Peter Singer: A Statue for Stalin?

PRINCETON – Hitler and Stalin were ruthless dictators who committed murder on a vast scale. But, while it is impossible to imagine a Hitler statue in Berlin, or anywhere else in Germany, statues of Stalin have been restored in towns across Georgia (his birthplace), and another is to be erected in Moscow as part of a commemoration of all Soviet leaders.

The difference in attitude extends beyond the borders of the countries over which these men ruled. In the United States, there is a bust of Stalin at the National D-Day Memorial in Virginia. In New York, I recently dined at a Russian restaurant that featured Soviet paraphernalia, waitresses in Soviet uniforms, and a painting of Soviet leaders in which Stalin was prominent. New York also has its KGB Bar. To the best of my knowledge, there is no Nazi-themed restaurant in New York; nor is there a Gestapo or SS bar.

So, why is Stalin seen as relatively more acceptable than Hitler?

At a press conference last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin attempted a justification. Asked about Moscow’s plans for a statue of Stalin, he pointed to Oliver Cromwell, the leader of the Parliamentarian side in the seventeenth-century English Civil War, and asked: “What’s the real difference between Cromwell and Stalin?” He then answered his own question: “None whatsoever,” and went on to describe Cromwell as a “cunning fellow” who “played a very ambiguous role in Britain’s history.” (A statue of Cromwell stands outside the House of Commons in London.)

“Ambiguous” is a reasonable description of the morality of Cromwell’s actions. While he promoted parliamentary rule in England, ended the civil war, and allowed a degree of religious toleration, he also supported the trial and execution of Charles I and brutally conquered Ireland in response to a perceived threat from an alliance of Irish Catholics and English Royalists.

But, unlike Cromwell, Stalin was responsible for the deaths of very large numbers of civilians, outside any war or military campaign. According to Timothy Snyder, author of Bloodlands, 2-3 million people died in the forced labor camps of the Gulag and perhaps a million were shot during the Great Terror of the late 1930’s. Another five million starved in the famine of 1930-1933, of whom 3.3 million were Ukrainians who died as a result of a deliberate policy related to their nationality or status as relatively prosperous peasants known as kulaks.

Snyder’s estimate of the total number of Stalin’s victims does not take into account those who managed to survive forced labor or internal exile in harsh conditions. Including them might add as many as 25 million to the number of those who suffered terribly as a result of Stalin’s tyranny. The total number of deaths that Snyder attributes to Stalin is lower than the commonly cited figure of 20 million, which was estimated before historians had access to the Soviet archives. It is nonetheless a horrendous total – similar in magnitude to the Nazis’ killings (which took place during a shorter period).

Moreover, the Soviet archives show that one cannot say that the Nazi’s killings were worse because victims were targeted on the basis of their race or ethnicity. Stalin, too, selected some of his victims on this basis – not only Ukrainians, but also people belonging to ethnic minorities associated with countries bordering the Soviet Union. Stalin’s persecutions also targeted a disproportionately large number of Jews.

There were no gas chambers, and arguably the motivation for Stalin’s killings was not genocide, but rather the intimidation and suppression of real or imaginary opposition to his rule. That in no way excuses the extent of the killing and imprisonment that occurred.

If there is any “ambiguity” about Stalin’s moral record, it may be because communism strikes a chord with some of our nobler impulses, seeking equality for all and an end to poverty. No such universal aspiration can be found in Nazism, which, even on its face, was not concerned about what was good for all, but about what was good for one supposed racial group, and which was clearly motivated by hatred and contempt for other ethnic groups.

But communism under Stalin was the opposite of egalitarian, for it gave absolute power to a few, and denied all rights to the many. Those who defend Stalin’s reputation credit him with lifting millions out of poverty; but millions could have been lifted out of poverty without murdering and incarcerating millions more.

Others defend Stalin’s greatness on the basis of his role in repelling the Nazi invasion and ultimately defeating Hitler. Yet Stalin’s purge of military leaders during the Great Terror critically weakened the Red Army, his signing of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact in 1939 paved the way for the start of World War II, and his blindness to the Nazi threat in 1941 left the Soviet Union unprepared to resist Hitler’s attack.

It remains true that Stalin led his country to victory in war, and to a position of global power that it had not held before and from which it has since fallen. Hitler, by contrast, left his country shattered, occupied, and divided.

People identify with their country and look up to those who led it when it was at its most powerful. That may explain why Muscovites are more willing to accept a statue of Stalin than Berliners would be to have one of Hitler.

But that can be only part of the reason for the different treatment given to these mass murderers. It still leaves me puzzled about New York’s Soviet-themed restaurant and KGB Bar.

Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. His books include Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, One World, The Ethics of What We Eat (with Jim Mason), Rethinking Life and Death, and, most recently, The Point of View of the Universe, co-authored with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek. In 2013, he was named the world's third "most influential contemporary thinker" by the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute.

Peter Singer: Why Pay More?

  

PRINCETON – When Radosław Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, went to Ukraine for talks last month, his Ukrainian counterparts reportedly laughed at him because he was wearing a Japanese quartz watch that cost only $165. A Ukrainian newspaper reported on the preferences of Ukrainian ministers, several of whom have watches that cost more than $30,000. Even a Communist member of Ukraine’s parliament, the Rada, was shown wearing a watch that retails for more than $6,000.

The laughter should have gone in the opposite direction. Wouldn’t you laugh (maybe in private, to avoid being impolite) at someone who pays more than 200 times as much as you do, and ends up with an inferior product?

That is what the Ukrainians have done. They could have bought an accurate, lightweight, maintenance-free quartz watch that can run for five years, keeping virtually perfect time, without ever being moved or wound. Instead, they paid far more for clunkier watches that can lose minutes every month, and that will stop if you forget to wind them for a day or two (if they have an automatic mechanism, they will stop if you don’t move them). In addition, the quartz watches also have integrated alarm, stopwatch, and timer functions that the other watches either lack, or that serve only as a design-spoiling, hard-to-read effort to keep up with the competition.

