A Green Humane Movement

Good news, EPA takes a slightly tougher stance on CAFOs (aka factory farms, aka hell on earth). This link comes from this post from Dylan Matthews, who ends his post on this point, "Given some coordination, a green/Humane alliance on tougher factory farm regulation could be pretty formidable." Too true, and a great hope. And while many people in the movements know this (and there is a great overlap between the green movement and the animal movement), for now there basically should be no difference between the two movements. They both should be working to abolish factory farms whose toxic chemicals and greenhouse gas production are amazing. They both should be working to stop global warming (which endangers entire species) and preserve ecological systems.

Now, some of you might not know this, but within the academic and sometimes radical articulations of ecological and animal rights thinking, these movements have often been at cross-purposes. This will be really surprising to those of you who think that the intellectual movements are basically interchangeable (we are frequently treated that way by people outside of environmental and animal studies). Now, a major part of this comes from academic discourses that tend to focus on fairly marginal questions or questions that assume a particular future rather than dwelling on the immediate crisis that we all agree on (those being the need to stop factory farming and rapid global climate change). But it is important to stop and remember that we really are profoundly on the same side, at least for the foreseeable future.

I also don't really get where the animosity comes from between green people and AR people. A plant based, sustainably produced diet is obviously the best.