Philosopher Peter Singer discusses the ethics of the Anthropocene

One of the world’s most influential living philosophers, Peter Singer, spoke at an event on resetting the baseline for a minimally ethical life.

Peter Singer

Peter Singer is widely regarded as one of the world’s most influential living philosophers. In this thought-provoking webcast, Peter spoke at an event, moderated by EY Climate Change and Sustainability Services Partner Adam Carrel on “The Ethics of the Anthropocene” — the extent to which the urgency of the climate crisis requires a reset of what it means to live an ethical life. The podcast also explores the personal consequences of voicing uncomfortable truths in traditional environments and how the sustainability movement can be more morally courageous in the years ahead.

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional advice. The views expressed in this podcast may not reflect those of the host or EY.

Intro: You are listening to Antithesis Talks, a series of conversations about the state of corporate sustainability in a world running out of time. Antithesis Talks is brought to you by EY Climate Change and Sustainability Services teams, and is driven by contribution from across the corporate sector, science, philosophy and the wider community. 

Peter Singer: [00:00:00] We need to enable people in the corporate world to stand up and take that stand. So, I think if you can build that organization to support them and encourage them and get them to talk to each other and maybe make it difficult for people to get fired for speaking out on these things, you'll be maybe making change possible that would not otherwise be possible.

Adam Carrel: Welcome everyone to the first instalment of Antithesis Talks, a series of conversations that would explore this crucial question of corporate sustainability in a world that is running out of time. This conversation comes off the back of the Enough  report, which we released sort of midway through last year, which itself prompted hundreds of conversations with corporate sustainability people around the world. All of whom, I'm pleased to say, are really keen to kind of re-prosecute the question of what does it actually mean to be a champion of sustainable development in the corporate world at this juncture in history. We'll come to that shortly. But firstly, let me introduce our extraordinary guests — the one and only Peter Singer, a round of applause for Peter, please.

Peter Singer: Thank you. 

Adam: So, I could probably spend the next 45 minutes cataloguing the immense achievements of Peter, but it's probably. Best summed up by the fact that he's widely regarded as the world's most influential living philosopher. He is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at the University of Princeton  .

He has written or edited more than 50 books with another one coming out in a month. He has dedicated his life basically to the reduction of suffering, be that human or nonhuman. And I think while you are probably more famous for your work in animal liberation, Peter has been writing about planetary sustainability for probably the length of your career as well.

But I think to kind of sum up what it means to be sitting opposite you tonight, I think it's no exaggeration to say that were this ancient Greece, it would be no more extraordinary for a kind of philosophical Luddite like me to wander up to the Acropolis and have a conversation with Aristotle, as it is for me to be sitting with you tonight, Peter. So, thank you very much for making the time. We really appreciate it. 

So, to quickly kick this off and to explain what we mean by the ethics of the Anthropocene, we put this report out in the world to ask the question of why isn't all of the immense commitment toward corporate sustainability that the trillions of dollars that are invested under some form of ESG mandate around the world, why is that not corresponding to the change the world needs in time?

And as a bunch of kind of technocrats, we thought the answer to that question would be technical in some way, some engineering feat, some absence of capital, etc. But what we heard kind of resoundingly when we spoke to people all around the world was that it's not for any lack of money or technology or data, that the underlying issue is moral courage. And not moral courage, sort of generally speaking, but moral courage on the part of people with the access to the technology and the money and the data to force through this change. And I think this is an important point to reiterate, none of our respondents were critiquing the state of moral courage generally, and nor is it our place to talk to that. We're talking about the kind of the corporate classes, particularly people that are within the middle to upper tiers of the global economy. People that very often, in their private lives, speak very passionately and eloquently about their concern for the planet and human rights and all those sorts of things, but they fail to give full effect to that in their professional lives. So, do you agree with the premise that there is a deficit of moral courage within the corporate classes that is preventing people from challenging the status quo of which they are a part?

