Every November, roughly 46 million turkeys are killed in the United States for the sake of “American Tradition.” These are curious, socially intelligent birds capable of recognizing flock mates, forming hierarchies, and communicating with unique vocalizations, yet most are reduced to a dining table centerpiece, living just 14–20 weeks before slaughter despite a natural lifespan of 10–15 years. Their short lives, filled with fear and pain, expose the uncomfortable truth that gratitude and violence are braided together in the modern Thanksgiving ritual.
Talking about turkeys means confronting the systems—colonial, patriarchal, and capitalist—that shape their lives and deaths. Thanksgiving, too, cannot be separated from the mythologies that erase Indigenous histories, stewardship, and struggles for sovereignty. This holiday invites us to rethink what, and who, we actually celebrate, honor, and consume.
Most U.S. turkeys live in industrial sheds holding 6,000–20,000 birds and are genetically engineered to grow unnaturally heavy and fast. Their bodies become so large that many cannot stand without pain, often developing joint damage, leg deformities, and heart failure; because of these proportions, they are bred almost exclusively through forced artificial insemination, with their natural social and reproductive lives erased and relabeled as “efficiency.”
Packed tightly together, birds are subjected to “management” practices like beak trimming, desnooding, and detoeing, which remove sensitive body parts without anesthesia and can cause long-term pain, altered behavior, and difficulty eating or moving.
Most turkeys raised for Thanksgiving live on litter soaked with feces and urine under artificial lighting designed to maximize growth; their rapid weight gain often outpaces skeletal development, and many collapse from heart or lung problems. This is not tradition. It is industrial design masquerading as holiday ceremony, where bodies are treated as commodities and exploited to produce life that exists only to generate profit, encapsulating patriarchal capitalist values.
The harm of industrial turkey production does not exist in a vacuum; it is built on stolen land, exploited labor, and ecological harm —precisely the systems that ecofeminism, antispeciesism, and degrowth aim to dismantle. Barns, slaughterhouses, and feedlots sit on land taken from Indigenous peoples which are converted into monoculture grain fields, while underpaid and often migrant workers shoulder the physical risk and trauma required to keep cheap meat flowing.
Thanksgiving intensifies this logic of overproduction: ever-bigger birds, subsidized grain, and millions of pounds of turkey waste each year. In a staggering display of patriarchal capitalism’s disregard for life, it is estimated that 8 million turkeys will be thrown in the trash this Thanksgiving. In this context refusing turkey becomes more than a dietary preference; it is a small but powerful act of rejecting growth-obsessed holiday consumption in favor of justice and planetary boundaries.
And yet, as animal agriculture continues to threaten ecological stability, this year’s H5N1 bird flu outbreaks expose how fragile the turkey industry really is. Since late summer 2025, between 2 and 2.2 million turkeys have been infected or mass-killed, leaving the U.S. with its smallest turkey flock in ~40 years. Zoonotic outbreaks like H5N1 are not random accidents; they are features of a system that concentrates animals, waste, and workers in the same polluted spaces.
These mass culls—often carried out through ventilation shutdown—are presented as “biosecurity,” but they are predictable fallout of confinement, genetic uniformity, and high-density sheds, as discussed in my last post “What We Do to Nature Makes Us Sick – Literally.”
By hiding the ongoing theft and enclosure of Indigenous territories, the Thanksgiving story obscures how industrial animal agriculture depends on those same lands for feed crops, confinement facilities, and slaughter plants.
Additionally, Indigenous relationships with turkeys stretch back more than 2,000 years and offer a radically different perspective of these animals than what is normalized by Thanksgiving as its celebrated today. Historical records show that Indigenous societies in the Americas valued the birds so highly that they tamed them at least twice for companionship and participation in ceremonies.
This contrast makes clear that the way turkeys are treated today is not natural or inevitable—it is a political and economic choice.
