4: “Do you want a habitable planet for your children?” – Sentientist Conversations – Zion Lights

We discuss the biggest questions: "what's real?", "who matters?" and "how to make a better world?" with scientists, celebrities, activists, writers and philosophers. The Sentientism worldview is "evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings." It's a simple, yet radical, philosophy that's grounded in reality (naturalistic epistemology) and has compassion for all sentient beings (mostly human and non-human animals). Naturalism & sentiocentrism combined.

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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.

Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our community. Our main group is here on FaceBook.