Why would any wise shopper accept such a bad bargain? Out of nostalgia, perhaps? A full-page ad for Patek Philippe has Thierry Stern, the president of the company, saying that he listens to the chime of every watch with a minute repeater that his company makes, as his father and grandfather did before him. That’s all very nice, but since the days of Stern’s grandfather, we have made progress in time-keeping. Why reject the improvements that human ingenuity has provided to us? I have an old fountain pen that belonged to my grandmother; it’s a nice memento of her, but I wouldn’t dream of using it to write this column.
Thorstein Veblen knew the answer. In his classic The Theory of the Leisure Class, published in 1899, he argued that once the basis of social status became wealth itself – rather than, say, wisdom, knowledge, moral integrity, or skill in battle – the rich needed to find ways of spending money that had no other objective than the display of wealth itself. He termed this “conspicuous consumption.” Veblen wrote as a social scientist, refraining from rendering moral judgments, though he left readers in little doubt about his attitude toward such expenditure in a time when many lived in poverty.

Wearing a ridiculously expensive watch to proclaim that one has achieved an elevated social standing seems especially immoral for a public official in a country where a significant portion of the population still lives in real poverty. These officials are wearing on their wrists the equivalent of four or five years of an average Ukrainian’s salary. That tells Ukrainian taxpayers either that they are paying their public servants too much, or that their public servants have other ways of getting money to buy watches that they would not be able to afford otherwise.

The Chinese government knows what those “other ways” might be. As the International Herald Tribune reports, one aspect of the Chinese government’s campaign against corruption is a clampdown on expensive gifts. As a result, according to Jon Cox, an analyst at Kepler Capital Markets, “it’s no longer acceptable to have a big chunky watch on your wrist.” The Chinese market for expensive watches is in steep decline. Ukrainians, take note.
Wearing a watch that costs 200 times more than one that does a better job of keeping time says something else, even when it is worn by people who are not governing a relatively poor country. Andrew Carnegie, the richest man of Veblen’s era, was blunt in his moral judgments. “The man who dies rich,” he is often quoted as saying, “dies disgraced.”

We can adapt that judgment to the man or woman who wears a $30,000 watch or buys similar luxury goods, like a $12,000 handbag. Essentially, such a person is saying; “I am either extraordinarily ignorant, or just plain selfish. If I were not ignorant, I would know that children are dying from diarrhea or malaria, because they lack safe drinking water, or mosquito nets, and obviously what I have spent on this watch or handbag would have been enough to help several of them survive; but I care so little about them that I would rather spend my money on something that I wear for ostentation alone.”

Of course, we all have our little indulgences. I am not arguing that every luxury is wrong. But to mock someone for having a sensible watch at a modest price puts pressure on others to join the quest for ever-greater extravagance. That pressure should be turned in the opposite direction, and we should celebrate those, like Sikorski, with modest tastes and higher priorities than conspicuous consumption.


Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, is one of the world’s most prominent ethicists. He is the author of Practical Ethics, Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals, and One World, The Ethics of What We Eat (with Jim Mason).

Peter Singer: Ethics and Agriculture

MELBOURNE – Should rich countries – or investors based there – be buying agricultural land in developing countries? That question is raised in Transnational Land Deals for Agriculture in the Global South, a report issued last year by the Land Matrix Partnership, a consortium of European research institutes and nongovernmental organizations.

The report shows that since 2000, investors or state bodies in rich or emerging countries have bought more than 83 million hectares (more than 200 million acres) of agricultural land in poorer developing countries. This amounts to 1.7% of the world’s agricultural land.
Most of these purchases have been made in Africa, with two-thirds taking place in countries where hunger is widespread and institutions for establishing formal land ownership are often weak. The purchases in Africa alone amount to an area of agricultural land the size of Kenya.

It has been claimed that foreign investors are purchasing land that has been left idle; thus, by bringing it into production, the purchases are increasing the availability of food overall. But the Land Matrix Partnership report found that this is not the case: roughly 45% of the purchases involved existing croplands, and almost a third of the purchased land was forested, indicating that its development may pose risks for biodiversity.

The investments are both private and public (for example, by state-owned entities) and come from three different groups of countries: emerging economies like China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Malaysia, and South Korea; oil-rich Gulf states; and wealthy developed economies like the United States and several European countries. On average, per capita income in the countries that are the source of these investments is four times higher than in the target countries.
Most of the investments are aimed at producing food or other crops for export from the countries in which the land is acquired, for the obvious reason that richer countries can pay more for the output. More than 40% of such projects aim to export food to the source country – suggesting that food security is a major reason for buying the land.

Oxfam International calls some of these deals “land grabs.” Its own report, Our Land, Our Lives,indicates that, since 2008, communities affected by World Bank projects have brought 21 formal complaints alleging violations of their land rights. Oxfam, drawing attention to large-scale land acquisitions that have entailed direct rights violations, has called on the Bank to freeze investments in land purchases until it can set standards ensuring that local communities are informed of them in advance, with the option of refusing them. Oxfam also wants the Bank to ensure that these land deals do not undermine either local or national food security.

In response, the World Bank agreed that there are instances of abuse in land acquisition, particularly in developing countries in which governance is weak, and said that it supported more transparent and inclusive participation. At the same time, it pointed to the need to increase food production to feed the extra two billion people expected to be alive in 2050, and suggested that more investment in agriculture in developing countries is required to improve productivity. The Bank rejected the idea of a moratorium on its own work with investors in agriculture, arguing that this would target precisely those who are most likely to do the right thing.

One may ask whether transparency and the requirement that local landholders consent to a sale is enough to protect people living in poverty. Supporters of free markets will argue that if local landowners wish to sell their land, that is their choice to make. 

But, given the pressures of poverty and the lure of cash, what does it take for people to be able to make a genuinely free and informed choice about selling something as significant as a right to land? After all, we do not allow poor people to sell their kidneys to the highest bidder.

Of course, hardline supporters of free markets will say that we should. But, at the very least, it needs to be explained why people should be prohibited from selling kidneys, but not from selling the land that grows their food. Most people can live without one kidney. No one can live without food.

Why does the purchase of body parts give rise to international condemnation, while the purchase of agricultural land does not – even when it involves evicting local landholders and producing food for export to rich countries instead of for local consumption?
The World Bank may indeed be more concerned about local landholders’ rights than other foreign investors are. If so, the 21 complaints made against Bank projects are most likely the visible tip of a vast iceberg of violations of land rights by foreign investors in agricultural projects in developing countries – with the others remaining invisible because victims have no access to any complaint procedure.

