So, basically, my view is I don't want to support the exploitation of animals, and within reason, I will do what I can to avoid it, but it's not like it's a religion for me. It's not like I consider I'm polluted if somehow some bit of milk or cheese or something passes my lips.
To make sustainable progress in reducing extreme poverty will require improvements in both the quantity and quality of aid.
If extreme poverty is allowed to increase, it will give rise to new problems, including new diseases that will spread from countries that cannot provide adequate healthcare to those that can. Poverty will lead to more migrants seeking to move, whether legally or not, to rich nations.
I don't understand the notion that modern farming is anything do to with nature. It's a pretty gross interference with nature.
I am not saying that factory farming is the same as the Holocaust or the slave trade, but it's clear that there is an immense amount of suffering in it, and just as we think that the Nazis were wrong to ignore the suffering of their victims, so we are wrong to ignore the sufferings of our victims.
It means that, in fact, it's - whether fascist is the right word I don't know - more of a plutocracy than anything resembling a democracy; it has become a nation controlled by a very small, very wealthy elite.
There's a difference between early and late abortions. If you have a late abortion, where the fetus might feel pain, then I think you should have a good reason. Because then you're inflicting pain. As you go through the third trimester, you need to have more serious reasons to end a pregnancy.
Robots already perform many functions, from making cars to defusing bombs - or, more menacingly, firing missiles. Children and adults play with toy robots, while vacuum-cleaning robots are sucking up dirt in a growing number of homes and - as evidenced by YouTube videos - entertaining cats.
Americans think they're the leader of the world and yet can say that they're putting their economic interests ahead of the lives of - quite possibly - tens of millions of people who over the next 50 years will die because of floods or storms or tropical diseases or whatever. I guess that sort of thing makes me angry.
My own view is that being a vegetarian or vegan is not an end in itself, but a means towards reducing both human and animal suffering and leaving a habitable planet to future generations.
The Pentagon said that these prisoners were kept in accordance with the Geneva Convention, and of course I was not reassured by that, but I couldn't prove that that was wrong; so we're clearer about that.
In the real world, 90% of the money spent on medical research is focused on conditions that are responsible for just 10% of the deaths and disability caused by diseases globally.
There is no doubt that there is a huge difference between human and nonhuman animals. But what we are overlooking is the fact that nonhuman animals are conscious beings, that they can suffer.
There is no humane slaughter requirement for wild fish caught and killed at sea, nor, in most places, for farmed fish.
In an ideal world, the amount of money we spend on medical research to prevent or cure a disease would be proportional to its seriousness and the number of people who suffer from it.
Bush sees the evil as out there in the wider world, residing in people who 'hate freedom'. Look at his immediate response to the pictures of prisoner abuse; this is not what Americans do, these are not our values.
If you go back in time you'll find tribes that were essentially only concerned with their own tribal members. If you were a member of another tribe, you could be killed with impunity.
If governments did not mislead their citizens so often, there would be less need for secrecy, and if leaders knew they could not rely on keeping the public in the dark about what they are doing, they would have a powerful incentive to behave better.
Of those who die from avoidable, poverty-related causes, nearly 10 million, according to UNICEF, are children under five. They die from diseases such as measles, diarrhoea, and malaria that are easy and inexpensive to treat or prevent.
If people are prepared to eat locally and seasonally, then they probably do pretty well in terms of environmental impact.
