Animals and the Environment
Dr. lisa kemmerer
ISBN: 978-1138825888
Publisher: Routledge, 2015
Overview
Drawing on a wide range of issues and disciplines, this diverse collection of engaging essays highlights common ground between earth and animal activists. The first book on the subject, Animals and the Environment explores shared philosophical groundings, exposes common cause, and raises a host of pressing and intriguing questions and concerns that lie at the intersection of environmental and animal ethics. This collection features teachers, grassroots activists, and international lobbyists whose expertise lies in mathematics, sociology, physics, ecology, psychology, Asian philosophy, ecofeminism, ethics, and biology. They hale from Malaysia, Greece, Canada, The United States, Norway, and Uganda, including the voices of a Chicana Indigenae, a Native American, and an Indian-American. Authors explore diverse and intriguing real-life concerns such as the Southeast Asian palm industry, trapping and wildlife management, ethics and zoos, bears and habitat loss, nature films and ecofeminism, elephants and rural human communities. On topics such as habitat destruction, animal agriculture, and politics, Animals and the Environment explores overlapping interests through contemporary examples: Ways of valuing grizzly bears in British Columbia, the mathematics of diet and environmental footprint in Greece, threats stemming from palm oil plantations in Southeast Asia, and the struggle for land between elephants and villagers in rural India. And through it all, narratives in Animals and the Environment demonstrate the common sense, viability—and urgent importance—of establishing a united front on behalf of the environment and animals against the powers of big government and big industry.
Book Quotes
“Some of the world’s biggest killers (including heart disease, a number of common cancers, obesity, diabetes, and infections from pathogens such as E. coli) are more likely for those who consume flesh, diary, or eggs. Anymal agriculture is implicated in a number of additional serious and deadly medical concerns, including respiratory diseases, antibiotic resistance, and zoomorphic diseases—which are funded and furthered by those who buy anymal products, but which affect all human beings.”
- AMORE, Health Chapter
“In choosing our diet, we choose not only whether or not a pig, cow, sheep, or chicken will live a miserable life and face slaughter in their adolescence, but whether or not mothers will be allowed to raise their young, whether or not the sacred bond between young and their mothers will be respected and honored. . . . Only vegans refuse to participate in the suffering and death that defines anymal agriculture.”
- AMORE, Feminism Chapter
“Farmers burn fossil fuels to prepare the land, to plant, fertilize, harvest, and then to transport and store millions of tons of feedcrops. Anymal agriculture burns fossil fuels to transport herds and flocks to slaughter and then to move anymal products to shops and for cold storage. Anymal agriculture is also the largest source of human-induced methane, created and emitted into the environment by the decomposition of manure and the digestion process of billions of cattle, sheep, and goats birthed and raised as “food,” and human-induced nitrous oxide, which is created and emitted by the decomposition of manure and synthetic fertilizers made from the trillions of tons of manure produced on anymal farms”
- AMORE, Environment Chapter
“Perhaps more importantly (and rather obviously), 2000-year-old descriptions of ritual sacrifices that were performed before Jesus became the final sacrifice—abrogating the need for any further sacrifice—have nothing to do with eating a cheeseburger in the 21st century.”
- AMORE, Religion Chapter