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