One such case belatedly came to the attention of the United Nations Human Rights Committee. In November, the Committee concluded that Germany had failed to police the Neumann Kaffee Gruppe regarding its complicity in the forced eviction of several villages in Uganda to make way for a large coffee plantation.

But the evictions took place in 2001, and the villagers are still living in extreme poverty. They found no remedy, in either Uganda or Germany, for the violation of rights that, according to the Committee, they possess under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Germany is a signatory. Are we to believe that landholders fare better with Chinese or Saudi investors?

Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, is one of the world’s most prominent ethicists. He is the author of Practical Ethics and Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals.

Peter Singer: Should We Live to 1,000?

PRINCETON – On which problems should we focus research in medicine and the biological sciences? There is a strong argument for tackling the diseases that kill the most people –diseases like malaria, measles, and diarrhea, which kill millions in developing countries, but very few in the developed world.

Developed countries, however, devote most of their research funds to the diseases from which their citizens suffer, and that seems likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Given that constraint, which medical breakthrough would do the most to improve our lives?

If your first thought is “a cure for cancer” or “a cure for heart disease,” think again. Aubrey de Grey, Chief Science Officer of SENS Foundation and the world’s most prominent advocate of anti-aging research, argues that it makes no sense to spend the vast majority of our medical resources on trying to combat the diseases of aging without tackling aging itself. If we cure one of these diseases, those who would have died from it can expect to succumb to another in a few years. The benefit is therefore modest.

In developed countries, aging is the ultimate cause of 90% of all human deaths; thus, treating aging is a form of preventive medicine for all of the diseases of old age. Moreover, even before aging leads to our death, it reduces our capacity to enjoy our own lives and to contribute positively to the lives of others. So, instead of targeting specific diseases that are much more likely to occur when people have reached a certain age, wouldn’t a better strategy be to attempt to forestall or repair the damage done to our bodies by the aging process?

De Grey believes that even modest progress in this area over the coming decade could lead to a dramatic extension of the human lifespan. All we need to do is reach what he calls “longevity escape velocity” – that is, the point at which we can extend life sufficiently to allow time for further scientific progress to permit additional extensions, and thus further progress and greater longevity. Speaking recently at Princeton University, de Grey said: “We don’t know how old the first person who will live to 150 is today, but the first person to live to 1,000 is almost certainly less than 20 years younger.”

What most attracts de Grey about this prospect is not living forever, but rather the extension of healthy, youthful life that would come with a degree of control over the process of aging. In developed countries, enabling those who are young or middle-aged to remain youthful longer would attenuate the looming demographic problem of an historically unprecedented proportion of the population reaching advanced age – and often becoming dependent on younger people.

On the other hand, we still need to pose the ethical question: Are we being selfish in seeking to extend our lives so dramatically? And, if we succeed, will the outcome be good for some but unfair to others?

People in rich countries already can expect to live about 30 years longer than people in the poorest countries. If we discover how to slow aging, we might have a world in which the poor majority must face death at a time when members of the rich minority are only one-tenth of the way through their expected lifespans.

That disparity is one reason to believe that overcoming aging will increase the stock of injustice in the world. Another is that if people continue to be born, while others do not die, the planet’s population will increase at an even faster rate than it is now, which will likewise make life for some much worse than it would have been otherwise.

Whether we can overcome these objections depends on our degree of optimism about future technological and economic advances. De Grey’s response to the first objection is that, while anti-aging treatment may be expensive initially, the price is likely to drop, as it has for so many other innovations, from computers to the drugs that prevent the development of AIDS. If the world can continue to develop economically and technologically, people will become wealthier, and, in the long run, anti-aging treatment will benefit everyone. So why not get started and make it a priority now?

As for the second objection, contrary to what most people assume, success in overcoming aging could itself give us breathing space to find solutions to the population problem, because it would also delay or eliminate menopause, enabling women to have their first children much later than they can now. If economic development continues, fertility rates in developing countries will fall, as they have in developed countries. In the end, technology, too, may help to overcome the population objection, by providing new sources of energy that do not increase our carbon footprint.

The population objection raises a deeper philosophical question. If our planet has a finite capacity to support human life, is it better to have fewer people living longer lives, or more people living shorter lives? One reason for thinking it better to have fewer people living longer lives is that only those who are born know what death deprives them of; those who do not exist cannot know what they are missing.

De Grey has set up SENS Foundation to promote research into anti-aging. By most standards, his fundraising efforts have been successful, for the foundation now has an annual budget of around $4 million. But that is still pitifully small by the standards of medical research foundations. De Grey might be mistaken, but if there is only a small chance that he is right, the huge pay-offs make anti-aging research a better bet than areas of medical research that are currently far better funded.

Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, is one of the world’s most prominent ethicists. He is the author of Practical Ethics and Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals.

Peter Singer: America’s Flawed Election / 有缺陷的美國大選

PRINCETON – No doubt many people around the world, if not most, breathed a sigh of relief over the re-election of US President Barack Obama. A BBC World service poll of 21 countries found a strong preference for Obama everywhere except Pakistan. Joy over the election’s outcome, however, should not blind us to its failure to meet a series of ethical benchmarks for democratic choice.

According to the US-based Center for Responsive Politics, spending on the election – for President and Congress, and including spending by outside groups as well as by the candidates and their political parties – is estimated to have exceeded $6 billion. That makes the 2012 US election the most expensive ever held.

The bulk of this spending is just the two opposing parties canceling each other out. This benefits advertising agencies and the media, but no one else, and surely not the parties themselves, or the viewers who are bombarded with ads, especially if they happen to live in hotly contested swing states. It is difficult to believe that, say, $200 million would not have been enough to inform the electorate adequately of the candidates’ policies.

In this scenario, spending limits would have saved about $5.8 billion. And, if such limits were combined with public financing of election campaigns, they would also help the election to meet an important ethical standard by denying the rich a disproportionate influence on outcomes, and hence on the subsequent actions of the president and Congress.

No one really expects political advertising to provide citizens with the information they need to assess the candidates’ merits properly. For the presidential election, however, the practice of holding three televised debates between the two major parties’ candidates should be an opportunity for a thorough airing of those issues. Unfortunately, the most recent debates failed to achieve that goal.