Peter Singer: I think you're right that people need to be prepared to stand out and set an example for others to follow. I think that's really important, but I also think that there is a problem that is really a version of the tragedy of the commons problem. That is, it's a collective action problem. You know, in the tragedy of the commons, you have some common land that you can graze your cows on. If everyone around were to graze one cow, the commons would thrive. But there're no laws, there's no overall government, so there's nothing to prevent people putting many cows on it. And if everybody puts many cows on it, the grass will die and the cows will starve. So, is it in anyone's interest to say, no, I'll take my cows off. But everybody else has got their cows still on the commons. So, you feel, I'm making a sacrifice and it's not solving the problem. So, I might as well keep my cows there as long as I can, so I'll get plenty of milk out of the cows as long as I can. [00:05:00]

And I think there's a lot of that going on, and we need to find solutions to that problem. We need to find either some way of regulating, as you could solve the tragedy of the commons, if you had some governing body saying, no, you can only have one cow per person, or we need to find ways in which we can show to people that it is actually in their interests, as well as being an ethical thing to do, or at least that it won't really harm their interests very seriously, if they are prepared to stand out. And to me, that's the problem that that needs to be solved, and we need to think how can we make it, at least not contrary to people's interests to say, we are not doing nearly enough. We are still heading for catastrophic climate change, and we all need to get behind this and we all need to make that change.

“We are still heading for catastrophic climate change, and we all need to get behind this and we all need to make that change.”

Adam: Yeah. Yeah. And I absolutely hear you there. And the tragedy of the commons is an [00:06:00] idea that speaks to the concept of the things that people do. People, you know, they're kind of active moral choices. But in trying to reabsorb as much of your writing as I could before this session, one of the things you write about a lot is that people shouldn't be just judged upon what they do. They should be judged by the things that they don't do. The things that they could have tried to prevent that didn't, you know, the tragedies they didn't try to unravel. And that sounds like a really straightforward concept when you say it out loud, but practically speaking, I think it really challenges the way that a lot of privileged people view their moral status in the world.

Someone like me, we would say, look, yes, I could be more morally consistent in my choices, but hey, I love my family. I'm a provider. I follow the law, generally speaking, I indicate in traffic. Every now and then, I sling a hundred odd bucks to a charity. Okay. So, you know, ethically, I'm kind of, at worst, I'm neutral.

You know, I'm an [00:07:00] ethical C minus, if you'd like. But if my moral ledger had to take account for all the things that I don't do, or all of the truth that I don't speak in certain forums when I ought to, my moral ledger looks completely different. I look like I'm sitting on a big fat F basically.

And my question, I suppose, is, with that in mind, with this idea of yours, that we need to be accountable for the things that we don't do. Do we really need to kind of reset the baseline for what constitutes a minimally ethical life for a privileged person in 2023?

Peter Singer: I certainly think we need to try to reset the baseline, and you're absolutely right — that part of that is looking at what we don't do.

When I wrote The Life You Can Sa ve  and set up the charity that has the same name, my aim really was to persuade people that to live an ethical life; it’s not enough to live in the way that you just described. Not breaking any laws, caring for your family, essentially, you know, [00:08:00] not killing or maiming, whatever.

All of those things that we know we ought not to do and that there're rules about not doing. But my point was that in a world in which there are some people who are living extremely affluent lives, and I'm not talking about people who are usually wealthy only, I'm talking about people who are middle class or above in affluent countries, they're living affluent lives as compared with, let's say, the bottom billion of the world, majority of whom would be in extreme poverty as defined by the World Bank, living on roughly AUS$3, if we're talking Australian dollars, AUS$3 a day. And with high rates of child mortality. And, essentially, lives that lack the basic dignity that we think every human life should be able to possess. And if we are not doing something to help them, I wanted to argue when we have the capacity to do that, and we instead spend our resources on things that we plainly don't need — that are [00:09:00] luxuries by any standard. Then there's something wrong with that and we should regard ourselves as having a moral failing, similar to the moral failings we would have if we had broken one of those other rules. So yes, that's the way I would like to reset the baseline. And of course, it does apply to climate change, as well as to global poverty, and applies to supporting the abuse of animals in industrial factory farms and a whole range of other things.

But you know, we can say that we need to reset the baseline. The question is how do we persuade enough people to do it? Because unfortunately, there's safety in numbers here for the people who are failing by these standards. They say, yeah, okay, but why pick on me? You know, everybody else is doing that.

So, there's a problem. You can maybe incrementally increase the baseline on a thing like what you give to help people in extreme poverty or what you do about Peter Singer: I certainly think we need to try to reset the baseline, and you're absolutely right — that part of that is looking at what we don't do.

When I wrote The Life You Can Sa ve  and set up the charity that has the same name, my aim really was to persuade people that to live an ethical life; it’s not enough to live in the way that you just described. Not breaking any laws, caring for your family, essentially, you know, [00:08:00] not killing or maiming, whatever.

