In this book launch panel, Jeff Sebo will discuss information and arguments from his new book Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves with Kendra Coulter and Douglas Kysar.

In 2020, COVID-19, the Australia bushfires, and other global threats served as vivid reminders that human and nonhuman fates are linked. Human use of nonhuman animals contributes to pandemics, climate change, and other global threats which, in turn, contribute to biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and nonhuman suffering. In Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves, Jeff Sebo argues that humans have a moral responsibility to include animals in global health and environmental policy, by reducing our use of them as part of our pandemic and climate change mitigation efforts and increasing our support for them as part of our adaptation efforts. Applying and extending frameworks such as One Health and the Green New Deal, Sebo calls for reducing support for factory farming, deforestation, and the wildlife trade; increasing support for humane, healthful, and sustainable alternatives; and considering human and nonhuman needs holistically. Sebo also considers links with practical issues like education, employment, social services, and infrastructure, as well as with theoretical issues like well-being, moral status, political status, and population ethics. In all cases, he shows that these issues are both important and complex, and that we should neither underestimate our responsibilities because of our limitations, nor underestimate our limitations because of our responsibilities. Both an urgent call to action and a survey of what ethical and effective action requires, Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves is an invaluable resource for scholars, advocates, policy-makers, and anyone interested in what kind of world we should attempt to build and how.

Panelists:

Professor Jeff Sebo is Clinical Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Affiliated Professor of Law, Philosophy, Bioethics, and Medical Ethics, and Director of the Animal Studies M.A. Program at New York University. He is author of Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves (Oxford University Press, 2022) and co-author of Chimpanzee Rights (Routledge, 2018) and Food, Animals, and the Environment (Routledge, 2018). He is also an executive committee member at the NYU Center for Environmental and Animal Protection, an advisory board member at the Animals in Context series at NYU Press, a board member at Minding Animals International, a mentor at Sentient Media, and a senior research affiliate at the Legal Priorities Project. 

Dr. Kendra Coulter is the Chancellor's Chair for Research Excellence and an associate professor in the department of labour studies at Brock University. She is a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, a member of the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists, the author of Animals, Work, and the Promise of Interspecies Solidarity (Palgrave Macmillan) and the forthcoming Defending Animals: Inside the Front Lines of Animal Protection (MIT Press), and a co-editor of Animal Labour: A New Frontier of Interspecies Justice? (OUP)

Professor Douglas Kysar is Joseph M. Field ’55 Professor of Law at Yale Law School and faculty co-director of the Law, Ethics and Animals Program. His teaching and research areas include torts, animal law, environmental law, climate change, products liability, and risk regulation. Kysar was previously on the faculty at Cornell Law School. He received his B.A. summa cum laude from Indiana University in 1995 and his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1998. Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable William G. Young of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

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