Consider, for example, the final debate in October, which was supposed to focus on foreign policy. The US may no longer be the world’s undisputed leader, as it was in the decade following the Soviet Union’s collapse, but it nonetheless has a vital role to play in international affairs. Obama referred to the US as “the indispensable nation,” and that description still holds true, in part because US military spending exceeds that of the next nine countries combined – five times more than China, the world’s second-largest military spender.

There was, however, no serious discussion of the conditions under which it would be right to use that military might. Both candidates indicated that they did not favor military intervention to prevent the Syrian government from killing more of its citizens; but, neither was prepared to say when they would be prepared to accept the responsibility to protect citizens who come under attack from their own government, or from forces that their government is unwilling or unable to restrain.

Both candidates said that they would support Israel and not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons, but there was no discussion of solutions to the Israel-Palestine conflict, or of the grounds on which countries that possess nuclear weapons might be justified to use force to prevent others from developing them.

Indeed, what was not discussed in the candidates’ debate on foreign policy was more significant than what was. All of the discussion focused on the region that stretches from Libya to Iran. China was mentioned only in terms of its supposed “cheating” on trade and currency matters. Issues like the eurozone’s troubles and relations with Russia received no attention at all. Needless to say, neither candidate thought it worthwhile to put forward a proposal to assist the more than one billion people living in extreme poverty.

The gravest omission was climate change. The closest Obama got to it during a debate was to talk about “energy independence,” which implies not being reliant on oil from the Middle East. That, obviously, is something that every patriotic American wants.

Obama also mentioned that he had raised fuel-economy standards for cars in the US, and had invested in renewable energy sources, like solar and wind power. But, when Romney talked about increasing coal production, Obama neglected to point out that carbon dioxide from coal-fired electricity generation is already a major contributor to climate change; that we still lack the technology to produce “clean coal”; and that increasing the use of coal will impose huge burdens on people worldwide.

It took the devastation of Hurricane Sandy to get the president to mention climate change. After that, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that he was endorsing Obama, because his policies were better on climate change. In response, Obama acknowledged that climate change is “a threat to our children’s future, and we owe it to them to do something about it.”

Now that he has been re-elected, the question is whether he will pay that debt to our children and to the generations that follow them.

Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, is one of the world’s most prominent ethicists. He is the author of Practical Ethics and Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals.

Peter Singer: 有缺陷的美國大選

普林斯頓— 毫無疑問，全世界很多人（若不是多數的話）會因奧巴馬連任美國總統而舒一口氣。BBC World Service在二十一國家民調顯示，除巴基斯坦外, 各國非常希望奧巴馬當選。但是，別讓令人欣喜的選舉結果蒙蔽了我們的雙眼，它並沒有合乎民主選舉的一系列倫理標準。

根據美國響應政治中心（Center for Responsive Politics）的數據，此次選舉的支出——包括總統選舉和國會選舉，包括黨外集團支出和候選人及其政黨支出——估計將超過六十億美元。這使2012年美國大選是有史以來最昂貴。

這筆支出大部份用於兩黨互相攻訐。這肥了廣告商和媒體，對其他人則毫無益處，對於兩大政黨和被廣告轟炸的觀眾（特別是在搖擺州者）更是如此。比喻說很難相信二億美元費用還不足以讓一個選區充分了解候選人的政策。

如此，那麼支出上限會節省了五十八億美元左右。此外，如果將這一節省上限與選舉活動的公共資助加上，兩者有助於大選符合一項重要的倫理標準——不讓富人對選舉結果有不合理的左右，進而影響當選後的總統和國會的決策。

無人真的指望政治廣告能給公民提供他們所需要的資料用於評估候選人是否勝任。不過，對總統大選來說，兩大黨候選人之間的三次電視辯論理應成為提供資料的機會。可惜，最近的電視辯論並沒有做到。

就拿十月份的最後一次辯論來說，這次辯論應該以外交政策為焦點。美國可能已不再像蘇聯解體最初十年時那樣是無可置疑的世界領袖，儘管如此，它在國際事務中仍然關鍵。奧巴馬將美國稱為「不可或缺的國家」，這一描述依然成立，部分是因為美國軍事支出超過隨後九國之和——比世界第二大軍事支出國中國高五倍。

但是，關於要什麼條件才可使用武力，並沒有認真討論。兩位候選人都表示無意以武力干預敘利亞政府殺戮平民的行為，也沒有說何時會保護他國公民免受他們國家不願或不能阻止的勢力襲擊。

兩位候選人均表示支持以色列、不允許伊朗發展核武器，但沒有討論解決以色列-巴勒斯坦衝突的辦法，也沒有討論核武國家在什麼條件下可以有理據地使用武力阻止其他國家發展核武。

事實上，沒有在候選人電視辯論中討論的外交政策問題比討論的問題更加重要。所有討論內容都局限在自利比亞到伊朗的地區, 只提到中國一次，說它在貿易和貨幣問題上「作弊」。歐元區危機和對俄關係等問題則沒有提及。不用說兩位候選人都認為沒有必要提出如何幫助生活在赤貧中超過十億人的方案。

最危險的忽略是氣候變化問題。奧巴馬在一次辯論中曾經最接近觸及這個問題便是說到了「能源獨立」，是減少對中東的石油依賴。這顯然是所有愛國的美國人想聽到的。

奧巴馬說已經提高了美國的汽車節能標準，並投資發展可再生能源如太陽能和風力能源等。但是，當羅姆尼談到增加煤產量時，奧巴馬並未指出用煤發電所產生的二氧化碳已成為氣候變化的罪魁禍首﹔而我們仍然沒有生產「清潔煤」的技術﹔而增加煤的使用會給全世界人民帶來沉重的負擔。

颶風桑迪所造成的災難才讓總統注意到了氣候變化。颶風過後，紐約市長布隆伯格宣布支持奧巴馬，因為他的氣候變化政策比較好。奧巴馬在回應中承認氣候變化是「威脅着我們孩子的未來，我們有義務為他們嘗試解決這難題。」

現在，他已經連任，且看他是否向我們的子孫兌現承諾。

Peter Singer: The Real Abortion Tragedy

MELBOURNE – In the Dominican Republic last month, a pregnant teenager suffering from leukemia had her chemotherapy delayed, because doctors feared that the treatment could terminate her pregnancy and therefore violate the nation’s strict anti-abortion law. After consultations between doctors, lawyers, and the girl’s family, chemotherapy eventually was begun, but not before attention had again been focused on the rigidity of many developing countries’ abortion laws.