All of those things that we know we ought not to do and that there're rules about not doing. But my point was that in a world in which there are some people who are living extremely affluent lives, and I'm not talking about people who are usually wealthy only, I'm talking about people who are middle class or above in affluent countries, they're living affluent lives as compared with, let's say, the bottom billion of the world, majority of whom would be in extreme poverty as defined by the World Bank, living on roughly AUS$3, if we're talking Australian dollars, AUS$3 a day. And with high rates of child mortality. And, essentially, lives that lack the basic dignity that we think every human life should be able to possess. And if we are not doing something to help them, I wanted to argue when we have the capacity to do that, and we instead spend our resources on things that we plainly don't need — that are [00:09:00] luxuries by any standard. Then there's something wrong with that and we should regard ourselves as having a moral failing, similar to the moral failings we would have if we had broken one of those other rules. So yes, that's the way I would like to reset the baseline. And of course, it does apply to climate change, as well as to global poverty, and applies to supporting the abuse of animals in industrial factory farms and a whole range of other things.

But you know, we can say that we need to reset the baseline. The question is how do we persuade enough people to do it? Because unfortunately, there's safety in numbers here for the people who are failing by these standards. They say, yeah, okay, but why pick on me? You know, everybody else is doing that.

So, there's a problem. You can maybe incrementally increase the baseline on a thing like what you give to help people in extreme poverty or what you do about climate change. You can increase it incrementally, [00:10:00] but it's really hard to raise it substantially, dramatically in one step, in a way that would lead to the majority of people, or the majority of affluent people, acknowledging that they're not living ethically at all.

Adam: And that's the rub. You know, that's the rub of this conversation and we will come back to that exact point. I think, you know, you mentioned that person, sort of saying, why do I have to be the avatar for, you know, our better senses in this moment when no one else is around me, right?

Say we did. Say you did, not me — you convinced a large number of people to act with greater moral agency, and to step out in their lives and be more morally consistent and be more insistent in their ethics and bring that to bear in more conversations, they're likely to then confront the next uncomfortable truth of ethics which is that, and you've sort of proven this point very well throughout your career, which is that people making ethical statements [00:11:00] has a funny way of making them deeply unpopular in some quarters.

Now, I wouldn't call you deeply unpopular in aggregate, but I'm sure you've discovered, that you're out there, you're trying to reduce suffering and you say something. And of course, the vast majority of people put you on a pedestal for doing that. But there are some powerful people, and I'm sure people that you would've wanted to like you, that will howl you down as somehow being immoral in making those statements.

And that's a very daunting thing for people from the broader corporate world, because contrary to the kind of stereotype that we are all these type A personalities running around furiously living our purpose, we are, truth be told, often quite conformist, nonconfrontational people and corporate norms discourage us from pointing out our colleagues’ ethical inconsistency.

You know, that's not the way we operate in the broader corporate world. So, learning what you've learned from someone that has flirted with controversy at certain points in your career, do [00:12:00] you see that? Do you see the kind of generation of outrage as a kind of occupational hazard that you just have to shrug off? Or do you emotionally prepare yourself for becoming a target and upsetting people?

Peter Singer: I suppose it's more of the latter. I do prepare myself emotionally for getting a certain level of abuse and that happens regularly. That's true. But on the other hand, I think that there's quite a lot of people who are really ready to listen to serious criticism of the way they're living.

And of course, it has to be delivered in a certain tone and in a certain style. It's not a matter of sort of preaching to people about how evil and wicked they are. And it's not about that either because I can easily imagine, you know, say my lifestyle up to the time I started really thinking [00:13:00] about the things that I was doing wrong — learned about my complicity in factory farming, thought more about what I was not doing to help people in extreme poverty. I was in my twenties by then. I was a graduate student, so I should have known better already. So, I'm not really going to say that, you know, these are terrible people, when I know that for a significant part of my life and certainly enough of my life for me to have known better, I was like that. So, I think you have to approach it in that way and say, look, we all have these ethical blind spots and let's think about this. And think about these examples I will give you as to why I think the way most people are living, including you, is not the right way to live. And I think you get a sort of perhaps pleasantly surprisingly proportion of the people who are ready to listen to that and ready to think about it. I wouldn't say they're all going to change their lives as a result, [00:14:00] but some of them do. And that's rewarding when some of them do.

“We can say that we need to reset the baseline. The question is how do we persuade enough people to do it?”

