Category Archives: Animals and ethics

The ethics of human interaction with animals

Jesus and Animal Sacrifice

Jesus in the temple (Greco) – public domain image

As we approach Easter, it is worth reminding everyone why Jesus was killed: because of his opposition to animal sacrifice.

This opposition led him to go into the temple and disrupt the animal sacrifice business. Shortly thereafter he was crucified by the Romans, doubtless because of his actions in the temple. Christians often remember the incident in the temple as “Jesus drives out the dishonest money changers,” but it is clear from both the gospels as well as the history of Christianity that the money changers had little to do with it. It is one of the few incidents in Jesus’ life that is found in all four gospels (Matthew 21:12-13, Mark 11:15-17, Luke 19:45-46, John 2:13-17). Continue reading →

Fish stories about Pythagoras and Jesus

Pythagoras and the Fishermen, by Salvator Rosa. Public domain image.

Whenever I discuss Jesus’ vegetarianism, one of the most frequent questions I get concerns the “fish stories” in the New Testament—stories where Jesus is depicted calling fishermen as disciples, serving fish to the 5000, miraculously helping the disciples catch fish, or in one case actually eating fish. The problem with these stories, which I’ve explained elsewhere, is that they are all stories fairly obviously added many decades after Jesus’ life by people who never knew Jesus personally. As evidence of an actual historical event in Jesus’ life, they are worthless.

What most people don’t know is that there is also a fish story about Pythagoras, which strongly resembles the “miraculous catch of fish” stories told about Jesus. What is especially interesting is that these stories about Jesus seem to be copied from the story about Pythagoras—but with the ending completely changed. Continue reading →

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead — review

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. Olga Tokarczuk. Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Thorndike Press, 2019.

The Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk has become something of a lightning rod in her home country because of her left-wing and anti-establishment views. She is also a vegetarian and recently received the Nobel Prize. So when I heard that Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (which turns out to be an allusion to a William Blake poem) had a strong “animal” theme, I was naturally curious and had to check it out.

Well, it does have an animal theme, but if you were expecting lyrical descriptions of the Polish countryside from this author, you can forget that right now. It is a gritty, modern, realistic murder mystery. Continue reading →

Is wilderness gone already?

Bull elephant from Sabi Sands of South Africa. Photo by Lee R. Berger. Source.

The pandemic has hurt “wildlife tourism” and endangered the wildlife which drew in the tourists. The Guardian announced (May 5) that, “Ecotourism collapse threatens communities and wildlife,” and The Washington Post adds (July 17) that this tourism “is essential to wildlife conservation in many African countries.”

These reports are all very true, but send the wrong message and obscure an important reality: wilderness is almost completely gone already. Instead of preserving wilderness, we should be trying to re-establish wilderness. Continue reading →

Denver is killing geese again

Some of the survivors on July 4, 2019 in Washington Park. Author’s photo.

We learned on the news today that the city is proceeding with its plan to slaughter more geese, just as it did last year.  We urge all Denver residents to protest this brutal, stupid, and unnecessary plan. Below is a letter that Kate and I sent to our city council representatives (Paul Kashmann, Debby Ortega, and Robin Kniech) one week ago, on July 1.  For more details or to get involved, visit the website of the grassroots group Canada Geese Protection Colorado. Continue reading →

The pandemic gets worse—why?

Burying plague victims in medieval Tournai (then in France). Public domain image. Source.

It’s probably not news to you that the COVID-19 pandemic is getting worse in the United States. Here are three questions. First, why is the pandemic getting worse? Second, what are the practical implications? Finally, who wants to repeat this experiment in another few years with a different disease? Continue reading →

Drawdown

Book cover for “Drawdown”

Several years ago, I took a look at the book Drawdown, edited by Paul Hawken. It has now been turned into a web site, “Project Drawdown,” which several people have recently mentioned to me. It’s a list of proposed solutions to global warming. It is not so much a plan to deal with global warming, but rather strategies that could be integrated into a plan. There are lots of good ideas, including not only the standard ones such as renewable energy, but also including plant-rich diets, forest restoration, bicycle infrastructure, and others.

Approaching global warming in this way looks like an attempt to retrofit sustainability onto our existing system. Is this going to work? Continue reading →

Keep calm: plants have protein

I’m ready for this campaign.

