Animal Ethics’s recent talks and seminars around the world

In recent months, Animal Ethics has participated in a large number of talks, seminars and other events at conferences, universities and other venues in many different countries. We have targeted different audiences who could make a significant difference for sentient beings, with a focus on wild animals, longtermism, and creating greater concern about speciesism. Below is a summary of the events we have run or participated in.

We gave a workshop about wild animal advocacy at the EA Global: London 2022 conference and two talks about the same topic at the EAG Global conference in San Francisco and at EAGx in Prague. Our members also gave talks about wild animal suffering at the Nordic Environmental Ethics Winter Symposium at the University of Copenhagen, at the Animals in Wars and Disasters symposium, and at the Principles of Ethical Decision Making in Environmental Practice workshop at the University of Freiburg.

We participated in a seminar for graduate students in biology and related fields at Imperial College London. Our representatives also gave talks for EA groups in Paris, Dresden, and Utrecht.

Animal Ethics members gave seminars on longtermism and animal advocacy at the Institute of Animal Law of Asia 2022, the Pompeu Fabra University, and the EAGx conference in Singapore. This is a very important yet disregarded topic in animal advocacy, toward which we plan to increase our efforts in the future.

In addition, our spokespersons gave talks about animal sentience and speciesism at different universities in Latin American countries such as Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Argentina. We also gave several officially recognized university courses at different universities in Brazil and Argentina. We gave a presentation at the National Animal Advocacy Gathering in Ecuador. In Colombia, an Animal Ethics representative gave a seminar to senators and members of the House at the Colombian National Congress.

We gave several Ask Me Anything talks for the World Day for the End of Speciesism, an international initiative joining animal advocates from around the world. At this event we responded to many questions presented to us, most of them by fellow animal advocates involved in other projects.

With these events our intention is to prompt a change in the ways sentient beings are regarded, not just in the immediate future but also in the long term. Our main topics at these events were wild animal advocacy, longtermism, and speciesism, as these topics are crucially important for animal advocacy. Wild animal suffering is huge in scale yet until very recently it has been disregarded in efforts to help animals. Longtermism is much needed in advocacy because the vast majority of the animals that could be affected by our decisions will likely live in the future, including the far future. The conditions for those animals will depend significantly on whether we attain a change in attitudes toward all sentient beings, and speciesism is a major obstacle.

The combined audiences of these recent talks amount to more than a thousand attendees, coming from key groups that are especially well situated to make the future better for all animals. These include university undergraduate and graduate students, researchers and professors, animal advocates, politicians, and other influential people interested in animal advocacy.

These events are also important because they provide us with a great opportunity to network and create new alliances with all these people. In the near future we will continue these activities, with forthcoming events at different universities, new EAGx conferences, and, next month, at the Animal & Vegan Advocacy Summit. We will keep you posted about future events in our social media.