Adam: You work in the fall semester at Princeton, which is kind of in the vortex of the great debate about cancel culture at the moment. And there's a squillion podcasts on that, we're not going to go down the path of talking about that any great detail, but nonetheless, it's a very live conversation in terms of the tolerance of modern populations to hear radical sentiment. And the capacity to be able to interact with a kind of wide audience as opposed to people that have already organized themselves into their various tribes of thinking and won't be pushed out of them. What's your optimism or pessimism in terms of the ability both of academia and the general public to be nudged out of a pre-set position into a space where they can be more objectively reasoned with?

Peter Singer: Well, I think what you're referring to in terms of the cancel culture is somewhat different, I should say. It actually comes from both sides, especially in the United States. In [00:15:00] my classes, I talk about a lot of things that might cause these kinds of reactions. And I tell people at the beginning of the class that we're going to be discussing things that may cause offense to some people and they have two weeks to drop out of the class and switch to another class at the beginning of the semester, if they want to. It doesn't seem that very many of them do. But after that, essentially, things go okay. I mean, people will sometimes come up to me and say, they didn't really appreciate what I said there, but we're having a reasonable discussion. They're not trying to shut me down. And that's okay then, I think that's fine.

Adam: So, in listening to you there and in reading a lot of your work, you strike me as someone that is ultimately optimistic about the capacity of human reason. You sort of suggest that reason is an enormous force, and that as socioeconomic development continues around the world, then educational attainment should increase around the world. And then it would be, you [00:16:00] know, reason will continue to be cultivated on the back of that. And it will be harder for ethical inconsistencies to survive in the public domain, particularly with people that have, like most people in this room, that have the kind of luxury of no immediate crisis of basic needs. So, we are able to kind of zoom out and in your fabulous words, take the perspective of the universe in terms of our thinking on ethics. But by that logic, the corporate world ought to be a hotbed of ethical reasoning, right? Because we are people that have no crisis of basic needs. We are highly educated, liberated people that enjoy some of the greatest physical and intellectual freedoms that any generation history has ever had. So, something is wrong in that regard. Now, I ponder this problem and I think one of the things is that the corporate world has a way of taking a liberated, educated and passionate person, and [00:17:00] concentrating their thinking in the narrowest of ways.

The corporate world likes people to kind of stay in their lane as well. We've become very familiar with our position descriptions and do what we are entitled to do via that as opposed to what we would feel compelled to do. And then also, like much of the rest of the world, we're kind of buffeted with information and dialogues from multiple places, so we are incredibly distracted. So, as someone that has found a way over your life to kind of step away and take the perspective of the universe and contemplate things, do you think we need to change our relationship with work to be able to ethically reason? Because I doubt that you can kind of diarize ethical reasoning between 10 and 10.30 on a Tuesday. So, what do you think we need to do from your knowledge of the corporate world to actually permit ourselves to be a kind of conduit for reason?

Peter Singer: Yeah, that's a good question. So, I think, of course, I'm fortunate in my occupation as a professor of ethics and philosophy, [00:18:00] I really can take the point of view of the universe and think how things look from there, and the university encourages me to do that and pays me for doing it. But if you're working for a corporation, then the objectives of the corporation are what is likely to guide your thinking, and certainly, those above you are going to want you to think about the best interest of the corporation in various ways, which will be often narrower than the point of view of the universe.

So, that's going to produce that tension unless you can find some way to find a harmony between them. Sometimes, you can say, well, look, our corporation could actually be sustainable, do good in the world, and that would help to promote the brand and we would become actually more profitable, would give us this competitive edge.

If you can do that, that's fine. And you know, sometimes you can. But if [00:19:00] the whole aim of the corporation, the whole business of the corporation is about doing something destructive, whatever it might be, if you are producing fossil fuels, if you are a beef producer or those kinds of things, then it's really difficult.

You can say, well, look, we should divest into producing solar energy or into producing plant-based foods. If the core business and the money-making side of the corporation is there, then it's going to be really difficult and you can think outside your workspace about the larger questions, but you're getting paid for thinking about in a different way. And at some point, you won't be getting paid anymore if you continue to think about the larger ones.

Adam: Indeed, indeed. You're probably right. You mentioned the idea of a corporation that could obviously, as many will do, profit from being part of the change and being sustainable organizations, and that's absolutely we hope the case. But in that you talk about this idea of making capitalism work [00:20:00] for the sustainable development agenda, which brings me to one of the areas that you are strongly associated with, which is effective altruism.

