Climate change is an emerging animal welfare threat affecting billions of animals through habitat loss, extreme weather, and changing disease patterns. Addressing climate change is animal welfare advocacy at global scale.
Climate change is the largest animal welfare challenge of the coming century. Its effects on animal welfare are direct and already occurring: heat waves kill farm animals in numbers that dwarf disease-related mortality; droughts kill wildlife; rising sea temperatures destroy reef systems; and polar habitat loss threatens the survival of cold-adapted species. The scale of harm is so vast that addressing climate change is simultaneously the largest welfare intervention available and the most remote from individual action. The connection between personal choices — diet, transport, energy — and planetary conditions is real but distant. The welfare-focused climate advocate recognises that systemic change requires political and corporate action at scales that individual consumer behaviour alone cannot achieve, while still pursuing individual behaviour change as a contribution to collective impact.