This web of ecological and social harm reveals that struggles for land, animal liberation, and bodily autonomy are never separate. Colonial systems reshape landscapes and species to fit extractive needs, while the same logic reaches into gender and labor. What happens to the land, and what happens to the animals forced onto it, mirrors what happens to the people whose labor and autonomy are also controlled.
Ecofeminism names these shared roots and insists that none of these violences can be confronted in isolation. Instead of systems built on domination, extraction, and sacrifice zones, it asks us to move toward plant-based, low-impact, and degrowth-aligned ways of living that are grounded in care, interdependence, and respect for all beings.
Reimagining Thanksgiving through this lens means refusing to isolate animal suffering from land theft, climate chaos, and labor exploitation.
Supporting Indigenous land defenders, eating plant-based seasonal foods, and telling honest histories become interconnected acts of resistance to a system that treats life as expendable.
In place of a holiday that normalizes mistreatment, these choices move us toward traditions rooted in reciprocity, repair, and the shared right of all beings to live and thrive.
Art has long served as a catalyst for change, connecting information to emotion and inspiring action. In the face of the climate crisis, human imagination may play a critical role in environmental activism by bridging creativity and science to drive transformation and innovation.
Several studies and projects support the idea that art can be a powerful driver for climate awareness.
For example, research published in ScienceDirect demonstrates that artistic activism fosters emotional engagement, behavioral change, and civic participation. Additionally, the US Global Change Research Program has found that climate art exhibitions and educational programs can encourage communities to see themselves as part of the solution, inspiring both dialogue and action.
Collaboration between arts and sciences transforms information into a sensory experience, which makes it more likely that the information will elicit emotion and remain in our memory.
Art’s power lies in its ability to make us feel before we act. By tapping into emotion, it connects intellectual awareness to moral responsibility. Art brings humanity to urgent political and environmental issues, allowing audiences to encounter them with new perspectives. This turns observation into involvement, inspiring people to envision how we might live differently in the future.
As one artist-scholar observed, “The universal language of art can encourage people from all different backgrounds to want to develop actions to help live more sustainably.”
Art, in this sense, becomes an act of resilience. It reminds us that that restoring our bond with the environment can be as creative as it is urgent.
Encountering Hundertwasser: A Philosophy of Color, Form, and Nature
My personal belief in the power of art as climate action was reinforced during a trip to Vienna several years ago. I had saved my pennies for several years and planned the trip around viewing works from my two of my favorite painters, Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, leaders of the Viennese Secession Movement whose paintings shaped my understanding of creative freedom. But it was while I was in Vienna that I encountered a new figure who would expand my thinking even further: Friedensreich Hundertwasser.
My first encounter with his work was at the Kunst Haus Wien, where I was enthralled by the unusual curved lines and bright hues covering the face of the building. While visiting this magnificently strange structure and viewing the paintings inside, I learned that Hundertwasser was not only an artist and architect, but an ecological visionary and environmental activist as well.
His work merged creativity and activism into one beautifully radical philosophy. Deeply inspired by the Viennese Secession Movement, which sought to break away from artistic nationalism and the conservative art establishment of the Austrian Empire, Hundertwasser envisioned an art form that healed both people and the planet.
His work rejected modernist straight lines, which he referred to as “godless and immoral,” in favor of spirals, organic patterns, and radiant colors that celebrated life’s natural irregularity. He was a leader in the development of new techniques and the use of unconventional materials often using homemade paints made from organic materials while having mastered many graphic techniques including lithograph, silk screen, etching, woodcut and mixed media.
Hundertwasser believed that humanity had created a separation from nature that was detrimental to both people and the planet and that this “aberration” must be reversed. His artworks often depict structural, environmental, and human elements while advocating for harmony between them.
Hundertwasser summarized his idea of a life in harmony with the laws of nature in seven points which are outlined in his “Peace Treaty With Nature.”
Ecological Conservation Through Art
Hundertwasser created original posters in support of environmental protection efforts such as whale conservation and the promotion of public transport. He dedicated the revenue from these posters to various environmental organizations, which was a key component of his environmental protection strategy.
