4: "Do you want a habitable planet for your children?" - Sentientist Conversations - Zion Lights

Zion Lights is an author & activist known for her environmental work & science communication. She is UK director of Environmental Progress. She has been a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion (XR) UK on TV and radio, and founded & edited XR’s Hourglass newspaper. She has written for The Huffington Post, authored the evidence-based nonfiction book The Ultimate Guide to Green Parenting, and given a TEDx talk.

To watch instead of listen, here's our conversation on YouTube.

We talk about:

• Front line activism (before & during XR)
• Why environmentalists should commit to evidence & reason, even when it’s uncomfortable (e.g. nuclear)
• The risks of cause commitment leading to dogma & the ignoring/warping of evidence
• How a lack of evidence risks undermining movement credibility (particularly when being interviewed by Andrew Neill)
• Individual change vs. systemic change – making it easier for people to do the right thing
• How XR have helped bring env. concerns into the public consciousness
• Energy Justice, finding sustainable ways to get energy to people that most need it
• Understanding the reality of life in less-developed countries & acting with compassion as we pursue solutions
• Avoiding the developed country trope of: “We burned fossil fuels to get rich & happy – but you developing countries can’t, because we’ve destroyed the environment”
• Embedding compassion (for human & non-sentient beings) in our environmentalism
• Growing up in England with Punjabi parents, one Christian & one Sikh
• Exploring religions but being “baffled” by them
• How other dogmas (e.g. anti-vaxx, anti-masking) relate to religious dogmas
• The good (compassion) & bad (e.g. caste discrimination) of religious ethics
• Fatalism, karma & crossing the road in Indian cities!
• Fatalism & prayer as ways of coping with a difficult life, but ones that trap people
• Avoiding romanticism about living “simple” lives. These lives are often short, risky & full of suffering
• Superstitions as another set of un-founded & potentially dangerous beliefs
• The sense of freedom from letting go of superstition & religion & adopting a scientific worldview
• Marrying a doctor for safety/health as well as status reasons!
• Risking family & social connections to take a different path
• The value & constraints/dangers of community obligations
• The importance of freedom & autonomy
• The image of animal products as high status, aspirational or a “treat”,  going back to hunter/gatherer times
• Veganism, animal farming, clean meat, wild animal suffering, eco-fascism, paganism 
• A Star Trek/Kaku/Deutschian/Sagan future!

There’s more about Zion here: http://www.zionlights.co.uk/ & you can follow her on Twitter here @ziontree. Here she is on our Celebrity “wall”.

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings.” You can find out more at sentientism.info.

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