of humans and non-human animals, fits better the “new-welfarism” than the classical one animalists like myself started with. Perhaps he should be accused of “Neoclassical abolitionism”. If that is the case, if I have to get another label, I want to have that one too –and if you want to call me Wilberforcist, I’ll take it.

In the end, the labels don’t really matter that much. If some animalists want to make anti-new-welfarism their own flag, it doesn’t really matter that much either. It some “welfarists” (old or new) take it personally, and want to spend some time defending “their ways”, so be it. For me the important thing is that every day there are more of “us” that join the journey, and more of us that don’t feel obliged to sign up to any side. Because old or new, classic or contemporary, we are still on the same ship, going towards the same destination, travelling in the same long and arduous journey, until those that come after us may eventually find what we all have been aiming for.

I bet Wilberforce also dreamt about it in the old days.

Jaysee Costa

The Abolitionist Reconciliation

It used to be very simple. You could choose the “compassionate” route or the “who cares“ route. You could act in an “animal friendly” manner and become a vegetarian, or you could choose to go out hunting and enjoy a steak dinner. Not surprising; not that long ago there used to be just a couple of TV channels available, a few political ideologies to vote for, and a handful of religions to follow. But we now live in the era of choice. Not only there have never been more human neurons in this planet (about 700 quintillions to be precise) –all of them busy rationalising everything– but there has never been so many ways to connect ones with the others, even if they physically reside is skulls thousands of miles apart.

So, in this multi-ideological universe, becoming an “animal” person is not an easy task. If you have just arrived and would like to “join the club”, you’ll find yourself with this question: “which one?” There have never been so many “factions” in the animal protection movement to choose. So many, that I am sure there would be quite a few that would object of me calling it “animal protection” –and possibly quite a few more for calling it a “movement”. They will all have good epistemological and even political reasons for those objections, don’t get me wrong. I am all for “good defining” and systematization, as it will become apparent with this blog. But if I was a “beginner” –which I am not– I would find it difficult, even off-putting.

This is why I decided to create this blog. At risk of just “adding” another option on the table to make the whole thing even more confusing, I thought that it that option was a “sticky” one, one that unifies rather than divides, one that “agglutinates” different ideologies and approaches into one simpler and easier to accept, then it would be worth to try.

First of all, let’s find a term broad enough to label “those in our side” in a satisfactory manner. The side of the “compassionate”; the side of the “respectful”; the side of the “friendly”. Let’s call “us” the “animalist” people. Perhaps the “animal people” would be more correct grammatically, but all people are animals (and not accepting this could already puts us at odds with the anti-speciests), even those that are unfriendly to others, so it would be best to add the “ist” to show that we are talking here about a belief, and ideology or a attitude, rather than just a physical description.

Now let’s recognise that in addition to exist, the animalist people as a group feel somehow part of a sub-culture that has an effect –or wants to have an effect– upon the world. A group that is in “motion” trying to change things. That is, in other words, a social “movement”.

How many different ideologies exist within the “animalist movement” nowadays? I don’t even know. I keep finding some new every day. We have the vegetarians, the vegans, the animal rights groups, the animal welfare groups, the Reganists, the abolitionists, the pragmatists, the animal protectionists, the neo-welferalists, de Francionists, the fundamentalists, the animal defenders, the liberationists, the anti-specists, the Singerites, the animal advocates, and surely many more that can be found or invent. I am sure that each of these have good reasons to exist and good arguments to justify their identity. I am also sure that among those that feel affiliated to any of these terms there are many people that I would be comfortable to share this planet with –certainly many more than among those that feel affiliated to “unfriendly” groups such as the hunters, bullfighting supporters, animal dealers, fur designers, vivisectionists or factory farmers.

So, which of these groups do I feel more “identified” with? Well, most of them, to be honest, but if I was forced to choose one, I would choose the “abolitionists”. In fact, I plan to dedicate the entirety of this blog to explain why, and to show that, for me, being “abolitionist” is not a “separatist” choice from within the animalist movement, but rather the contrary.

In a hypothetical situation where I would have to confess that I have participated in online dating websites (which, if I did, that would not necessarily mean that I did it for the same reason everyone else does), I could well admit that there would be a term that would be most practical to explain “a bit more about myself” in a few words. That would be “VAREAL”, which is the acronym for “Vegan Animal Rights Environmentalist Atheist Lefty”. I certainly am each of these things. In fact, this is how I define myself in Twitter. However, “abolitionist” is a far better term, since I believe it includes all the other five concepts –and more– in the widest sense of the word. I certainly would like to abolish the use of animals in the food, clothes, cosmetic, pharmacy and entertainment industries, as well as abolish the legal discrimination that individuals suffer because of the species they belong to. And I would also like to abolish the unscrupulous exploitation and destruction of the environment, as well as all religions, all monarchies, and the capitalist paradigm. But I suspect that most potential suitors would not get all that about me from reading the term “abolitionist” in my online profile.

Therefore, explanations are in order. To abolish something is a curios “action”, since is an active “event” to stop something that occurs, which if successful implies an “estate” where such “something” is now permanently absent. So, it is not about “to be” or “to do”, but rather to “un-do” something forever. This means that in this simple verb, you have imbedded a powerful “moral judgement”. “Abolishing” is not like “extinguishing”, “disappearing” or “dying out”, which seem to happen spontaneously and without much help. Rather, it implies the judgement of something as being wrong, the possibility to do something about it, and the consequence that this something is stopping it altogether forever. It is a hugely powerful ethical and political word, perfect for those that feel driven by ethics and want to help to improve society and the world. So, good for people like me, annoyingly opinionated nagging “do-gooders”, but it is also good for those who history have remembered them as “great”, because of the positive changes that have given us.