While visiting the Kunst Haus Wien, I was especially moved by Hundertwasser’s poster“Save the Rain – Each Raindrop is a Kiss From Heaven,” created for the Norwegian Nature Conservancy Association to raise awareness about acid rain and its impact on forests and fish. Seeing this work in person filled me with a deep, expansive gratitude for the miracles of the natural world.
The phrase “Each Raindrop is a Kiss from Heaven” overwhelmed me with how extraordinary our planet truly is—how every organism, from grasslands to glaciers, plays a critical role in maintaining the balance that allows us to have clean air, water, food, and medicine. These everyday miracles are sacred gifts. Protecting them is not just an act of care; it is a privilege and our responsibility as beings on this earth.
Manifestos for People and Planet
Hundertwasser spread his ecological positions in numerous manifestos, letters, and public demonstrations. His “Mouldiness Manifesto Against Rationalism in Architecture” from 1958 introduced ideas that remain profoundly relevant today, including the concept of “tree duty” which views integrating vegetation into architecture as a moral and ecological responsibility, promoting the idea that trees should grow on buildings as living architectural elements.
The 1958 manifesto generally called for humanity to restore its relationship with nature by returning to organic, evolving, and humanistic architecture. This vision foreshadowed current movements in sustainable design and biophilic architecture, which similarly emphasize harmony between humans, structures, and the environment.
Tangentially, Hundertwasser campaigned for forestation of the city through rooftop gardens and “tree tenants” that integrate greenery into urban architecture. He also developed and promoted eco-friendly waste management systems, including humus toilets and biological water purification that used aquatic plants to clean wastewater naturally.
His buildings, such as Vienna’s Hundertwasserhaus and Kunst Haus Wien, are living artworks characterized by vegetation and a jubilant embrace of imperfection.
In a world of homogenized cities and ecological neglect, his work proclaimed a rebellious return to nature.
Lessons from Hundertwasser: Honoring Non-Traditional Climate Action
Hundertwasser’s activism teaches several vital lessons. First, resistance to environmental degradation does not only require scientific credentials—it needs vision, creativity, and the courage to break away from conventional norms.
Hundertwasser’s “Everybody Must Be Creative” manifesto argues that creativity is a fundamental human right and necessity, not a privilege of artists. He condemned what he called “the new illiteracy”—the inability to create—claiming that modern civilization suppresses innate imagination through education and standardization.
Hundertwasser reminds us that solutions to complex problems such as the climate crisis demand imaginative engagement from all fields and backgrounds, making creativity an essential skill across disciplines.
His philosophy insists that ecological stewardship is a community responsibility, one that flourishes when everyone, from architects to artists and activists to ordinary citizens, claims a role in restoration and advocacy.
It is essential to recognize that climate action thrives through diversity of approach. Non-traditional methods like art, music, storytelling, and participatory design can catalyze real change, inspire empathy, and build movements.
By embracing creative resistance and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, we can expand our impact—making space for everyone to contribute, innovate, and inspire.
To honor Hundertwasser’s legacy means advocating for the importance of art alongside science and ensuring that sustainability remains a vibrant, imaginative movement.
Since the 1990s, evidence supporting animal sentience has increased tenfold, demonstrating that animals possess the capacity for subjective experiences like pleasure and pain—states previously believed beyond their reach. This surge in evidence has amplified the animal rights movement, spotlighting the injustices prevalent in animal agriculture, research, testing, and challenging normalized societal views of animals.
Photo by Caroline S.
A pivotal moment in this revolution was the establishment of Animal Sentience in 2015. This academic journal became the first to exclusively study the capacity of nonhuman animals to feel and think. By integrating ethics, neuroscience, animal behavior, and welfare science, Animal Sentience has provided a centralized, peer-reviewed platform for interdisciplinary research, marking formal recognition of animal sentience as a legitimate scientific field.
This milestone followed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (2012), which affirmed that many nonhuman animals possess neurological substrates for consciousness.
By legitimizing research on subjective experiences in animals, Animal Sentience challenged behaviorist paradigms that had dominated much of the 20th century.
