There’s no justice without climate justice, and no climate justice without anti-speciesism
– an interview with just wondering… taken by Zane McNeill -*
Zane McNeill: One of the things that visually and allegorically struck me the most was the imagery of a storm, a flood, a great disaster. Does this storm represent the already ‘disappeared’ and that the end of the world we imagine is already here? If so, how do we move past drowning in this dystopia and imagining a multi-species solidarity future?
just wondering…: The storm is indeed echoing a big change. It represents the ending of a certain kind of world, both in a physical sense, signaling the presence of the 6th mass extinction, and in an epistemological and ontological sense in which the human being and human culture no longer sit on top of different beings that are thrown together under the name of Nature. In other words, it signals an end to the conceptual binaries we find in the West, such as Nature/Culture, Mind/Body, Human/Animal, and others. But, the storm is more than this in the film, it’s also signaling an ongoing cycle of injustice that keeps happening. It’s not just about the mass extinction that we are facing right now, the one Elizabeth Kolbert talks about, but an echo of the environmental injustices of the past and the destruction that indigenous people and other animals faced due to colonialism and the brutal stealing of land used for grazing that made huge profits in the pockets of white Europeans. A part of the answer rests here, with the violence that was caused.
First of all, there is an acknowledgment of what was done before us and the things still perpetuated. Environmental justice must go beyond the discussion of carbon emissions and envision a more radical change. What we must understand is that the harm done by colonialism is the backbone of the ongoing system. In other words, capitalism runs on theft, it runs on exploited labor, and it runs through the subjugation of non-human animals that are endlessly reproduced in horrible conditions.
By not being considered edible, routinely experimented on, or killed to be transformed into a product for others, by simply being seen as a member of society, many humans benefit from anthroprivilege, as Simon Springer calls it. Clearly, some humans benefit more than others, but modern human societies give all of us a certain amount of power over the lives of other animals from the moment we are born in the dominant species. Of course, a considerable amount of the human population doesn’t benefit much from this system. Many humans from the Global South live in extremely precarious situations, so the top 10% living in the Global North are definitely the ones who have the most to gain from the current arrangements. They are the ones who truly benefit from property laws that allow owning other individuals, breeding them endlessly to be disabled and dismembering them piece by piece to sell their bodies on the market, making huge profits out of it. In one sense, the question is simple, there’s no way to go forward without abolishing the animal industrial complex.
The evidence of this disastrous system is overwhelming, not only because of the unimaginable torturous and hellish ways other animals are treated in abattoirs, but also because of countless other reasons: poor working conditions, environmental damage, the risk of pandemics, and the list continues, putting the lives of many other peoples on the line. There are many, many steps we need to take from where we are now to be able to live in welcoming multispecies societies. Some of them are easier, others are hard and they require a lot of effort, not just politically, in terms of mobilization and organization, but also as an effort spent constantly on tackling anthropocentric values, speciesist norms and practices, as well as the ideology of humanism. Why humanism? Because it’s based on the ideal image of the rational, white Eurocentric, cis, able-bodied man that is seen as the master, shepherd, or guardian of all other beings.
Z. M.: “We Fly, We Crawl, We Swim” seems to be predicated on the argument that climate justice is necessary for any justice. In my work, in particular, I continually work towards a justice that is not only oriented in environmental justice, but also encapsulated anti-speciesism and other movements for liberation. Could you explain how you see these justices intertwined and why it is imperative to predicate these social justice movements on environmental justice?
One of our main intentions with the film was to bring anti-speciesism closer to the climate justice movement. To step back and explain: speciesism is a form of intersubjective, institutional and epistemic discrimination reflecting anthropocentric norms and values that, directly and indirectly, at a structural and individual level, harms individuals who are not classified as Homo sapiens. In the humanist paradigm, non-human animals are rendered unworthy or less worthy because certain particularities are constructed as qualitatively different to justify the unequal consideration and the hierarchical value system of the dominant actors in power. In this way, non-human animals fall outside of „the human” category that is deemed virtuous and worthy of ethical consideration contrasting to „the animal”.