When one feels frustrated and overwhelmed because of severe injustices and suffering witnessed, knowing that they are not inevitable and things can be corrected, is very consoling and invigorating. It certainly gives you batteries to carry on living, and reasons for optimism and hope. The possibility of “abolition” gives you this, but abolition is not just a theoretical possibility, but also a historical fact. “Bad” thing have indeed been abolished. Often not overnight; often not without a long and difficult struggle; often not “completely” in an absolute sense –but completely enough. Abolition is taught in history, and it is almost always associated to an improvement, a better world, a “good” result. And it is thought everywhere, because it has happened everywhere, in all cultures, and since the first records began. At the least, it is part of ethnic and cultural evolution. At the most, it is a universal achievement intrinsically linked to the good side of civilization.

The problem begins when we start to see abolitionism purely as a strategy. There are abolitionist strategies, which certainly are tools at the disposal of the animalist movement, but being an abolitionist is much more than just applying a strategy, as being a pacifist is much more than just be “at peace”. Abolitionism is, in fact, a process. A process which starts at one point in an individual life or a society state, and ends at another when something that was deemed bad is now gone. It is a journey in which, who takes it, only knows its general direction and destination, but not the exact path to get there. We may know the origin, have a moral compass for directions, and imagine how the final destination would look like, but we don’t quite know what we are going to encounter in the way, and how long is going to take. And this is the important bit: the kaleidoscopic abundance of types of animalist doctrines are in fact just the hills and meanders through which this journey is taking us; the irregularities in the landscape that may well slow us down, push us through short cuts, or simply “captivate” us with “the view”. Some of us may travel looking at the horizon; others looking at each step in the way, but most of us are going in the same direction and will recognise our destination when we reach it. We, the animalist people, are all in the abolitionist journey, even those that may feel that the term abolition does not apply to them, or those that do not use it because it is jealously guarded by others that like to bask in it.

The others, the animal users, abusers and consumers, are taking a different journey. The “exploitationist journey”. They go in the opposite direction to us, and sometimes they may distract us and even push us backwards. If that is the case we do have to raise the alarm, and help others to regain the “right” orientation. But in general, as long as we are all going towards our shared destination, we should be tolerant with the path that everyone chooses. This does not mean that we should not help others to take the best possible way we may think of, the one that is either easier to navigate, or takes us more rapidly to our destination, but we should not forget that not all of us started at the same point, not all of us carry the same baggage, not all of us are good in cross-country trekking, and not all of us want to be helped. And this is applicable to individuals, groups, organizations, societies and cultures.

When we look at abolitionism as a process, no just as a strategy, we will start to discover different facets of it. We may find “abolitionist milestones”, such as the one that goes from vegetarianism to veganism, or between lifestyle and advocacy, or between advocacy and activism, or between welfare and rights. We may discover that each step or action may have an “intrinsic abolitionist value”, so not always a reform is just a regulation (some reforms may indeed push us towards abolition, while others may not). We may find that the “abolitionist message” cannot be driven only though pragmatism and randomness, but that needs an ethical engine and a moral compass to work, if we want to reach the destination and not finding ourselves going backwards. We may recognise the advantages of “abolitionist refocusing”, which suggest that it is easier to lose one’s way if we concentrate too much in the compass (our high moral values), the road (the stones and crevices of each individual animal’s ordeal) or the horizon alone (the long term utopian policies), rather than paying attention to all of them in turns, according to where we are in our journey.

But this does not end with the animalist world. Those engaged in the abolitionist journey will realise that they are also going in the right direction when they think beyond the animal kingdom or within the human bubble alone. The environment, human rights, gender rights, sexuality rights, socio-economic paradigms, geopolitics, etc, all have “bad” things in them that can be abolished through a journey which happen to go in the same general direction than the animalist abolitionist process. A journey that often involves respect, fairness and non-violence, as the main fuel of the vehicles we choose to travel with.

By exploring all this with an open mind and a certain “good faith” attitude towards other well-intentional fellow beings, we may find that rather than select a very narrow niche from which undertake our quest for a better world, we may like to deep our ephemerons existence into more than one ink pot, as long as their colours paint the same kind of future, and we feel personally and socially fulfilled. We may feel that, while travelling, it may be good to sing the song of abolitionist reconciliation, so we can enjoy our journeys more and feel less alone. There is an awful lot of people travelling in the other direction and avalanching us stray from every corner, so hearing such song guiding us all the way may be “just the ticket”.

In this blog I will try to improvise this song with my own personal tune. In following contributions, I intend to discuss issues such as the green abolitionism, the neo-welferalism, the taxonomic factor, freedom and power, the charity question, or the Unified abolitionist. I know that it’s very pretentious for my part to pontificate along with cheap philosophies and pompous analogies, as if there is anyone out there that may care about my opinion. But hey, this is what blogs are for! Hopefully this writing will exorcise all the confused demons that are itching inside my brain, constantly excited by the sight of new divisions, seditions and puritanisms.

So, if curious, watch this space.

Jaysee Costa