The journal’s influence extends to policy, with its research supporting legal protections for species like cephalopods and decapods in the EU and UK. The incorporation of animal sentience into UK law through the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 demonstrates growing societal acknowledgment of animals’ capacity for suffering, supporting calls to end practices like factory farming and animal testing.
While these legal protections have helped improve animal welfare and awareness of animal rights, there is still much work to be done to implement the findings of the animal sentience revolution into industry and society.
Moreover, Animal Sentience has strengthened ethical arguments against practices like factory farming and animal research by highlighting evidence of sentience across diverse taxa.
In essence, Animal Sentience has played a critical role in advancing scientific understanding, fostered interdisciplinary collaboration, influenced policy changes, and shifted societal attitudes toward recognizing animals as sentient beings deserving moral consideration.
The New York Declaration challenges paradigms in ethics, neuroscience, and societal norms. It explicitly rejects the assumption that consciousness requires human-like brain structures and the idea of human exceptionalism in understanding animal consciousness.
As the Declaration states, “The architecture for consciousness in other animals may look completely different than in humans… It is irresponsible to ignore [this] in decisions affecting animals.”
By challenging anthropocentric biases and recognizing consciousness as a trait shared across diverse species with varying neural architectures, the New York Declaration provides a framework for integrating scientific findings into ethical decision-making, urging society to reevaluate its treatment of animals in agriculture, research, and other industries.
The declaration marks a pivotal moment in the science of animal minds by combining empirical evidence with moral responsibility, pushing for systemic changes in how humans interact with nonhuman animals.
It also emphasizes that absolute certainty about consciousness is not required to take ethical precautions, advocating instead for a precautionary principle in decision-making.
If there is even a realistic possibility that an animal can suffer or experience harm, policymakers should consider this when crafting laws and regulations. By assuming consciousness, we can create better animal welfare practices and ensure that no sentient beings are harmed.
If consciousness isn’t human-specific, speciesist hierarchies (e.g., prioritizing mammals over fish) become untenable. This realization highlights the fact that speciesism is a construct, and thus our understanding of speciesism is shaped by human perception and cultural systems, rather than being an objective, universally fixed reality.
Building on this foundation, the ASENT Project (2019-2024) has challenged binary classifications of sentience by proposing a multidimensional framework that considers valence (pleasure/pain), arousal (intensity), self-awareness, and social awareness across species.
By rejecting binary thinking, ASENT helps us understand that sentience isn’t one-size-fits-all. It’s not just about whether an animal can feel pain – it’s also about how deeply they experience the world around them. Are they self-aware? Can they form social bonds? And what’s the emotional intensity behind their experiences?
ASENT’s spectrum model widens our definition of sentience, allowing for what is classically considered partial evidence (e.g., chickens showing empathy) to warrant ethical safeguards.
The ASENT framework emphasizes taking preventative action when there is a threat of harm by stating that “Uncertainty about sentience does not justify inaction.”
These milestones highlight a critical point: sentience should not be a prerequisite for welfare.
Because our understanding of sentience is largely based on the human experience, there is a high likelihood that animal consciousness differs from our own in ways we may not fully comprehend, which is further complicated by humans’ incomplete understanding of our own species’ consciousness.
Animals that have not been proven sentient are labeled as non-sentient until proven otherwise, leading to the risk of inflicting harm on sentient beings.
As science evolves, more species are recognized as sentient, underscoring the need to assume sentience until proven otherwise and to grant welfare to all species based on their intrinsic value. The intrinsic value of animals refers to the idea that animals have inherent worth, independent of their usefulness or value to humans, meaning their lives are valuable in and of themselves.
Additionally, breakthroughs in neuroscience and ethology show that animals previously thought incapable of feeling pain—such as crustaceans and cephalopods—are indeed sentient. This evidence dismantles arguments justifying their use in food and research industries and further supports the argument to assume consciousness until proven otherwise.
