Lewis Bollard on the strategies that win, the traps to avoid, and why.
About this episode
Lewis Bollard should be a familiar name for those trying to improve the lives of farmed animals. For almost 10 years, he’s been running the farm animal welfare program at Open Philanthropy, the largest funder in the fight against factory farming. It's hard to think of someone who's had a large positive influence on the modern farm animal welfare movement.
In this conversation, we discuss the many different approaches we can take to help animals. We talk about why some strategies are less promising than they initially seem, common misconceptions he sees amongst advocates, why creating good strategy is hard, where the movement is under-investing and what he’s learned from other social movements.
See the full transcript on our Buzzsprout.
Chapters:
- What Lewis has changed his mind on (00:02:33)
- The challenges of institutional meat reduction (00:06:05)
- Lewis' pessimism on animal welfare litigation (00:11:58)
- The case for animal welfare technologies (00:14:42)
- Why blocking new farms may not help (or even make things worse) (00:18:24)
- What Lewis thinks advocates commonly get wrong (00:23:11)
- Incrementalism vs moonshots & the speed of social change (00:26:50)
- What is the movement under-investing in? (00:36:44)
- Challenges in scaling large organisations (00:41:46)
- Prop 12 and the future of US legislation (00:45:43)
- How can we improve our political advocacy? (00:50:01)
- What can we do in the Global South? (00:55:32)
- How will transformative AI affect animal advocacy? (01:07:43)
- What is tough about Lewis' role? (01:15:41)
Resources:
- For more about Open Phil as a funder, check out our episode with Amanda Hungerford
- Lewis’ substack
- Lewis AMA on the EA Forum
- Lewis' Twitter
With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!
Note: My (James') views here are my personal opinions and don't represent those of Coefficient Giving.
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