t us look at our attitude to animals more generally. In the 36 hours that we worked to free the northern bottlenose from the toxic claustrophobia of the Thames, thousands of other animals were suffering the cramped, artificially lit and sadistic conditions of the nation’s battery farms. All for the sake of a few pence off the price of produce….
The answer demonstrates the fuzziness of our moral thinking. Most of us feel a sense of obligation towards the animal kingdom but this is almost impossible to reconcile with our tolerance of legalised cruelty. What better way to absolve our collective conscience than with an overblown gesture to a solitary whale? After all, £100K is a drop in the Thames compared with the serious money required for ethical consistency in our approach to animals.
But why should ethical consistency in our approach to animals require that we treat all animals the same? It seems to me entirely reasonable to have different attitudes to different animals. Personally I like cats, but don’t like rats: an inconsistency which doesn’t bother me in the least. Cats are beautiful and make nice pets; rats are horrible and spread diseases. A Martian might find my attitude very odd given how both are furry mammals, but then I’m not a Martian. Our ethics aren’t imposed on us from above: they evolve as part of our relationships as human beings – pet-lovers and, for the most part, carnivores – with other animals. And yes, a whale is something special.
Much worse, it seems to me, are those who’d try and impose some supposedly consistent ethical approach, treating all animals the same, against all our moral intuitions.
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