So, because we felt that such views were reflected in the mainstream discourse around carbon emissions and green growth, focused on humanist and neoliberal approaches to the problem, we sought to address them. In our work, we look at how social justice issues often intertwine and how injustices are caused by a pattern of similar factors. We do this by taking into account different acts of violence, looking at what they have in common, and analyzing the histories preceding us. We can think here of the violent domestication of other animals, the European colonization of indigenous land, and the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and see how these forms of oppression are linked, as David Nibert’s work shows. All these horrible processes had a role to play in the formation of the current global capitalist system.
There are many ways in which different forms of oppression meet, so we try as best as we can to have a pro-intersectional perspective, taking into account how different (non)humans have been affected by the current system. From non-human animals to working-class folks and people living in the poorest regions on this Earth, to BBIPOC, (dis)abled, neurodivergent, queer & trans folks, sex-workers, women, to folks without education or a home. Everyone’s voice matters, because all of these people face some kind of violence within this system, where risks are not shared equally. So, in our view, it has become impossible and perhaps entirely misleading to ignore the complex and different problems marginalized communities face for the sake of speaking of just one struggle.
The struggle for liberation is made of many battles that belong to all of those who are marginalized. We must find ways to address social issues without ignoring the particularity of every individual and of every struggle, and by speaking of the common social and environmental pressures – fighting together for liberation. So, the simple answer to your question, why environmental justice is so important, is because, without this sort of justice, we can barely have any kind of justice for the already marginalized communities above. Climate justice is linked with everything else. That is because it’s crucial to be able to breathe, to have water and food, to have a home today and tomorrow, and to have some kind of chance to cover one’s basic necessities to live… without this bare minimum, other forms of justice collapse and remain illusory. Floods, hurricanes, wildfires, pandemics, heatwaves, shortages of water, drought, are just some of these pressing issues that are knocking on the door, pushing democratic forms of governance into totalitarian and fascist directions.
In our film, we wanted to make sure that the idea of climate justice is not predicated on the speciesist ideas and anthropocentric values that brought us here, and that powerful actors become responsible and are being held accountable for the direct or indirect harm they have on the lives of non-human animals. We addressed the question of justice through four lenses. The first kind of justice is called recognition, the second is representation, the third speaks of distribution and the last one is about parity of participation. All these forms of justice are taken from environmental justice literature and political ecology, as well as from early movements of EJ that had a strong commitment to change the economic system. We recontextualized some of these views in the case of non-human animals by relying on ideas taken from the political turn in animal studies, where other animals are seen as political actors, all while being critical of humanist conceptions of justice.
Z. M.: There has been a lot of talk recently on a solidarity economy and just transitions towards environmental sustainability. The main argument is that capitalism is the underlying current that commodifies and exploits people, nonhuman animals, and the environment. In which ways do you envision a reformation of economics towards a more just Commons-based society?
Well, that’s a big and complex question. But the thing is, some of it isn’t that difficult. It doesn’t take a lot to realize it’s wrong to have people make huge profits of what is essential to the lives of others. So, for one thing, we need to take the profit motive off things like healthcare, housing, education. And regarding the commons, once the profit motive is out, we can look together – the commons sustain us and all that is living.
The land, the waters, the air, they shouldn’t be owned and destroyed at the whims of some. And it’s interesting to see how the concept of the commons changes once we take other animals into consideration: we realize we have an even bigger claim for living in good relations, since so many of us (human and non-human) depend on it. Our (common) health is not only individual, but collective and environmental – we aren’t disentangled from “nature”, and the COVID-19 pandemic is just one sign of this.
Z. M.: In ecofeminist thought, the importance of ‘Otherization’ and its embeddedness in the nature-culture dualism is often emphasized as the foundation of hegemonic power structures and systems of violence. Could you unpack the importance of this and explain how it is entangled with issues of environmental degradation, speciesist violence, and other oppressive structures?
