It's the Speciesism, Stupid!: Animal Abolitionism, Environmentalism, and the Mass Media

Introduction

We live in a time of intense instrumentalization of life. The paradigm still dominant in the Western culture has helped to weave a concept of nature as a set of instruments for the human species. A consequence is that out of the three pillars underlying sustainability the economic one becomes prevalent in its “green” version. Markets for environmental commodities and payment for environmental services are mechanisms born in this context. The quest to tackle the climate change problem via a carbon market is probably the most emblematic example.

Although the climatic issue is a real question to be faced, other problems associated with the so-called “Anthropocene” (Lewis & Maslin, 2015; Zalasiewicz, 2015) are equally or even more severe. Extensive destruction and degradation of habitats – main causes for biodiversity loss, are primary cases requiring urgent attention.

Rockström et al. (2009, p. 472), for example, proposed nine “Earth-system processes and its associated thresholds which, if crossed, could generate unacceptable environmental change”. Their analysis shows that “three of these processes – climate change, rate of biodiversity loss and interference with the nitrogen cycle – have already transgressed their boundaries” (Rockström et al., 2009, p. 475) and the rate of loss of biodiversity, terrestrial and marine, appears as the most critical, since the border for a safe range of operation is already far exceeded (see also WWF, 2016).

Likewise, according to the 2016 Living Planet Report (WWF, 2016, p. 3), “species populations of vertebrate animals have decreased in abundance by 58 per cent between 1970 and 2012”. Although climate change is a significant menace, the most common threat to declining animal populations is the loss and degradation of their habitat (WWF, 2016).

It is also paramount to focus on a specific group of vertebrates – mammalians. Smith et al. (2016, p. 101) point out that there has been “a fundamental shift from a world dominated by wild animals to one largely composed of humans and their livestock”. This transition in the biosphere has a number of important implications in terms of ecosystem functions. As the megafauna animals (including elephants, rhinoceroses, giraffes, hippopotamuses, lions, bears, elks, wild buffaloes etc.) have been important ecosystem engineers, “there is an urgent need to understand in a holistic way just how ecosystems may ´unravel´ with their decline or extinction” (Smith et al., 2016, p. 107). Smith et al. (2016) evaluate several proposals of “rewilding”, but in order to look at this issue through a genuinely holistic perspective, one must investigate the underlying context. In this case, the historical, economic, political and cultural causes of such decline must be taken into account, along with a critical analysis of the dominant solutions that prevail today, which are market-based and extensively dominated by a chrematistic view.

Aristotle, in his book “Politics” (see Aristotle, 1999), explained the difference between economics and chrematistics or wealth getting. The first is concerned with the material supply of the oikos (the family, house or family property) or the polis (the city, city-state or body of citizens) while the latter, even being part of the economy, is essentially an acquisitive technique. Aristotle also made explicit that chrematistics can become unnatural, breaking all limits, and anticipated that the accumulation of wealth would end up destroying the good way of living (Rossi & Tierno, 2009).