Abortion receives extensive media coverage in developed countries, especially in the United States, where Republicans have used opposition to it to rally voters. Recently, President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign counter-attacked, releasing a television advertisement in which a woman says that it is “a scary time to be a woman,” because Mitt Romney has said that he supports outlawing abortion.

But much less attention is given to the 86% of all abortions that occur in the developing world. Although a majority of countries in Africa and Latin America have laws prohibiting abortion in most circumstances, official bans do not prevent high abortion rates.

In Africa, there are 29 abortions per 1,000 women, and 32 per 1,000 in Latin America. The comparable figure for Western Europe, where abortion is generally permitted in most circumstances, is 12. According to a recent report by the World Health Organization, unsafe abortions lead to the death of 47,000 women every year, with almost all of these deaths occurring in developing countries. A further five million women are injured each year, sometimes permanently.

Almost all of these deaths and injuries could be prevented, the WHO says, by meeting the need for sex education and information about family planning and contraception, and by providing safe, legal induced abortion, as well as follow-up care to prevent or treat medical complications. An estimated 220 million women in the developing world say that they want to prevent pregnancy, but lack either knowledge of, or access to, effective contraception.
That is a huge tragedy for individuals and for the future of our already very heavily populated planet. Last month, the London Summit on Family Planning, hosted by the British government’s Department for International Development and the Gates Foundation, announced commitments to reach 120 million of these women by 2020.

The Vatican newspaper responded by criticizing Melinda Gates, whose efforts in organizing and partly funding this initiative will, it is estimated, lead to nearly three million fewer babies dying in their first year of life, and to 50 million fewer abortions. One would have thought that Roman Catholics would see these outcomes as desirable. (Gates is herself a practicing Catholic who has seen what happens when women cannot feed their children, or are maimed by unsafe abortions.)

Restricting access to legal abortion leads many poor women to seek abortion from unsafe providers. The legalization of abortion on request in South Africa in 1998 saw abortion-related deaths drop by 91%. And the development of the drugs misoprostol and mifepristone, which can be provided by pharmacists, makes relatively safe and inexpensive abortion possible in developing countries.

Opponents will respond that abortion is, by its very nature, unsafe – for the fetus. They point out that abortion kills a unique, living human individual. That claim is difficult to deny, at least if by “human” we mean “member of the species Homo sapiens.”

It is also true that we cannot simply invoke a woman’s “right to choose” in order to avoid the ethical issue of the moral status of the fetus. If the fetus really did have the moral status of any other human being, it would be difficult to argue that a pregnant woman’s right to choose includes the right to bring about the death of the fetus, except perhaps when the woman’s life is at stake.

The fallacy in the anti-abortion argument lies in the shift from the scientifically accurate claim that the fetus is a living individual of the species Homo sapiens to the ethical claim that the fetus therefore has the same right to life as any other human being. Membership of the species Homo sapiens is not enough to confer a right to life on a being. Nor can something like self-awareness or rationality warrant greater protection for the fetus than for, say, a cow, because the fetus has mental capacities that are inferior to those of cows. Yet “pro-life” groups that picket abortion clinics are rarely seen picketing slaughterhouses.

We can plausibly argue that we ought not to kill, against their will, self-aware beings who want to continue to live. We can see this as a violation of their autonomy, or a thwarting of their preferences. But why should a being’s potential to become rationally self-aware make it wrong to end its life before it actually has the capacity for rationality or self-awareness?

We have no obligation to allow every being with the potential to become a rational being to realize that potential. If it comes to a clash between the supposed interests of potentially rational but not yet even conscious beings and the vital interests of actually rational women, we should give preference to the women every time.

Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, is one of the world’s most prominent ethicists. Since becoming widely known for his 1975 book Animal Liberation, a seminal contribution to the animal-rights movement, he has been at the forefront of public debates on abortion, euthanasia, genetic engineering, and “collateral damage” on the battlefield, among other ethical issues. Time magazine lists him as one of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Peter Singer: Dying in Court

UTRECHT – Gloria Taylor, a Canadian, has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Over a period of a few years, her muscles will weaken until she can no longer walk, use her hands, chew, swallow, speak, and ultimately, breathe. Then she will die. Taylor does not want to go through all of that. She wants to die at a time of her own choosing.

Suicide is not a crime in Canada, so, as Taylor put it: “I simply cannot understand why the law holds that the able-bodied who are terminally ill are allowed to shoot themselves when they have had enough because they are able to hold a gun steady, but because my illness affects my ability to move and control my body, I cannot be allowed compassionate help to allow me to commit an equivalent act using lethal medication.”

Taylor sees the law as offering her a cruel choice: either end her life when she still finds it enjoyable, but is capable of killing herself, or give up the right that others have to end their lives when they choose. She went to court, arguing that the provisions of the Criminal Code that prevent her from receiving assistance in dying are inconsistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which gives Canadians rights to life, liberty, personal security, and equality.

The court hearing was remarkable for the thoroughness with which Justice Lynn Smith examined the ethical questions before her. She received expert opinions from leading figures on both sides of the issue, not only Canadians, but also authorities in Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The range of expertise included general medicine, palliative care, neurology, disability studies, gerontology, psychiatry, psychology, law, philosophy, and bioethics.
Many of these experts were cross-examined in court. Along with Taylor’s right to die, decades of debate about assistance in dying came under scrutiny.

Last month, Smith issued her judgment. The case, Carter v. Canada, could serve as a textbook on the facts, law, and ethics of assistance in dying.

For example, there has been much debate about the difference between the accepted practice of withholding life support or some other treatment, knowing that the patient is likely to die without it, and the contested practice of actively helping a patient to die. Smith’s ruling finds that “a bright-line ethical distinction is elusive,” and that the view that there is no such ethical distinction is “persuasive.” She considers, and accepts, an argument advanced by Wayne Sumner, a distinguished Canadian philosopher: if the patient’s circumstances are such that suicide would be ethically permissible were the patient able to do it, then it is also ethically permissible for the physician to provide the means for the patient to do it.