Yes, well, the nature/culture binary is based on a modern, Eurocentric ontology, that considers a specific kind of human and his culture as the main historical actor. This view is predicated on the idea that there is such a thing as “Nature” that exists outside, which makes up the background of resources on which this particular human sits. As with many other dualisms, it implies a hierarchy between those two dimensions to justify a relation of use. So, the subject who has Culture sits on one side, while the objects which are determined, dull things, are part of Nature. Of course, this view completely ignores that there are other relations in the world between different actors, that other animals aren’t machines driven by instinct, that the so-called thinking-subject isn’t universal, but embodied, and that this binary model has a history and a place.
In other words, what this paradigm does is to impose a Eurocentric view of the world, treating other beings from a position of power, and of domination. It is another violent way in which the world is categorized by powerful actors to justify a specific set of property rights, political participation, and a certain kind of relation between beings. We don’t want to overemphasize the role that ideas, paradigms, and ideologies play in the shaping of the world and narrowly focus on human existence only. However, the view that humans and their Culture are separated from Nature did play an essential part in pushing us closer towards the climate crisis. Indigenous peoples’ knowledges would have ensured that this Earth has a better future, yet we are on the path that we are. And, this is to a certain extent due to European expansion, its relation of domination with Nature, and all the horrible acts that are rooted in the growth of capitalism.
Z. M.: What I find most impactful about your film is its offering of solutions—we do not leave the film drowning, but hopeful and inspired to create sustainable futures. I especially was moved by what a trust multispecies society could look like. Could you explain the power of reimagining animals and the environment as political persons, citizens, and denizens? Why is it necessary to rework our systems to include more-than-human actors and actants as autonomous?
The political question is a big one. This part in the film stems from Donaldson & Kymlicka’s argument regarding seeing other animals as political actors that should have a voice in our (common) political matters. So first, it is necessary to view other animals as political actors precisely because this allows including their perspectives and needs into the making of society, as active agents, not as beings we simply protect or guard. Eva Meijer’s work also influenced us a lot regarding the languages of other animals, exploring the need for communication with them to collectively change our institutions.
Viewing non-human animals as political actors is different from viewing the environment as such. In our view, it is (non)human individuals who should be seen as agents whose needs, wishes, and voices need to be included in the process of political decision-making. However, this is not to say that we shouldn’t have protections for forests, for example. Instead, it means that individuals should be treated with inviolable rights, they cannot be sacrificed for the “greater good” of the ecosystem. Trees, rivers, or plains, need not be seen as citizens in this sense, with negative and positive rights. However, harming those can harm the individuals whose lives depend on them, so it’s important to protect the environment since this is what enables individuals to have good lives. We would not speak about the need for socialization or for learning the rules of society, since a forest is not an individual, at least not in the same way a dog or a human is.
Some people consider the paradigm of rights too anthropocentric, or liberal, or think it gives too much legitimacy to state power – these are critiques we acknowledge and agree with up to a certain point. And, to some degree, it’s certain rights that we oppose, such as the human right to own other animals as property. However, our response is that not having any kind of rights for marginalized individuals (in this system) is much worse. Sure, we can question the paradigm of rights, but when people are overly suspicious about the rights of other animals, or of those who don’t have them, instead of the other way around, we should really question their political goals. Rights can be tactically used to disrupt and disarm human sovereignty so that other animals have a better chance to survive against systemic discrimination.
In Donaldson and Kymlicka’s Zoopolis we have rights for every non-human animal, but positive rights vary whether those animals exist within human communities and were “domesticated” (such as cows or dogs), whether they are non-specifically dependent on human settlements, in other words, “liminal” (such as pigeons or crows), or whether they are outside of human spheres, free-roaming (such as deer or bears). Every category is viewed differently based on their relations, on the spaces they occupy, and on their relationship to territory. In this way, the authors speak of: citizenship, denizenship, and sovereign communities. This strategy might not be perfect, and we must question the conceptualisation of sovereignty, the assumed naturalized relations to territory, and who settles such matters. However, the turn to see other animals as political actors is one way to acknowledge our interspecies relations instead of ignoring them, and it’s a way forward from seeing other animals as moral patients. For example, the category of “liminal animals” can address some problems coming from traditional animal rights theories that speak only of the “domesticated/wild” dichotomy and thus forgetting or invisibilizing other animals living among us.
