EA - Announcing the Publication of Animal Liberation Now by Peter Singer

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Announcing the Publication of Animal Liberation Now, published by Peter Singer on May 19, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.SummaryMy new book, Animal Liberation Now, will be out next Tuesday (May 23).I consider ALN to be a new book, rather than just a revision, because so much of the material in the book is new.Pre-ordering from Amazon or other online booksellers (US only) or ordering/purchasing within the first week of publication will increase the chance of the book getting on NYT best-seller list. (Doing the same in other countries may increase the prospects of the book getting on that country’s bestseller list.)Along with the publication of the book, I will be doing a speaking tour with the same title as the book. You can book tickets here, with a 50% discount if you use the code SINGER50 (Profits will be 100% donated to effective charities opposing intensive animal production).Please spread the words (and links) about the book and the speaking tour to help give the book a strong start.Why a new book?The major motivation of writing the new book is to have a book about animal ethics that is relevant in the 21st Century. Compared with Animal Liberation, there are major updates on the situation of animals used in research and factory farming, and people’s attitudes toward animals, as well as new research on the capacities of animals to suffer, and on the contribution of meat to climate change.What’s different?The animal movement emerged after the 1975 version of AL. In particular, the concern for farmed animals developed rapidly over the last two decades. These developments deserve to be reported and discussed.Some of the issues discussed in AL have seen many changes since then. Some animal experiments are going out of fashion, while some others emerged. On factory farming, there were wins for the farmed animal movement, such as the partially successful “cage-free movement” and various wins in legislative reforms. But the number of animals raised in factory farms increased rapidly during the same time. A significant portion of this increased number came from aquaculture, in other words fish factory farms. New developments were also seen regarding replacing factory farming, in particular the development of plant-based meat alternative and cultivated meats.ALN has a more global perspective than AL, most notably discussing what happened in China. Since the last edition of AL, China has greatly increased the use of animals in research and factory farming.There are also changes in my views about a number of issues. Firstly, since 1990 (The year of publication for the last full revision of the 1975 version of AL), scientists have gained more evidence that suggests the sentience of fish and some invertebrates. Accordingly, I have updated my attitudes toward the probability of sentience of these animals. Secondly, I have changed my views toward the suffering of wild animals, in particular the possibility and tractability of helping them. Thirdly, I have added the discussion about the relation between climate change and meat consumption. Last but not least, Effective Altruism, as an idea or as a movement, did not exist when the versions of Animal Liberation were written, so I have added some discussions of the EA movement and EA principles in the new book.Is the book relevant to EA?Animal welfare is, and should be, one of the major cause areas with EA for reasons I do not need to repeat here. I will explain why ALN is relevant to EA.Firstly, ALN contains some of the commonly used arguments by EAs who work on animal welfare on why the issues of animal suffering is important. Reading ALN provides an opportunity for newcomers to the EA community to learn about animal ethics and why some (hopefully most) EAs think that animals matter morally and that they are...