Environmentalists cannot be animal liberationists - Essay Example

Paper Introduction Many people think that the environmental activists and animal rights activists are same. They perceive that both environmental activists and the animal rights activists are involved in similar social and environmental welfare activities to achieve a single goal. In short, it can be said that their purpose of work is same. Here, it needs to be mentioned that above assumption of common people is true to a certain extent as both the environmental activists and the animal rights activists act to maintain the ecological balance of the planet to ensure environment friendly world with a proper ecosystem.

However, here it needs to be mentioned that there have been certain different arguments that seems to differentiate between the environmental activists with the animal rights activists. Environmentalists cannot be animal liberationists. Animal liberationists cannot be environmentalists Although various people believe that both animal rights activists and the environmental activists belong to the same class. Author Gary Varner actually spoke with Mark Sagoff mentioning the belief that the animal rights activists cannot be environmental activists.

As a matter of fact this is a statement that has been made by various authors. According to the authors, it is very hard to mess these two groups into a larger group. Varner also stated that among the environmental philosophers there is a tendency to compare the environmental ethics and the animal rights. This is usually done by differentiating the specific views in the ethical theories or the specific accounts of the views that might imply to discussion (Varner 98). The environmental philosophers on the other hand cannot come into an agreement over the fact that the theoretical foundations as well as the practical applications of the animal rights view are quite inconsistent with the people belonging to the discipline of the environmentalism.

Varner also provided evidence that the two groups look at themselves as two different groups, hence the people around should also look to do the same. Varner also said that Bryan Norton believed that both the groups of animal rights activists and the environmental activists should help each other because both the values and systems of the groups point towards the common objective of protecting the ecological balance. The topic became interesting after going through an article regarding billboards that PETA had positioned in Canada.

The billboard actually said ‘Eat the Whales’. This was actually targeted towards the environmentalists that were protesting against the hunting of whales. According to Sagoff, animals have rights in not suffering just like the humans. According the animal rights activists the nature undermines the rights of the animals by killing the animal in far larger numbers than human beings do. The nature visits the animals with suffering that exceeds the sufferings of the animals in the hands of the humans.

Therefore, to protect the rights and interests of the animals the animal activists should be committed to get the animals out of the wild. In simple terms Sagoff wanted to differentiate between the animal rights activists and the environmentalists. According to Sagoff the animal rights activists look to maintain animal equality and animal rights. The moral standing of the activists is only for the higher animals. There is presence of individualism and anti hunting. On the other hand the environmental activists actually believe in the ecological integrity.

The ecological or environmental ethics stands for the respect for the overall functioning of the natural systems. The moral standings of the environmental activists focus on the animals, plants, ecosystems and the Earth itself. Another major difference between the animal activists and the environmental activists is the fact, that the animal activists actually feel that, predation is not a good thing for the animal rights. Whereas the environmental activists feel that predation is god as it helps in maintaining the ecological balance and it is needed to protect the predators and if needed reintroduce them.

Conclusion From the detailed discussion above, it can be concluded that the animal rights activists actually believe that the activists are morally compelled to prevent predation. But such proposals actually are anti environmentalist. This sacrifices integrity, authenticity and the wildness of the whole ecosystem. Hence, it can be said that the environmental activists cannot consistently be known as the environmentalists, Add to this the policy of recommendations that follow from the theories of the animal activists are quite strange and tends to contradict with that of the bigger picture itself, i.e. the ecological balance.

Work Cited Varner, Gary. In Natures Interests? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Print.