Now, for those that aren't familiar with the effective altruism movement, and I mentioned this to Peter beforehand, he was kind of shy to acknowledge it, but it is responsible for tens of billions of dollars being set aside for worthy causes.

Peter Singer: Well, that's your figure. Don't, don't quote, hang on it. Cause somebody will say document that. And it may be true, but it's hard to prove.

Adam: Yeah. And that is a humble way to put it. But nonetheless, if you, even from rough numbers, there is some extraordinary wealth put behind that. And the underlying ethical logic of that, I think is indisputable.

The idea that wealthy, privileged people should give much more of their money to important causes. But there is a criticism in that, which you have faced, which is the idea that part of how effective altruism is described is, it says that for some people, particularly very bright people, the best thing [00:21:00] they can do is make as much money as possible within the capitalist system, and then give that money away to those that need it, as opposed to applying their intellect for the deconstruction of the system to a degree, or in the very least, to kind of apply themselves to the unravelling of late capitalism in its kind of worst forms. What's your reaction to that criticism of effective altruism?

Peter Singer: Well, I think it does depend on what position you're in, what you're doing, and what your skills and opportunities are.

So, in terms of, let's start with where you are in terms of saying, what you should be doing if you have the talents, is to try to unravel late capitalism in its worst forms. That's a pretty big ask, I have to say. It's doubtful that you're going to be able to achieve that. It's not clear what the alternatives really are, and it's not clear how to bring about those alternatives.

So, I think it would be reasonable for someone to say, I really don't [00:22:00] know that I could do that. And I feel fear that I'm likely to work hard at it and end in failure without achieving anything. Whereas if I have the ability to earn a lot of money in, let's say, the financial sector, and I don't feel that I'm actually doing harm by that, and let me come to that in a moment, and I'm earning enough to do significant amounts of good to people in extreme poverty or supporting opposition to climate change, whatever it might be, then that's something that I can have high confidence that I will be doing good. And I'd rather do that than take this small chance of changing the entire system. Now, some people will say, but look, if you're working in the finance sector, you are not neutral. You're actually doing harm in what you're doing. And that offsets the good that you might be doing with the money that you're donating to the effective causes, [00:23:00] but that is going to depend on what you're doing, right? I mean, if what you are trying to do is to get approval for a huge new coal mine, then yes, you shouldn't be doing that, even if you're going to earn a lot of money in doing it.

One of my former Princeton students is somebody who's been doing this, and Princeton students do get headhunted. Recruiters from Wall Street, come down to the campus each year, and look for students who are bright and seeking employment and, particularly if they have good quantitative skills, they hire them.

And sometimes, some of the best philosophy students also are good at math and those quantitative fields. So, this particular student was offered a position that in his first year out of university was paying him a six-figure salary. He also had an offer to go to the graduate school in Oxford to study philosophy, and he came to talk to me about those choices.

And said, would I be doing more good as a professor of philosophy than I would if I take [00:24:00] the Wall Street offer and I can live cheaply, I don't want a luxury lifestyle, so I can donate a lot of that income and over the years, it will grow to effective causes. And I said, and what exactly would you be doing if you take this job?

And he said, well, I'd be trying to predict rises or falls in prices of commodities. It's basically a company that takes positions on commodities in accordance with its best guess as to whether they're going to rise and fall. And it's earning money for its investors if it's successful. And I said, well, is it going to cause problems in prices going up on scarce commodities that will cause hardships?

And he said, no, it's not nearly that big. It's not at all big enough. If anything, he said, maybe it smooths out some of the, if we're successful, it smooths out some of the jumps that might otherwise occur when the news breaks that the commodity is going to be in shorter supply or conversely.

So, it didn't really seem that he was doing any harm, as far as I could see. It was not like [00:25:00] raising funds for a coal mine. And I said to him, well, you know, it seems clear that you would be doing good in that area. And there's a lot of people going into philosophy. There's a lot of professors in philosophy who are very talented. You are a talented philosopher, but I couldn't honestly say that you're so extraordinarily talented that you'll produce something really new and startling. And that was realistic. I mean, he accepted that. So, he did go to Wall Street and he's been quite a few years out now. And from the last time I had contact with him, he was continuing to give at least half of his income to effective charities.

So, I think he probably made the right decision in doing good, even though he's certainly not unravelling capitalism.

