And what is the distinction between animal rights and animal welfare? I mean, I think most of us when asked would say that we love animals, protect them when we can, and are certainly not opposed to their welfare or well-being. But invariably when the term rights are used in the same sentence as animals, people tend to ask "Well what about human rights?" as if the two are mutually exclusive. It's like saying that if you're concerned about the one, you can't care about the other. Not true in my opinion. In my own life I see my increasing involvement with animal rights as a natural progression of all the other rights that have occupied my time at one point or another: human rights, women's rights, gay rights, children's rights, disability rights, and now, animal rights. Perhaps too my focus these days is more on those whom I view as having the least amount of power, the least able to give voice, but I don't see the different rights as necessarily unconnected.
What a wonderful and important message! Thank you for this blog. I truly look forward to reading and interacting with it. May you find many readers and inspire many others to do everything they can do to help the non-human animals we share this world with. Congrats on the launch!
Thank you Krissa! I really appreciate the encouragment and support. And I think what you said is key -- we're supposed to share the world with non-human animals -- something we human animals appear to have forgotten. I look forward to our upcoming dialogue. :)
Thanks, A.R.. Yep, sharing. One of the first steps toward respecting our furry/feathered/scaly friends is to realize that we are in fact sharing this planet with them. We are not their *masters*. We have possibly destroyed the climate of this planet so that, sooner than we think, it will be uninhabitable for all. How sad is that? We made the mess, not them. But we're all going to pay for it. Yeah, humans are the most highly evolved species. Right.
I have to admit that in my more cynical moments I sometimes think that if other living creatures and nature itself weren't involved, I wouldn't give a crap about global warming/climate change, and that the human race will deserve everything it's gonna get. Like I said, in my darker hours. :)