3 ethical catastrophes you can help stop, right now | Peter Singer | Big Think

3 ethical catastrophes you can help stop, right now

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Philosopher Peter Singer cites his top three ethical issues in the world today as: extreme poverty; climate change, which is related to poverty; and the way humans treat animals.

Any rational being should be interested in trying to understand how they ought to live, and whether they are doing things that are right or wrong. Singer suggests asking yourself important questions. When it comes to extreme poverty, ask: "Is it okay for me just to be living my life in my society and not doing anything for people who, through no fault of their own, are living in extreme poverty?"

For climate change, ask how you can put pressure on political leaders to take serious steps to prevent a climate change catastrophe that will disproportionately affect the poor. When it comes to animal cruelty, ask: "Am I complicit in the suffering that's being inflicted on animals, especially in factory farms but in other forms of farming as well? Am I complicit in that when I buy those products? And, if so, does that mean that I need to stop buying them?

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PETER SINGER:

Peter Singer is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University in the University Center for Human Values and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies. He is widely considered to be one of the world’s most influential living philosophers.

Check Peter Singer's latest book 10th Anniversary Edition The Life You Can Save: How To Do Your Part To End World Poverty

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TRANSCRIPT:

PETER SINGER: Great philosophers have tried to understand the world we're living in and have tried to think about how we ought to live. And I think these are really fundamentally important questions that any rational being ought to be interested in trying to find the answers to.

What are the fundamental principles about how we ought to act? Ought we to be looking at moral rules that we ought never to violate? Ought we to be trying to work out what rights beings have? Should we be looking at the consequences of our actions and use that as the ultimate criterion for deciding what's right and wrong? These questions are still questions we face today. They have no scientific answer; They're not about the nature of the universe in that way. They're about how we ought to live, which is a different type of question. And so I think it's particularly relevant to look at what philosophy and what philosophical discussions have contributed to our reflection and our thought about how we ought to live.

So my top three current ethical issues would be global poverty; climate change, which is clearly related to global poverty; and the way we treat animals, which I think is a hugely neglected issue that affects tens of billions of animals every year.

I think a question that you might use to shape your thinking around the issue of global poverty would be: What ought I to be doing to contribute to helping people in extreme poverty? Each person who asks that question, of course, is in a somewhat different situation, but I'm assuming that you're living in an affluent country and within that country you're not among the poorest in that country, so you're middle class in that country or above, so you have money to spare after providing for your all your basic needs and making some provision for the future. You spend money on luxuries that you don't need, if it ranges from buying a bottle of water when you could drink water that comes out of the tap and is free or maybe it's taking vacations or buying clothes when you've got plenty of clothes to keep you warm and decent. So if you're in that situation, then you can ask yourself: What ought to I be doing to consider myself an ethical person? Is it okay for me just to be living my life in my society and not doing anything for people who, through no fault of their own, are living in extreme poverty. And if the answer to that is no then you need to think about, well, what should I be doing? How much should I be doing?

With regard to climate change, perhaps the most pressing question is what can I do about this situation? I'm assuming that, like the overwhelming majority of scientists, you accept that climate change is real, that it's happening, that it is largely caused by human activities emitting greenhouse gases and that it's going to be catastrophic...

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