Adam: I can imagine this broken-hearted hedge fund manager in their pin-striped suit walking through down downtown Manhattan. You are telling them they're never going to be a philosopher ringing in their ears as they wipe their tears with hundred-dollar bills.

[00:26:00] That's a hard thing to hear, what your description is. And you are a consequentialist by philosophical breed. And you look at the end goal. And for you to look at the end goal from your immense vantage point and think that it's a bridge too far to try and unravel the worst successes of late capitalism may well be the right answer, but it really rubs against, I think, some of the revolutionary zeal of the sustainability community. We struggle with that idea and you started with the reference of the tragedy of the commons. It's hard to imagine a way in which we would end the tragedy of the commons without, in some way, changing the nature of capitalism itself, which is kind of the root cause in many ways of the tragedy of the commons.

“The idea that wealthy, privileged people should give much more of their money to important causes. But there is a criticism in that.”

Adam: It's an interesting thing that came through in a lot of our conversations, which is that I think our community is split between people that like us, I suppose, that work in the corporate sustainability world that have committed notionally to the idea of self-regulation as [00:27:00] possible. The system can fix itself.

But there were a lot of people that wrote to us and said, you can't fix the system. Okay. It's a wasted effort to try and fix the system. Let the system fall apart, and from its ashes will rise a better model and just don't stand in the way of that. It was striking how many people thought that, but what would be your response to those people from a consequentialist point of view that would like the whole thing to fall apart, so that we could come up with something better in its ruins?

Peter Singer: Well, firstly, of course, we've heard that several times before. It's a sort of Marxist idea that the contradictions in society, in history will get worse and worse and more intense and more intense. And then there will be a revolution that overthrows the system and builds an equal society in which, you know, everybody contributes according to their ability and takes according to their needs.

We know that that didn't happen. Marx was simply wrong in his predictions, and the communist societies that were formed certainly did not live up to what Marx thought would happen. The withering away of the state that he [00:28:00] predicted was in fact exactly the reverse of what happened in in those countries.

So, the idea that capitalism will collapse from its own internal contradictions, and we can build something better on its ashes, I think is in a way wishful thinking, except that I wouldn't really want to wish for the collapse of society, because that would cause immense harm to many of the people who are currently dependent on that system anyway. But let me go back to what you said a moment ago about the tragedy of the commons and the idea that this can't be fixed or can't be fixed within the system we're working in. I think it can, because as I said, if you had a governing body that would regulate this and say you can only have one cow per villager or something of that sort, you could fix the tragedy of the commons and we could do the same.

Now, unfortunately, we don't have a global government, but a global government could fix climate change. It wouldn't be easy, but it would be doing it by means of carbon [00:29:00] taxes or cap and trade systems, something of that kind. And that could change and that's compatible with capitalism. And there are societies that are still clearly capitalist — Scandinavian societies, other parts of the European Union — that are still capitalists, but that do have regulations that show the way in which we can overcome a lot of these problems. And it's true, for example, with factory farming, which is another area that I'm interested in, not that any of the countries have completely got acceptable regulations, but the standard battery cages for hens, for example, which are still legal in this country and still the majority of eggs produced in the United States come out of that system, are illegal across the entire European Union.

And so, you still have capitalist egg producers. But they all have to deal with the regulations about how much space do hens have to have and how they have to be provided with a nesting box and a whole lot of other things that improves their welfare. It [00:30:00] doesn't improve it to the standards that I would like, but it definitely improves it, and it definitely is compatible with capitalism.

So, that's why I don't despair, when I say I don't think we're going to see capitalism collapse and a better society rise on its ashes, I don't despair about the possibility of making the progress that we need, including eventually producing a sustainable economy within that system, but in a way that is regulated much more than we have now.

And of course, there's going to be opposition to that. And in some countries like the United States, it's perhaps hard to see how we're going to get there. In other countries that have less opposition to governments and to regulations, I think it is possible to get there.

“I don't despair about the possibility of making the progress that we need, including eventually producing a sustainable economy within that system, but in a way that is regulated much more than we have now.”

Adam: Philosophy generally when you look at it, and again, I'm deeply undergraduate in my take of it, but a lot of it assumes that there's a permanent amount of time to arrive at the right answer.

You know, that some kind of long unfolding [00:31:00] process of Socratic reasoning might lead us to some great cumulative Kantian epiphany, if given enough time. But we simply do not have the time for that. So, what are examples of ethical movements that have broken through in an expedited period of time?