Smith also had to assess whether there are public-policy considerations that count against the legalization of physician assistance in dying. Her decision focuses mainly on the risk that vulnerable people – for example, the aged or those with disabilities – will be pressured into accepting assistance in dying when they do not really want it.

There are conflicting views about whether legalization of voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands, and of physician assistance in dying in Oregon, has led to an increase in the number of vulnerable people being killed or assisted in dying withouttheirfull, informed consent. For many years, Herbert Hendin, a psychiatrist and suicide expert, has asserted that the safeguards incorporated in these laws fail to protect the vulnerable. He gave evidence at the trial.

So, too, on the other side, did Hans van Delden, a Dutch nursing home physician and bioethicist who for the past 20 years has been involved in all of the major empirical studies of end-of-life decisions in his country. Peggy Battin, the most prominent American bioethicist working on assisted dying and euthanasia, also took the stand.

In this dispute, Smith comes down firmly on the side of van Delden and Battin, finding that “the empirical evidence gathered in the two jurisdictions does not support the hypothesis that physician-assisted death has imposed a particular risk to socially vulnerable populations.”
Instead, she says, “The evidence does support Dr. van Delden’s position that it is possible for a state to design a system that both permits some individuals to access physician-assisted death and socially protects vulnerable individuals and groups.” (The most recent Dutch report, released after Smith handed down her judgment, confirms that there has been no dramatic increase in euthanasia cases in the Netherlands.)

Smith then declared, after considering the applicable law, that the provisions of the Criminal Code preventing physician assistance in dying violate disabled people’s right not only to equality, but also to life, liberty, and security. She thus opened the door for physician assistance in dying for any grievously and irremediably ill competent adult, under conditions not very different from those that apply in other jurisdictions where physician assistance in dying is legal.
The decision will almost certainly be appealed, and the final outcome seems likely to depend on the appellate judges’ interpretations of Canadian law. But Smith’s verdict on the ethics of assistance in dying – and of the facts regarding jurisdictions, like the Netherlands and Oregon, that have it – seems likely to stand for a long time to come.

Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, is one of the world’s most prominent ethicists. Since becoming widely known for his 1975 book Animal Liberation, a seminal contribution to the animal-rights movement, he has been at the forefront of public debates on abortion, euthanasia, genetic engineering, and “collateral damage” on the battlefield, among other ethical issues. Time magazine lists him as one of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Peter Singer: The Use and Abuse of Religious Freedom

MELBOURNE – What are the proper limits of religious freedom? Marianne Thieme, leader of the Party for the Animals in the Netherlands, offers this answer: “Religious freedom stops where human or animal suffering begins.”

The Party for the Animals, the only animal-rights party to be represented in a national parliament, has proposed a law requiring that all animals be stunned before slaughter. The proposal has united Islamic and Jewish leaders in defense of what they see as a threat to their religious freedom, because their religious doctrines prohibit eating meat from animals that are not conscious when killed.

The Dutch parliament has given the leaders a year to prove that their religions’ prescribed methods of slaughter cause no more pain than slaughter with prior stunning. If they cannot do so, the requirement to stun before slaughtering will be implemented.

Meanwhile, in the United States, Catholic bishops have claimed that President Barack Obama is violating their religious freedom by requiring all big employers, including Catholic hospitals and universities, to offer their employees health insurance that covers contraception. And, in Israel, the ultra-orthodox, who interpret Jewish law as prohibiting men from touching women to whom they are not related or married, want separate seating for men and women on buses, and to halt the government’s plan to end exemption from military service for full-time religious students (63,000 in 2010).

When people are prohibited from practicing their religion – for example, by laws that bar worshiping in certain ways – there can be no doubt that their freedom of religion has been violated. Religious persecution was common in previous centuries, and still occurs in some countries today.

But prohibiting the ritual slaughter of animals does not stop Jews or Muslims from practicing their religion. During the debate on the Party for the Animals’ proposal, Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs, Chief Rabbi of the Netherlands, told members of parliament: “If we no longer have people who can do ritual slaughter in the Netherlands, we will stop eating meat.” And that, of course, is what one should do, if one adheres to a religion that requires animals to be slaughtered in a manner less humane than can be achieved by modern techniques.

Neither Islam nor Judaism upholds a requirement to eat meat. And I am not calling upon Jews and Muslims to do any more than I have chosen to do myself, for ethical reasons, for more than 40 years.

Restricting the legitimate defense of religious freedom to rejecting proposals that stop people from practicing their religion makes it possible to resolve many other disputes in which it is claimed that freedom of religion is at stake. For example, allowing men and women to sit in any part of a bus does not violate orthodox Jews’ religious freedom, because Jewish law does not command that one use public transport. It’s just a convenience that one can do without – and orthodox Jews can hardly believe that the laws to which they adhere were intended to make life maximally convenient.

Likewise, the Obama administration’s requirement to provide health insurance that covers contraception does not prevent Catholics from practicing their religion. Catholicism does not oblige its adherents to run hospitals and universities. (The government already exempts parishes and dioceses, thereby drawing a distinction between institutions that are central to the freedom to practice one’s religion and those that are peripheral to it.)

Of course, the Catholic Church would be understandably reluctant to give up its extensive networks of hospitals and universities. My guess is that, before doing so, they would come to see the provision of health-insurance coverage for contraception as compatible with their religious teachings. But, if the Church made the opposite decision, and handed over its hospitals and universities to bodies that were willing to provide the coverage, Catholics would still be free to worship and follow their religion’s teachings.

Religious exemption from military service can be more difficult to resolve, because some religions teach pacifism. That problem is usually resolved by providing alternative service that is no less arduous than military service (so that such religions do not attract adherents for that reason alone), but that does not involve fighting or killing.

Judaism, however, is not pacifist, so, once again, there is no real issue of religious freedom at stake. The ultra-orthodox want exemption for those who spend their time studying the Torah on the grounds that Torah study is as important as military service to Israel’s well-being. Providing the option of non-combatant national service thus will not resolve this dispute, unless it consists of Torah study. But there is no reason why Israel’s secular majority should share the belief that having tens of thousands of ultra-orthodox scholars studying the Torah provides any benefit at all to the nation, and it is certainly not as arduous as military service.

Not all conflicts between religion and the state are easy to resolve. But the fact that these three issues, all currently causing controversy in their respective countries, are not really about the freedom to practice one’s religion, suggests that the appeal to religious freedom is being misused.

Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, is one of the world’s most prominent ethicists. Since becoming widely known for his 1975 book Animal Liberation, a seminal contribution to the animal-rights movement, he has been at the forefront of public debates on abortion, euthanasia, genetic engineering, and “collateral damage” on the battlefield, among other ethical issues. Time magazine lists him as one of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Peter Singer: Weigh More, Pay More

MELBOURNE – We are getting fatter. In Australia, the United States, and many other countries, it has become commonplace to see people so fat that they waddle rather than walk. The rise in obesity is steepest in the developed world, but it is occurring in middle-income and poor countries as well.

Is a person’s weight his or her own business? Should we simply become more accepting of diverse body shapes? I don’t think so. Obesity is an ethical issue, because an increase in weight by some imposes costs on others.

I am writing this at an airport. A slight Asian woman has checked in with, I would guess, about 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of suitcases and boxes. She pays extra for exceeding the weight allowance. A man who must weigh at least 40 kilos more than she does, but whose baggage is under the limit, pays nothing. Yet, in terms of the airplane’s fuel consumption, it is all the same whether the extra weight is baggage or body fat.

Tony Webber, a former chief economist for the Australian airline Qantas, has pointed out that, since 2000, the average weight of adult passengers on its planes has increased by two kilos. For a large, modern aircraft like the Airbus A380, that means that an extra $472 of fuel has to be burned on a flight from Sydney to London. If the airline flies that route in both directions three times a day, over a year it will spend an additional $1 million for fuel, or, on current margins, about 13% of the airline’s profit from operating that route.

Webber suggests that airlines set a standard passenger weight, say, 75 kilos. If a passenger weighs 100 kilos, a surcharge would be charged to cover the extra fuel costs. For a passenger who is 25 kilos overweight, the surcharge on a Sydney-London return ticket would be $29. A passenger weighing just 50 kilos would get a discount of the same amount.

Another way to achieve the same objective would be to set a standard weight for passengers and luggage, and then ask people to get on the scales with their luggage. That would have the advantage of avoiding embarrassment for those who do not wish to reveal their weight.

Friends with whom I discuss this proposal often say that many obese people cannot help being overweight – they just have a different metabolism from the rest of us. But the point of a surcharge for extra weight is not to punish a sin, whether it is levied on baggage or on bodies. It is a way of recouping from you the true cost of flying you to your destination, rather than imposing it on your fellow passengers. Flying is different from, say, health care. It is not a human right.

An increase in the use of jet fuel is not just a matter of financial cost; it also implies an environmental cost, as higher greenhouse-gas emissions exacerbate global warming. It is a minor example of how the size of our fellow-citizens affects us all. When people get larger and heavier, fewer of them fit onto a bus or train, which increases the costs of public transport. Hospitals now must order stronger beds and operating tables, build extra-large toilets, and even install extra-large refrigerators in their morgues – all adding to their costs.

Indeed, obesity imposes a far more significant cost in terms of health care more broadly. Last year, the Society of Actuaries estimated that in the United States and Canada, overweight or obese people accounted for $127 billion in additional health-care expenditure. That adds hundreds of dollars to annual health-care costs for taxpayers and those who pay for private health insurance. The same study indicated that the costs of lost productivity, both among those still working and among those unable to work at all because of obesity, totaled $115 billion.

These facts are enough to justify public policies that discourage weight gain. Taxing foods that are disproportionately implicated in obesity – especially foods with no nutritional value, such as sugary drinks – would help. The revenue raised could then be used to offset the extra costs that overweight people impose on others, and the increased cost of these foods could discourage their consumption by people who are at risk of obesity, which is second only to tobacco use as the leading cause of preventable death.

Many of us are rightly concerned about whether our planet can support a human population that has surpassed seven billion. But we should think of the size of the human population not just in terms of numbers, but also in terms of its mass. If we value both sustainable human well-being and our planet’s natural environment, my weight – and yours – is everyone’s business.

Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. His books include Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, The Expanding Circle, and The Life You Can Save.

Peter Singer:Europe’s Ethical Eggs / 有道德的歐洲雞蛋

PRINCETON – Forty years ago, I stood with a few other students in a busy Oxford street handing out leaflets protesting the use of battery cages to hold hens. Most of those who took the leaflets did not know that their eggs came from hens kept in cages so small that even one bird – the cages normally housed four – would be unable to fully stretch and flap her wings. The hens could never walk around freely, or lay eggs in a nest.

Many people applauded our youthful idealism, but told us that we had no hope of ever changing a major industry. They were wrong.

On the first day of 2012, keeping hens in such cages became illegal, not only in the United Kingdom, but in all 27 countries of the European Union. Hens can still be kept in cages, but they must have more space, and the cages must have nest boxes and a scratching post. Last month, members of the British Hen Welfare Trust provided a new home for a hen they named “Liberty.” She was, they said, among the last hens in Britain still living in the type of cages we had opposed.

In the early 1970’s, when the modern animal-liberation movement began, no major organization was campaigning against the battery cage. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the mother of all animal-protection organizations, had lost its early radicalism long before. It focused on isolated cases of abuse, and failed to challenge well-established ways of mistreating animals on farms or in laboratories. It took a concerted effort by the new animal radicals of the 1970’s to stir the RSPCA from its complacency towards the battery cage and other forms of intensive animal rearing.

Eventually, the new animal-rights movement managed to reach the broader public. Consumers responded by buying eggs from free-ranging hens. Some supermarket chains even ceased to carry eggs from battery hens.

In Britain and some European countries, animal welfare became politically salient, and pressure on parliamentary representatives mounted. The European Union established a scientific committee to investigate animal-welfare issues on farms, and the committee recommended banning the battery cage, along with some other forms of close confinement of pigs and calves. A ban on battery cages in the EU was eventually adopted in 1999, but, to ensure that producers would have plenty of time to phase out the equipment in which they had invested, its implementation was delayed until January 1, 2012.

To its credit, the British egg industry accepted the situation, and developed new and less cruel methods of keeping hens. Not all countries are equally ready, however, and it has been estimated that up to 80 million hens may still be in illegal battery cages. But at least 300 million hens who would have lived miserable lives in standard battery cages are now in significantly better conditions, and there is great pressure on the EU bureaucracy to enforce the ban everywhere – not least from egg producers who are already complying with it.

