There is almost no correlation between how serious a threat is and how much we worry about it. In fact, the correlation is often inverse - we worry far more about child abductions and school shootings now that they almost never happen than we did when they happened more. Because if something happens all the time it's not "news". So a school shooting in any crappy city anywhere in the US prompts national headlines and gets us ALL worrying about whether our children are safe, whereas kids dying in auto accidents or house fires or drowning in swimming pools in much larger numbers don't even make the local newscast.
People certainly have a different emotional reaction from watching an animal die, this reaction being almost completely unknown those days, than from buying a hamburger in the supermarket, which doesn't provoke any emotion whatsoever. Do I have to convince you very much that emotions play a big role in the so called "morality" and especially being able to act on it?
Obviously there are historical examples that there were people a very long time ago already that were concerned about the sad fate of the killed animals, for example Native Americans used to "thank" the animals they killed for providing food and ask them for forgiveness, Buddhist say "might you be reborn as a buddha" before eating meat etc., you will see this aspect of human life very carefully regulated by most religions, indicating it was a problem that concerned people from a very long time ago.
For another, more general example, try to convince someone of sacrificing a very, very minor modern convenience of theirs for some greater good. I often have to go to terrible pains to explain that I am perfectly fine with my current phone and I don't want to waste it to just get a new toy, and I am far from being any kind of ecology freak. When I buy crips and coke at a grocery 50m from my flat and don't want a plastic bag, the seller assures me that it's for free so I don't have to worry :) The people who actually use any more substantial effort to not deprive too much resources are very often gravely ridiculed, because most of society seems to view resources as unlimited.
Sorry to jump here, but he clearly did not wrote that. He wrote in fact the opposite. He said we have been killing animals to survive for a very long time.
It is you who attach some kind of moral meaning to the act of killing and eating an animal. Some people have to do it, for them to feel purer (in the past) or hipsterer (now). I would prefer to become food at the end of my life, Soylent Green style, instead of such mind shenanigans.
It's good that you don't ask for bags in the grocery, but in the end this means little if human population keeps growing and growing.
And since when did the ethics and normalities of past become the standards by which our present should be governed? If animal slaughter is alright because it was okay a few hundred years ago then slavery, child marriage and hundred other nonsensical stuff should be alright as well. What we do now should be determined by how our society feels now and how it wants to invest in the future. Arguing that that our present actions should be governed by medieval ethics is lazy.
Bingo. Because if you're squeamish, that means you have someone else do it for you.
Are you sure? The biggest problem I have with rod-fishing is that it is boring - not that the fish has to die (and I don't give less value to the life of a fish than, say, a pig, as some people tend to do). Sure, I haven't needed to slaughter my own livestock, but if I imagine that I have of only eaten oatmeal and potatoes for the last fourteen days, slaughtering some animal for its meat doesn't seem like such a terrible sacrifice. Now, I am not a farmer or a hunter, but if I were you could just argue that most people are not farmers and/or hunters.
The modern man may be squeamish, but the thing about humans are that we are great at adapting. A modern urban person might recoil at the thought of not getting at least one shower a day, getting to sleep in a comfortable bed and have food in the fridge at all times, but if push comes to shove and she has to for some reason survive in the wilderness or out on a farm, I'd say she would get used to that reality relatively quickly. And she might have been previously reserved towards killing animals since the reality of it was so removed for her, but again if the need arose she would probably not have much problem with it unless she already had some established ethical opposition to using animals for their meat, hide etc. After all, a good chunk of her ancestors probably had to have a hand in slaughtering animals.
Absolutely. We need to feel pain, otherwise we're lost.
And: We are the Boiling Frogs:
Increase the heat (=pain) slowly enough and we'll accept it as "The New Normal".
Increase the pain quickly enough, and we'll reject it and fight for our lives.
Should our action therefor be to concentrate on preparing for the "rebuiliding"?
It is especially sad given that sometimes sacrificing a small convenience for one person would be able to make a huge change in somebody else's life. But again, once there are enough degrees of separation, we do not feel "in position" to help and we do not view it as our problem to do it.