If we look otherwise, with the welfarist approach, it’s clear that the effort to reduce the violence inflicted upon other animals is rarely in their interest since it adjusts a broken system, often with the end goal of convincing consumers that there is an ethical way to kill and exploit them. It’s clearly not enough, the simple recognition of inviolable rights will end the whole industry itself, and we already know how little these rights can give and how further we need to push beyond negative rights.
The ecological approach, on the other hand, is seeing other animals as part of Nature, sometimes justifying killing individuals to save some threatened species or the ecosystem. Sacrificing individuals for the „greater good” is something that nobody will dare to propose in the case of human beings (for good reasons), so it’s easy to see how this approach is problematic and speciesist. The abolitionist approach, on the contrary, coming from animal rights theory, is a more radical response to welfarism, with which we agree on many points. However, one issue we have with a certain strand of it is the fixation on a total separation between humans and other animals. Not only that this is not really possible conceptually or practically, but we don’t see it as ideal either. This is not because we don’t understand the power imbalances or violent practices existing in human societies, but because we don’t think that humans can simply withdraw from being in the lives of other animals without biopolitical control, or without other violent forms to ensure that human and non-human lives don’t meet. In our view, we also need to find ways to live among other animals, socialize with them, share and give back the stolen spaces, provide care, freedom, mobility, and thus find ways to co-exist. We have a responsibility to ensure that human needs, priorities, and safety, do not come at the expense of other animals, and that their interests are taken into account.
We cannot simply ignore that we are always in nature, always enmeshed in interactions with other species, relating with each other and changing the environment in which we all live. We cannot entirely avoid intervening in the lives of other animals, because we aren’t separated from them in the first place.
Z. M.: You mention that sanctuaries are a contemporary example of ‘places of possibilities.’. Could you explain how reimagining the non-human-world as kin is imperative to interrogating normative power structures and reimagining our infrastructure and world with more-than-humans in mind?
Kinship is one path through which we can think, feel, and act in relation with other animals. There is kinship in an expansive sense, let’s say, such as that we are all earthlings and we have so much in common – our need for nourishment and a healthy environment, our history of having co-evolved together, with common ancestors, common environmental pressures. All these factors push us towards what Mattew Calarco called the indistinction approach – a period where the human/animal divide can no longer be supported, biologically, ontologically, empirically, and of course, politically. Then there is kinship in the very sense of the word – having particular relations with particular individuals, building ‘families’ that are more-than-human, non-heteronormative, multispecies. And that happens quite often, with ‘pets’. But in some sanctuaries, kinship relations are built with non-human animals whose personhood is downplayed in the broader speciesist society (such as farmed animals). That carries a sort of power because it breaks down the ‘normal’ order. The being that others kill and eat becomes your kin, their life depends on your life, and your happiness depends on their happiness – as with anyone you deeply love and care for. The possibilities this opens are still to be explored – what would our relationships with other animals look like if they were based on care, respect, admiration, trust and consent? If other animals could choose to live with us, would they? Wouldn’t it be amazing to find out, to enable them to choose?
Z. M.: This film does not sidestep the harm that has been wrecked on non-humans and marginalized human communities. What does accountability look like when capitalism literally has a body count of millions? How do you understand and operationalize this harm that seems so difficult to comprehend? With this in mind, what reparations can and should be offered to these communities? What does ‘making living just’ look like?
Asking the question is precisely the point. Even more so – not asking it, but making it possible for those who are silenced to have a real say in it. It is not our question to answer by ourselves. It is our question to bring to the front. And furthermore, it is our task (as activists) to change the terms of the debate, to enable the voices that are silenced to speak on these issues – and not only to ‘add’ to what is being said, but to construct new ways of debating and speaking that need not always relate to already legitimized laws and values.
For example, it will always be difficult to argue for animal agency and political participation within human laws that see them as property. Making living just is, and should be, an ongoing practice, one in which both the process and the scope is decided together. It can be guided by principles that protect the marginalized and enable them to have a say in it, it can be non-coercive and non-punitive, it can be done. Or at least we can try.