The utilitarian classifications of living organisms used in the speciesist hierarchy lays the foundation for humans to justify inflicting harm on each other based on perceived traits of moral or performance superiority.
Speciesism places Homo sapiens at the top of a hierarchy that is used to justify sacrificing other animals. Harmful practices and ideas about animals that are deprioritized in the speciesist hierarchy are used to rationalize colonial practices and violence towards groups of people.
Speciesism allows certain animals to be exploited and treated as commodities to accommodate human needs and desires, while other animals with the same capacity to experience emotion can be considered family.
In 1999, the Treaty of Amsterdam went into force, granting animals official recognition as sentient beings in the EU, which demonstrates widespread acceptance of animal sentience. However, the practices used in animal agriculture and animal testing disregard the fact that animals such as cows, pigs, chickens, and rats are capable of experiencing a significant range of emotions, including fear, stress, pain, social bonds, joy, empathy and affection. This juxtaposition highlights a significant level of cognitive dissonance associated with the production and consumption of animal products as well as products tested on animals.
Despite our knowledge of their ability to experience subjective states, chickens, pigs, and cows are viewed as commodities in society, raised simply for consumption without deliberation on their wellbeing.
In industrialized agriculture, these animals are confined in cramped, unsanitary conditions to maximize production, leading to suffering and disease. Calves are separated from their mothers within a few hours of birth and male piglets are castrated without anesthesia. However, the normalization of speciesism in society enables people to turn a blind eye to the 10 billion animals that are killed on factory farms in the USA annually and their suffering.
Humans must challenge our idea of superiority in the animal kingdom, recognizing that we are animals too. It is unjust to engage with practices such as laboratory testing, animal agriculture, and the destruction of natural habitats due to the distress and pain these practices inflict on innocent, sentient beings in addition to the harm they inflict on the Earth.
Vegan ethics align with the scientific consensus on animal consciousness and the urgency of staying within planetary boundaries.
The convergence of animal sentience science, climate urgency, and planetary boundary breaches creates a compelling ethical and ecological case for transitioning to veganism in the U.S. Here’s how these elements interconnect:
“Humane Slaughter” is an oxymoron, as the Humane Slaughter Act excludes 9.7 billion chickens and turkeys slaughtered annually, allowing live-shackling and ineffective stunning. Even for covered species, 16% of cows are ineffectively stunned during slaughter due to rushed bolt-gun procedures resulting in repetitive stunning or slaughter while conscious. Additionally, there are countless allegations of abuse, violations, and deceptive practices against farms that hold humane farming certifications. For example, investigations into Plainville Farms, a Global Animal Partnership certified facility, revealed workers kicking, beating, and throwing turkeys, with sick and injured birds left untreated. Animal Welfare Certified Farms have been found guilty of animal abuse, including workers kicking birds and forcing screaming pigs into gas chambers.
The New York Declaration urges avoiding harm where consciousness is a “realistic possibility.” Given ASENT’s evidence, this includes all vertebrates and most invertebrates used in agriculture. The precautionary principle dictates that uncertainty about sentience does not justify inaction. Veganism offers a solution, reducing suffering by eliminating demand for animal products, which directly reduces slaughter rates, and mitigates climate change by shifting to plant-based diets, potentially cutting agricultural emissions by 49% and land use by 76%.
Rejecting speciesism is not only a moral choice but also crucial for the planet’s survival.
Developments in animal sentience science confirm that animals experience subjective states such as pain, fear, empathy, and pleasure, making their exploitation morally indefensible.
Sentience-based ethics challenge speciesism by dismantling the hierarchy that places human interests above those of non-human animals.
Evidence of animal cognition, such as playful behaviors in bees and problem-solving in octopuses, underscores the ability of science to evolve overtime and the need to assume consciousness in order to ensure that no sentient beings are harmed.
These scientific advancements strengthen the moral argument for veganism by revealing the inherent suffering and exploitation in animal agriculture, advocating for systemic change in research, societal norms, and practices. Moreover, they challenge anthropocentrism by showing that consciousness is not uniquely human nor reliant on familiar neural structures. We must recognize that sentience is a spectrum with diverse evolutionary origins, and revise animal welfare laws, research ethics, food systems, and our relationship with nonhuman life.