With the ban on battery cages, Europe confirms its place as the world leader in animal welfare, a position also reflected in its restrictions on the use of animals to test cosmetics. But why is Europe so far ahead of other countries in its concern for animals?

In the United States, there are no federal laws about how egg producers house their hens. But, when the issue was put to California voters in 2008, they overwhelmingly supported a proposition requiring that all farm animals have room to stretch their limbs fully and turn around without touching other animals or the sides of their cage. That suggests that the problem may not be with US citizens’ attitudes, but rather that, at the federal level, the US political system allows industries with large campaign chests too much power to thwart the wishes of popular majorities.

In China, which, along with the US, confines the largest number of hens in cages, an animal welfare movement is only just beginning to emerge. For the sake of the welfare of billions of farmed animals, we should wish it rapid growth and success.

The start of this year is a moment to celebrate a major advance in animal welfare, and, therefore, for Europe, a step towards becoming a more civilized and humane society – one that shows its concern for all beings capable of suffering. It is also an occasion for celebrating the effectiveness of democracy, and the power of an ethical idea.

The anthropologist Margaret Mead is reported to have said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” The last part may not be true, but the first part surely is. The end of the battery cage in Europe is a less dramatic development than the Arab Spring, but, like that popular uprising, it began with a small group of thoughtful and committed people.

Peter Singer is Professor of bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. His books include Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, The Expanding Circle, and The Life You Can Save.

Peter Singer: 有道德的歐洲雞蛋

普林斯頓——40年前我和另外幾個學生在英國牛津市一條繁忙的街道上散發傳單，抗議用密集式籠箱養雞的行為。大多數接過傳單的人都不知道自己吃的雞蛋原來來自於那些極為窄小，以致連一隻鳥都無法完全伸展雙翼的籠子——而常規操作中這麼一個籠子要裝下四隻母雞。而那些母雞根本不能隨意走動或是在窩裡生蛋。

許多人都為我們這幫年輕人的理想主義叫好，卻也告訴我們說想要這樣的大型行業發生變革是不可能的。但他們錯了。

從2012年1月1日起，在這種籠子裡飼養母雞就是違法行為，不僅在英國，還包括全部27個歐盟國家。你依然可以把母雞養在籠子裡，但必須提供更多的空間，而且籠子內必須配備雞窩盒以及磨爪柱。上個月，英國母雞福利信托基金的成員向一隻名為“解放”的母雞提供了一個新家。而據他們所說，這隻母雞是英國最后一批還住在密集籠箱裡的母雞之一。

在1970年代早期，當現代動物解放運動發端之時，沒有任何大型組織發起抗議密集籠箱養雞的行為。英國防止虐待動物協會——也是所有動物保護組織的始祖——早已失去了成立之初的銳氣。該協會把焦點放在了某些單獨的虐待個案之上，卻不去質疑那些在已經在農場和實驗室中形成常規的虐待動物行為。最終新一代動物保護分子成功聯合起來，才使英國防止虐待動物協會走出這種自以為是的狀態，投入到反對密集籠箱養雞以及其他集中飼喂動物的運動當中。

最終，新的動物權利運動成功接觸到了更廣大的公眾。作為回應，消費者們開始選擇購買那些來自放養雞的雞蛋，而一些超連鎖級市場甚至停止從密集籠箱養雞廠採購雞蛋。

在英國以及某些歐洲國家，動物福利已經成為了重要的政治議題，民意代表所承受的壓力也不斷增大。歐盟設立了一個科學委員會來對農場中存在的動物福利狀況進行調查，而該委員會則建議禁止密集籠箱養雞以及其他某些形式的監禁式豬/牛飼養方式。最終歐盟在1999年通過了禁止密集籠箱養雞的禁令，但為了讓禽蛋生產商們能有足夠的時間來逐步淘汰這些設備，最后的生效日期被推遲到了今年1月1日。

值得贊揚的是，英國禽蛋行業接受了這個現實並發展出了不那麼殘酷的新型養雞方式。但並不是所有國家都做好了准備，因為估計還有8000萬隻母雞被飼養在密集式籠箱裡。但至少已經有3億隻母雞因此成功擺脫了原本悲慘的處境並顯著改善了生存狀況，同時歐盟的相關機構也承受了強大壓力要求在所有地方執行這一禁令——而不僅僅局限於那些已經接受了這一禁令的禽蛋生產商身上。

禁止密集式養雞的禁令以及禁止使用動物測試化妝品的法規都使歐盟確立了其全球動物福利領導者的地位。但為何歐洲可以在關注動物方面領先全球其他地區如此之多呢？

在美國，沒有任何聯邦法律規定禽蛋生產商應該如何飼養母雞。但當這一事務在2008年擺在加利福尼亞州選民面前時，他們一面倒地支持一個立場：農場飼養的所有動物都應當擁有可以充分伸展四肢羽翼並在轉身時不致碰到其他動物或者籠壁的空間。這意味著並不是美國民眾的態度有問題，而是在聯邦層級上，美國的政治系統給予了那些擁有巨額選舉資金的行業過分巨大的力量，足以將大多數民眾的意願置諸腦后。

在中國這個和美國相當的全球母雞存欄量最大的國家，動物福利運動堪稱小荷剛露尖尖角。為了數百億隻農場動物的利益，我們也希望這些運動能迅速壯大並取得成功。

今年的開端是一個慶祝動物福利事業重大進步的時刻，而對歐洲來說也是向一個更文明也更人性化的社會——對所有能感受痛苦的生物表達關注的社會——所邁出的一步。同時這也是個慶賀民主制度的有效性，以及一個道德理念所產生的力量的時候。

美國人類學家瑪格麗特·米德曾說：“毫無疑問，一小批有思想且意志堅定的公民是能夠改變世界的。事實上，這也是變革發生的唯一方式。”后面那半句或許有爭議，但前面半句則確鑿無疑。密集籠箱在歐洲的終結所帶來的進步或許比不上阿拉伯之春，但正如那場民眾起義一樣，發起這一事件的正是一小批有思想且意志堅定的公民。

Peter Singer 是普林斯頓大學生物倫理學教授，墨爾本大學榮譽教授。他的著作包括《動物解放》、《實用倫理學》，《食品中的道德》以及《你所能拯救的生命》