Z. M.: “Our world is globalized, but risk is not” was such a powerful part of this film. I’ve been thinking a lot about ‘sustainability’ and how it seems to mitigate the harms of energy use away from holding the actual bad actors accountable and instead blaming the victims of climate change and capitalism. Even in the U.S., those most likely to live next to a factory farm are rural, poor, people of color. This is a clear case of environmental racism—their communities, land, and self are polluted and they themselves become an example of toxic ecologies and bodies—and yet advocates usually blame them for working and living in these spaces. Why do marginalized populations face the heightened risks of climate change, and what is the responsibility of people who live in parts of the world that contribute to this?
In one way, you have already answered a part of the question – marginalized populations face a heightened risk precisely because they are seen by the dominant class as less valuable and less worthy.
They are not the ones who benefit from this system, but the ones who pay the costs. However, it is important to realize how much each of us benefits – without guilt or shame. When thinking about what our responsibility is, we should also correlate it with our position, power and privilege. For example, Timothy Pachirat wrote that people who buy “meat” are paying others to do the dirty and dangerous work of killing other animals for them – they are to be held responsible much more than someone who is just looking for a job to survive. Then of course, the people who buy “meat” only buy what is given to them by an industry that is absolutely huge and also subsidized by the government. There’s always someone above, holding more power than us, but that doesn’t mean we should discount the power that we have. And this is not about liberal consumer ethics – this is about a political boycott, this is about integrity in our daily lives, this is about recognizing the things we can do, and some are really within reach. In leftist climate circles, there’s a pushback to not talk about individual consumption, because of course that won’t change the industry by itself. So it won’t, we need structural change as well. But is it justified for us to not change anything about our lives, when we advocate for change?
Z. M.: I was extremely moved by the quote “if you don’t even own your body, how can there be justice?” In the film, you illustrate battery hens in a factory farm, but I also thought of the prison-industrial complex, of battles for reproductive justice, of the indentured servitude many of us are entangled in within this capitalist system. I feel like under capitalism, many of our bodies aren’t our own—they are used as tools commodified for capital and production. I’ve been thinking about disability and trans liberation as a way in which to reclaim our bodies. Could you speak to ways in which you see justice and autonomy embodied in liberation movements as a direct subversion and challenge to capitalism?
Yes! That is one quote which easily points to how the antispeciesist struggles are intertwined with feminist, antiracist and queer struggles. It’s a question of bodily autonomy that we can’t do without, even if we refuse the mind/body dualism and the separation between the two. Sometimes we need to work with the words we have, work with the things we can right now, so as to be able to go further, and have more liberatory actions in the future. Disability justice is, for example, one site of amazing creativity and resistance against capitalism’s desire to profit off bodies. And there’s a lot of overlap and strength we could find in fighting these fights together and learning from each other, from different movements. There’s no way that one can just topple capitalism and leave other systems of oppression intact. They won’t go away on their own. If there isn’t explicit attention paid to the voices of those that are disabled, or trans, how can it be ensured that a new system won’t be ableist, or cisnormative? Reclaiming the body can be seen, partly, as a refusal of the humanist, Cartesian mind/body separation, a refusal of our bodies as ‘resources’ for capital.
We are our bodies and our bodies can be political forces. In fact, they already are.
Z. M.: What is the power in embracing our own animality? There is a long history of the category of ‘human’ being used to oppress and animalize marginalized peoples and many people still feel harmed when being compared to non-humans. In what ways does declaring that “I am an animal too” offer a space in which to imagine a multi-species liberation and build solidarity with the more-than-human world?
That’s a great question! Let us just say that, in our view, is not so much a matter of embracing our “animality”, in the sense of a primordial or natural side that we have. This is because humanity is not something that emerged from “animality”, and this is part of the problem we try to address. From an evolutionary point of view, humans are a specific specialized animal like all others, we did not „evolve from animals”, as some humanists claim. So, instead of taking a discontinuous or gradual position, there’s also a pluralistic understanding of the evolutionary process that doesn’t place the human at the top of the hierarchy.
