About 1,500 people packed Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University on a Friday night to hear Singer. The event was organized by local effective altruists, who have formed Giving What We Can DC, and by PSI(Population Services International), a big global health and development nonprofit favored by Singer. Singer signed books at a reception afterwards and then dined on a vegetarian menu — butternut squash soup, risotto, tofu, poached pears — with followers at Nora, oft-celebrated organic eatery. Singer wrote an influential book called Animal Liberation in 1975; many effective altruists are vegetarians or vegans because they take seriously the suffering of animals on factory farms.
On stage, Singer took an upbeat approach to what could be a downbeat subject. Problems of poverty and disease can seem hopeless, he noted, but they are not. Certainly the needs are great–UNICEF says thousands of poor children below the age of five die every day–but the world now knows how to prevent or even eliminate diseases like polio, malaria and TB. “There are 16,000 dying each day now, but there were 27,000 dying each day less than 10 years ago,” Singer said. “That’s tremendous progress.”
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