By Lee Hall
Part 15 of a Series
Sustainable Development Goals: They’re a major topic on social media. But if humans want to be sustainable, we’ve got to get serious. We must divest from customs and businesses that treat animal life as commodities. This blog entry is the 14th in a series, as we look at each of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The 15th goal is “Life on Land.”
The sheer weight of animal husbandry on the land is outrageous. Our purpose-bred land mammals outweigh naturally evolving mammals many times over. Of the biomass of all the world’s birds, 71% belong to poultry farms.
Stop breeding cows and other farm animals, and we stop pushing the untamed out of their own habitat. And we stop our government’s wars on wolves and coyotes and the ruin of prairies and forests for grazing and feed crops.
The human quest to dominate Earth and its conscious beings caused our sustainability crisis. If we really want to address the crisis, we’ll have to question our received attitudes about human dominion.
Lee Hall is a member of the Speakers Bureau of the American Vegan Society. Lee’s entry on “Nonhuman Rights and Human Sustainability” appears in the Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (Springer). Lee holds a Master’s degree in environmental law with a focus on climate change from Vermont Law School, and has taught environmental law at the University level.