People respond negatively to being compared to other animals because „animality” has been used as an abject category to justify harmful actions towards everyone who is put in it. Completely different beings, who are not seen as fully human by the dominant actors in power, have been thrown in this category throughout history. It’s no wonder that many people don’t respond positively. The category has been used to mark an „other” that is considered less worthy. Given this historical reality, a distancing reaction is understandable, it is a means of self-protection – “the animal” is killable, “the human” shouldn’t be. In our view, though, embracing those anthropocentric and humanist values will result in a perpetuation of violence. “Animality” is still kept as a wretched, devalued condition to properly frame “the human” identity in opposition. Because of this, we think it is imperative to emancipate and redefine “the animal” apart from the humanist paradigm to adequately address the problem. And, we need to continue to criticize the politics behind the human/animal dichotomy that justifies speciesism and other harmful -isms.
On every level we can think of, ontological, empirical, or political, the idea that humans are, or must be seen as superior beings has been challenged again and again. The film tries to point out that we are all animal-beings, which is to say, embodied and vulnerable beings endowed with certain particular characteristics that define our experience. We feel pain and pleasure, and we move towards something, either by flying, crawling, or swimming. We also have common characteristics because of our common ancestors and because we are affected by similar selective pressures. As humans, we are evolutionary neighbors with other animals, not higher on the ladder. To reclaim “humanism” from the Eurocentric conception is often merely an adjustment that lets more beings inside the moral circle, but without sufficiently questioning speciesism and the sovereignty of “the human”. In other words, without questioning the image of the ideal subject around which the moral circle is drawn in the first place, the hierarchical dimension on which “the human” identity is based, as well as the history and philosophy of the human/animal dichotomy. Not to say that the whole approach of drawing a line where „the human” ends is often, if not racist, ableist or essentialist, which is exactly what we oppose. We don’t oppose that every being, every species, is different and has their own needs and particularities. We oppose the universalism, essentialism, and the anthropocentric values that come with humanism and its politics. The idea that humans are animals plus something that makes them something else completely is what we criticize. And the idea that “the human” is in opposition to “the animal”. In our view, humans are specific animals, and although all species and all individuals have distinct characteristics, there’s no human/animal “abyss”.
This dichotomy and the metaphysics that support it have received many critiques recently, and we think our work is a continuation of this line of thought. It’s important to understand the history of humanism, as well as what other people mean when they say that there’s a clear line between humans and other animals. Are those claims a simple misunderstanding coming from a lack of biological knowledge, or are they rather stating something deeper, perhaps ontologically or politically? We think it’s the latter, and that’s why our anti-speciesist work has been often focused on that. To speak of “the animal that I am” isn’t simply to restate a scientific consensus, it’s a political statement that comes with a critique of humanism, and its anthropocentric metaphysics, to challenge an oppressive system and its current power structures.
Zane McNeill is a scholar-activist with a BA in History and MA in Political Science. He is an experienced organizer and has worked in the spheres of public policy, government relations, and animal law in the non-profit sector. They are the co-editor of Queer and Trans Voices: Achieving Liberation Through Consistent Anti-Oppression and are currently working on other projects concerning queer liberation in Appalachia, anti-carceral veganism, choreopolitics, and socially engaged art.
just wondering… is a collective of three individuals creating short animated essays against the status-quo. Drawing from posthumanist and antispeciesist theories, as well as many other approaches from philosophy, social sciences, and activist movements, they aim to make knowledge more accessible through audio-visual storytelling. Their work is inescapably political and speculative. Aron Nor is a researcher, artivist, and filmmaker, Mina Mimosa is a visual artist and activist, and M. Martelli is a writer and activist-scholar.
“we fly, we crawl, we swim – a short film about climate justice” explores different ideas of justice through anti-speciesist lenses. The film engages with ideas taken from environmental justice, political ecology, political philosophy, posthumanism, critical animal studies, and anti-speciesist thought in general. It won “Best Animation” at Kraków Vegan Film Festival, „Best Climate Film” at Luleå International Film Festival and “BEST OF FEST” award from Animalis Fabula Film Festival. The film was supported by the 2020 grant from Culture & Animals Foundation and individual donations through Patreon.
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* Acest interviu a apărut în limba italiană în Liberazioni. Rivista di critica antispecista.