The pandemic is scary, but its scariest aspect is something we still don’t know: what will be our society’s ultimate reaction to it? Our treatment of animals was key to the origins of the pandemic, but it is also part of resolving the pandemic.

President Trump is struggling to keep slaughterhouses going and recently declared them to be “essential.” His views are now being backed up by armed right wing protesters demonstrating to reopen the economy. Slaughterhouses are trying to return to their bloody normal, with some sort of minimal protections for slaughterhouse workers; but protections for workers from the virus are still not mandated by the CDC. Some think that slaughterhouses will just continue to produce meat even if it means increased risks to workers.

Vegans can become the voice of calm in this crisis by stating the obvious: plants have protein. Continue reading →

Shut down the slaughterhouses

On Tuesday, the Denver Post reported  that “5th Greeley JBS worker dies.” JBS is a Colorado slaughterhouse employing 6000 workers. Over 100 employees tested positive for the coronavirus (COVID-19), and five have died: four workers and one person who worked at the corporate office. (Let’s see, that works out to about a 5% mortality rate.) Despite this, JBS is re-opening! And the company is going to court to stop the union from raising safety concerns in public! Continue reading →

This pandemic is about animals

“Pandemic” is a popular board game. If our current situation were replicated in game terms, we would have lost already, because more than seven outbreaks have occurred. Source: author’s photo.

This pandemic is a pivotal event, not just for vegans, but for almost everyone on the planet. There’s a lot that we still don’t know. But there can be no doubt that this pandemic is a consequence of our treatment of animals. Continue reading →

Destroying the planet to save it

Ecotourism in Zimbabwe. Source: JackyR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mudbath5.jpg)

Flying harms the climate. Air travel is growing rapidly. Its net impact is nearly twice as great as the impact of the CO2 emissions alone, much greater than that from cars. Air travel creates nitrous oxides, water vapor, sulfate aerosols, soot aerosols, and contrails. Noted climate activist Greta Thunberg famously went out of her way to avoid flying to a climate conference on the other side of the Atlantic.

So should we all stop flying, or at least avoid flying as much as possible? In a recent New York Times opinion article, Costas Christ (of Beyond Green Travel) argued that flying as part of wildlife tourism may actually be climate-friendly. Continue reading →

Why geese in Denver is an important issue

After the roundup and slaughter of geese in Washington Park, an article by Michael Roberts appeared in Westword, “Things Denver Should Care About More Than F*cking Geese.” Flynn’s argument was, in effect, “what about crime, what about homelessness, and what about affordable housing?”

My response is—”what about water? What about living space? Where, exactly, do you think you’re living?” There’s already insufficient water and land for everything that people want to do in Colorado. The “goose problem,” at its heart, is about living space. Continue reading →

Let Them Eat Geese

Some of the survivors on July 4 in Washington Park

Some Denver residents are still unaware of the roundup and mass killing of over a thousand Canada geese in Washington Park and other Denver city parks, which took place toward the end of June. The city claimed that the geese were a health problem; and the goose meat is going to the homeless.

Before getting to the rationale for the mass killing of innocent creatures in our parks, it’s worth reflecting on the irony of giving their meat to the homeless. The meat is likely tainted with pesticides and metals, and a few years ago some city officials seemed to think that this precluded feeding the meat to the homeless. Evidently the city has now resolved its doubts on that score. The city also recently defeated, overwhelmingly, Initiative 300, which in effect would have legalized homelessness in Denver by repealing the “camping ban.” Congratulations, homeless people! You won’t be able to sleep anywhere — but you WILL get some goose meat of questionable quality. Continue reading →

If slaughterhouses had glass walls

Paul McCartney PETA

“If slaughterhouses had glass walls, we would all be vegetarians.” This quotation from Paul McCartney is the basis for a 13-minute PETA video narrated by Sir Paul with some pretty graphic slaughterhouse footage. PETA is betting that once you know the truth about slaughterhouses, you’ll go vegetarian or vegan. This is also the philosophy implicit in a lot of vegetarian information campaigns ranging from gentle to graphic — Vegan Outreach pamphlets, the hour-long video “Earthlings,” and Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation. But is it true? If slaughterhouses really had glass walls, either literally or metaphorically, would we all be vegetarian? Continue reading →