Focusing on utopian societies rather than dystopian ones activates distinct psychological mechanisms that enhance problem-solving and community engagement. Evidence from psychological research reveals three key differences in their impacts on motivational pathways, behavioral outcomes, and cognitive trade-offs.
Photo by Caroline S.
Utopian thinking operates through hope-driven self-regulation which fosters collective goal-setting, critique of current systems, and enhanced creativity. Hope-driven self-regulation involves using a sense of hope and agency to guide and improve one’s thoughts, feelings, and actions towards desired goals, fostering resilience and positive outcomes.
Collective goal-setting helps communities imagine ideal societies, activates abstract thinking, and facilitates the ability to identify shared objectives which increases intentions for social and behavioral change. Articulating utopian visions increases critique of current systems, leading to reduced satisfaction with existing societal structures and cognitive dissonance that drives reform. Additionally, high-level abstract thinking triggered by utopian visions help overcome mental barriers and increase creativity, supporting innovative solutions. In contrast, dystopian thinking primarily engages fear-based prevention by focusing on avoiding catastrophic futures and reactive (rather than proactive) problem-solving. This focus can lead to reduced trust and paranoia among communities due to the emphasis on potential risks over opportunities.
Studies show that utopian thinking significantly benefits behavioral outcomes as it enhances both criticism of current systems and concrete plans for improvement, whereas dystopian scenarios increase tendencies to justify current systems. The table below demonstrates impacts of utopian focused thinking vs dystopian focused thinking on social change, risk perception, and sustainability.
As demonstrated by the table above, focusing on utopian narratives has been found to increase personal and societal hope. A study showing that utopian thinking significantly boosted hope also found that this increase in hope had a notable positive impact on collective climate action and enables cognitive alternatives to “status-quo” thinking.
There can be cognitive trade-offs with focusing too heavily on utopian societies as it can enable escapism when change seems unlikely and requires concrete implementation plans to avoid being only a fantasy. Therefore, a balanced approach of understanding utopian opportunities and dystopian risks is most effective. Dystopian narratives can help to provide urgency through vivid warnings, however they risk desensitization with overuse which can lead to decreased community engagement after repeated exposure.
Media, particularly books and movies have been heavily focused on dystopian futures for over a decade with series such as The Hunger Games and The Handmaids Tale becoming best sellers. The IMDB list of Utopian movies contains only 45 titles in total, many of which are from before 2010. IMBD offers another list titled “Top 100 Dystopian Movies” suggesting that there are more than 100 dystopian movies, and this list contains only the top rated titles. With this information it is clear that the ratio for dystopian movies compared to utopian movies is at least 2:1.
Focusing too heavily on dystopian narratives only strengthens the unwanted outcome. The media we consume and the scenarios we hypothesize about must be balanced with idealism and hope in order to build our desired world.
The most effective strategy combines utopian visioning to establish aspirational goals and creative freedom, dystopian reality-checking to identify implementation barriers, and mental contrasting techniques that alternate between ideal futures and current obstacles. This combined approach leverages utopia’s motivational benefits while grounding solutions in dystopia’s risk-awareness, as seen in climate action strategies that pair net-zero visions with risk analyses. This provides a holistic understanding of the risk of inaction and the opportunities that are possible through risk mitigation.
Because the media we have access to is more heavily focused on dystopian narratives, there is a need to actively seek out or create more utopian focused media and activate a hopeful mindset. This can be done by reading books on solutions and frameworks for social and environmental sustainability, listening to positive affirmations that activate hope, learning about climate tech solutions, and learning about societies that have successfully implemented equitable systems that support human and environmental wellbeing.
Focusing on utopian visioning, dystopian-reality checking, and utilizing mental contrasting techniques can help create innovative solutions, strengthen resilience against risks, and increase collective action.