What shortcuts did they take? Did they have to take any ethical liberties in being able to motivate change very quickly? What have you seen that stands out to you as groups of people that broke through within a finite period of time to change the world?

Peter Singer: Well, historically, I think the great example is the abolition of the slave trade.

And that movement, which clearly had an ethical basis in the United Kingdom that stopped the British slave trade and achieved a great success within a relatively short period of time. But other more recent movements, I'm old enough to be able to remember that when I was an undergraduate at the University of Melbourne up the road, and went to [00:32:00] parties in the evening and then came home, took off my clothes that I'd been wearing and picked them up the next morning. They smelled of cigarette smoke. Any party that you went to the room would be dense with cigarette smoke. And I wasn't even aware at the time that this was bad for my health or posing a health risk. But I certainly didn't like the smell of it.

So, that changed pretty rapidly. Now you might say, well that changed because people realized that it was in their own interest to not smoke. And maybe their companies they were working for realized that they could be sued for not providing a safe workplace. And that might be another reason.

And then people who did smoke and had to go downstairs and stand outside on the footpath to smoke maybe felt a bit foolish standing there with a few other smokers. So, that has definitely changed and not worldwide, but it's certainly changed here and in many other countries quite rapidly.

And the other example would be the [00:33:00] acceptance of gay people. And even to the point of gay marriage, that's, I think, a change that nobody really predicted as recently as the presidency of George W. Bush. So, in this century, his strategist Carl Rove wanted to get measures on the ballot that were essentially ensuring that marriage had to be between a man and a woman.

And he wanted to get them on the ballot, because he thought then people would turn out who wanted marriage to be limited to a man and a woman, who disapproved of gay relationships. And once they've turned out, then they would also vote for the Republican candidates on the ballot. And of course, in the United States, getting voter turnout is really important in a way that fortunately it's not here.

So, that was considered to be a positive thing for the conservatives to have that on the ballot. And it switched within a decade really, to being a negative thing to have on the [00:34:00] ballot because more people would turn out and vote against that or would vote actually for same-sex marriage.

So, that was pretty dramatic. There certainly are examples of movements that can change people's moral thinking quite rapidly.

Adam: Look, and those three examples are very apt, and I know you appreciate this fact, but be it the transatlantic slave trade, or tobacco or discrimination based on any form of sex or gender or preference, those changes came after immense suffering. You know, the slave trade lasted 300 years. Tobaccos cost millions and millions of lives. There are immeasurable lives that have been ruined as a consequence of the discrimination people have faced. And so, to a certain extent, those ideas collapsed under the weight of their own, not just absence of moral logic, but just self-evidence suffering of large numbers of people, which contributed to their demise eventually. What are the examples of ethical movements that have been able to [00:35:00] proceed that? That don't need that curve of suffering to be able to make their point successfully on the other side, but manage to get people to pre-emptively change ahead of that, which is the great question, particularly in the context of anthropogenic climate change that we want to explore.

Peter Singer: Right. You're absolutely correct. This is different, because it's a bit of an oversimplification, you could say we don't see the suffering we're producing, we're emitting a colorless, odorous gas into the atmosphere. And it's affecting people far away, both geographically far away from us and far away from us in time.

It's affecting children, grandchildren, and future generations for a long time to come. And that does make it harder, because we don't have that sort of innate response to seeing someone suffering. As I say, that’s an oversimplification, because we do know now that we are causing a variety of extreme climate events.

And we are seeing suffering from them, even [00:36:00] within our own country. We saw the suffering from the bushfires, both to humans and to animals. We've seen the suffering from the floods in Lismore and other places. So, we are starting to see it, but, you know, it's still the link between that and what we are doing isn't as vivid as it clearly is in the other examples that I gave. So, I can't think of an example of the kind that you've challenged me to give. I don’t know whether you had one in the back of your head when …

Adam: Well, no, sadly. Well, I mean, there is one that I, that comes to mind of course, and that's animal liberation.

And look in the news but yesterday was footage so horrific that I'm sure there must be moments at which you would despair about the time it has taken for humanity to unravel the tragedy of certain forms of factory farming.

Peter Singer: Yeah, it is. But we do see the suffering, right?

Yeah. I mean, that's what the video was.

Adam: Well, indeed. So that movement has catalyzed a great amount of change and subscribers [00:37:00] over to that ideal. What did you do to achieve critical mass at that time? You know, you wrote an essay in 1973, I think, or 74. You wrote …

Peter Singer: 1973 was the essay, and then 75 was the book.

