Debriefing an evening with Peter Singer

Peter Singer appeared before a capacity partisan crowd at the University of Toronto yesterday evening. Instead of summarizing his remarks, I thought I would give you a streaming consciousness about some of what he had to say:

• a Canadian philosopher, Richard Keshen (of the University College of Cape Breton) inspired him to write Animal Liberation after declining a meat based meal in a university cafeteria on purely ethical grounds.
• Keshen got Singer starting to think about whether there is something wrong about the way we treat animals (i.e. other sentient beings) to turn them into food.
• The phrase "Animal Liberation" first appeared in the press for the first time on the April 5, 1973, cover of The New York Review of Books. Under that heading, Singer discussed Animals, Men and Morals, a collection of essays on mankind's treatment of animals, which was edited by Stanley and Rosalind Godlovitch and John Harris. Singer credits the Godlovitch's for first blazing the trial of animal liberation for which he has now become reknowned.
• If we reject race as a boundary for discrimination, it is not easy to understand why species should be used as a boundary. One of the most interesting comments made by Singer was his suggestion that this proposition has become almost unassailable in contemporary philosophical thought.
• All animals (or at least all vertebrates that can sense pain) should be included in man's "moral sphere".
• When we consider the staggering numbers of animals killed for food in the U.S. and canada on an annual basis (billions in the U.S. and millions in Canada), one realizes that there is a vast amount of suffering that can be prevented.
• Factory farming results in a tremedous waste of food - anywhere between 50% to 75% of the food input devoted to meat production is literally wasted.
• U.S. livestock causes more greenhouse gas emissions than transportation (I don't know where he got this statistic but I don't doubt it).
• Worldwide, 27,000 children die every day due to easily preventable causes linked to poverty (eg. diarrhea, pneumonia, malarie, measles, contaminated water). This number is mind numbing.
• Approximately 1.4 billion of the world's population are currently living in extreme poverty which is currently defined as subsusting on less than $1.25 U.S. a day and that figure reflects our purchasing power in North America - not what $1.25 would buy us in the third world.
• Singer recommended Thomas Pogge's World Poverty and Human Rights for further reading.
• Singer declined to respond to an audience member's suggestion that Bill Gates was guilty of causing more harm than his philanthropic works have created good as a result of his support for patent protection in the third world. Singer commented (as he does in The Life You Can Save) about the massive amounts which Gates has gifted towards alleviating suffering in the third world. Indeed, based on sheer magnitude of giving, Gates is either the world's greatest giver or second behind Warren Buffett. Singer remarked that patents eventually expire and said that the issue was more complex than he wanted to get into in this forum.

Overall, my impressions were that Mr. Singer is a gentlemanly scholar who genuinely enjoys lecturing to a receptive audience. He seems to pass the "beer test" and is the kind of person who would be a treat for a dinner companion. Perhaps most importantly, he has a well honed skill for making his thought provoking concepts accessible to an audience largely falling outside his academic realm.

Of course, the primary reason why Singer was in Toronto was to promote the launch of The Life You Can Save (pictured above and available for purchase at amazon.ca at the following link: http://www.amazon.ca/Life-You-Can-Save-Poverty/dp/1400067103/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237607489&sr=8-1). At the time of this writing, the book was ranked #23 in sales on amazon.ca and it seems poised to crack the top 10.

I have also posted the following review on amazon.ca:

I bet you didn't know that a copy of this book has been sent to the Prime Minister of Canada, Leader of the Opposition Ignatieff, Gilles Duceppe, Jack Layton and the other 304 Members of Parliament. Why? Because this is a book that deserves to be read by those who make the decisions that affect our country. The Life You Can Save is the culmination of Peter Singer's work in the area of applied ethics for over 30 years. His conclusions are as simple as they are profound: if we can reduce the suffering of some of the world's impoverished people by making modest personal (and national) sacrifices, then it is ethically indefensible for us not to do so. While some may say this is like asking for support for motherhood and apple pie, the point Singer is trying to reinforce is that small changes to our micro and macro spending patterns can better the lives of millions. This is a worthwhile message presented in a compelling manner.

To download a podcast of Peter Singer's March 20, 2009 appearance on CBC radio's "Q" go to: http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/pastpodcasts.html?42#ref42