Can We Justify Flying in an Age of Climate Breakdown?

With international travel coming to a halt during the pandemic (or at least becoming cumbersome and prone to cancellation), I’ve been waiting patiently for the time when I can hop on a plane again and go on some trips that I’ve been planning. Before the pandemic struck, I had a flight booked to the island…

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Does Lab-Grown Meat Deserve the Hype?

Lab-grown meat is being heralded as a viable solution – the solution we desperately need – to the ecologically destructive effects of animal agriculture. Animal agriculture is responsible for at least 16.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which is more than that caused by all transportation combined. In addition, it takes 2,500 gallons…

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Digital Antinatalism: Is It Wrong to Bring Sentient AI Into Existence?

Digital antinatalism is the philosophical view that it is morally wrong to create sentient artificial intelligence (AI). It is a variant of antinatalism, which promotes the view that we should refrain from procreating for moral reasons. We can consider digital antinatalism to be a selective – or weaker – form of antinatalism since one may…

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Will We All Be Eating Insects in the Future?

The idea of eating insects can seem a bit unappealing if you’ve been brought up with a Western diet. We do eat them as a novelty or inadvertently as food colouring. However, insect-eating (known as entomophagy) is common in many cultures across the world. Humans have been eating insects from prehistoric times to the present…

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The UK’s Legal Recognition of Animals as Sentient Beings: Encouraging But Contradictory

The UK has decided to formally recognise non-human animals as sentient beings (this includes all vertebrates by default). Invertebrates could be included later based on new evidence, although there is already strong evidence that some invertebrates (crustaceans and cephalopods) can feel pain. This is the first contradictory aspect of the legislative decision. The introduction of…

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