Adam: Yeah. Is the book, right? Yeah. Which set off a, you know, it changed the world, but it started with an essay. What were the steps in those first few years to try and garner a degree of critical mass to be able to elevate that conversation to the point that it got to.

Peter Singer: I mean there was really a lot of movement building, I suppose. There was, when I wrote those works, there were animal societies. There was, obviously in England, where I was living at the time, was the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Ancient Society, and we had Australian equivalence of it. But at that time, it was really very much focused on cruelty to dogs and cats and horses, but hardly anything else.

Certainly, was not tackling factory farming, although that was already accounting for probably the majority of [00:38:00] chickens and laying hens and a substantial number of pigs that were being produced. So, there were some of those organizations, but they weren't really the large, more radical organizations that were protesting about factory farming and they did start to form in the coming years, and you know, I'm certainly grateful to them. For example, in the United States, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals was founded by Ingrid Newkirk and Alex Pacheco. And Ingrid has been kind enough to say that it was reading Animal Liberation³  that changed her mind.

And as the organization started to grow, every person who joined or made a donation, they donated a copy of Animal Liberation, which was great for sales. I think they donated hundreds of thousands of copies. It wasn't great for royalties, because my publisher gave them to them at such a huge discount, which was good. You know, I wanted that to happen. I wanted the book to be read, but there was no real financial return in it. But I'm grateful to Ingrid, particularly for having built that large organization that [00:39:00] started mailing to hundreds of thousands of supporters and members and brought about change.

And some of those other organizations have done that. So, that was hard and dedicated work by a number of people who did that. Now, you said it's built critical mass and changed the world. I wish it had changed the world a lot more than it has. As I said, it's maybe produced some changes. I mentioned those in Europe and we are getting some here in Australia now. Things are being phased in. We're far behind Europe. I mean the United States, some states that have citizens-initiated referenda, been able to get this on the ballot and have laws rather like those in Europe, California is one of them. There are about eight others. But the states that have the largest numbers of farmed animals — Iowa and Nebraska and North Carolina — they don't have any of these laws.

So, it hasn't changed the world nearly enough, even in the United States. And don't ask me about China.

Adam: Well, everything you've seen over your career and while you are humble about the [00:40:00] extent to which movements that you've been a part of have achieved critical mass. Nonetheless, for anybody out there either in this room or part of the global sustainable development movement that wants to be more ethically consistent, wants to put their head above the parapet and stand out and be a greater part of the force of change, and more importantly, wants to network themselves.

As we say there's no point in people flaming out in little quiet pyrrhic victories of outrage if it doesn't change the system. We actually need to be successful. We need to be powerful. We need to change the narrative and actually then change the structure of the economy, albeit from within.

What advice would you give to people that are trying to set down that path to catalyze one ethical movement or another?

Peter Singer: Well, I would say, following on from what I was talking about, do try to build an organization that exists for, I think, your audience is people working for corporations, possibly working at higher management.

The levels in those corporations and build an [00:41:00] organization, where they can network, as you just said, and where they can be supported, and where they can feel emboldened and knowing that they won't be alone, if they do go out on a limb and say, we are not doing the right thing here. We are not doing what we need to do, if we are going to get to a sustainable planet, and if we're going to avoid climate change getting completely out of control with those nightmarish scenarios. So, we need to enable people in the corporate world to stand up and take that stand and persuade their seniors to come along with them. And some of them will be the seniors and then they need to bring the board and the shareholders along with them.

But I think that's possible. I think enough people are seeing how serious this issue is. I think if you can build that organization to support them and encourage them and get them to talk to each other and maybe make it difficult for people to get [00:42:00] fired for speaking out on these things, you'll be maybe making change possible that would not otherwise be possible.

Adam: Well, Peter, thank you so much for making time with us tonight and for everything you do, if we could have a concluding round of applause for Peter. Thank you very much.

Tanya: You’ve been listening to Antithesis Talks, a series of conversations about the state of corporate sustainability in a world running out of time. Antithesis Talks is brought to you by EY Climate Change and Sustainability Services team, and is driven by contribution from across the corporate sector, science, philosophy and the wider community. To contribute, visit our website at ey.com. Antithesis Talks is available there or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you haven’t already read the Enough Report, we encourage you to do so. You can read or listen to it on our website at ey.com.

“We need to be powerful. We need to change the narrative and actually then change the structure of the economy, albeit from within.”