Saving ourselves, who saves them?

After listening to Gary Kleppel talk in class on Monday, I was very enthusiastic about working to make my life and as many others as I can more sustainable. While I agree with him that we need to save ourselves and in doing so we will save more and more of the world, I worry about how long that would take. It seems to me the largest problem with large scale change is getting people to "go first." While I might "save myself" no one is going to want to join me because I didn't focus enough on telling them why I am doing it.

This is especially important when lives are on the line, I am mainly referring to creatures who can't save themselves. We need to save ourselves, that is not really arguable, however we need to try and help those who cant.

Think of how many animals would be in-humanely treated over the years that we spend all our energy on saving ourselves. Over 100-million pigs are raised and slaughtered each year (http://www.da4a.org/pigs.htm) , that's a lot of animals that are denied, essentially any sort of life. If each person in our school had their own farm, that's about 20,000 farms. Now if they raised pigs for food, perhaps 10-15 in their herd, that' still only 300,000 pigs, significantly less than the millions killed each year. This is does not include other farm animals like chickens, cows and sheep.

According to the World Farm Animals Day organization, about 50 billion animals are in-humanely treated and then killed each year. Due to the fact that the numbers are so high, people need to reach out and save animals as we save ourselves. Those 50 billion don't a chance to plead their case before a jury, they don't even know their going to die so how could they possibly know to save themselves?

I feel we as human beings have a moral obligation to defend them. Most of us enjoy a juicy steak or bacon with their eggs but few ever consider the horrors that food faced before it was on your plate. However because so many of us love to eat meat, there are a lot of people who can make a change. There is no need for the inhumane treatment of animals other then convenience, the facts are out and now it's up to the consumer to make a choice.