Sentient Beings

I'll start this post by mentioning I'm well aware it's likely to be controversial, and I understand why. But I wonder if technology developed so that we could experience what other sentient animals (outside of humans) experienced, would we carry on treating them as we do now, or would we find it unbearable?

We've had a lot of wasps appearing in the house. I believe the queens search around for places to build nests at this time of year. I hate wasps (the stingy bastards) but I would try not to kill one. Up 'til now I've managed to get them all back outside with no damage to me or them. However, they keep coming back (clever bastards). Just now I saw a dead wasp behind the blind in my bathroom and worried that it had been flying around in a panic, with no idea of how to escape with its life.

On the C5 Jeremy Vine tv programme today they were talking about how we need to cut down on meat and dairy to help save the planet. I'm semi-vegetarian, so I have a foot in two camps. What annoyed me (and Jeremy Vine does often annoy me) is when he said something along the lines of, 'If you fly over Britain you see great swathes of land given over to animal husbandry. We shoudn't be seeing that amount of land given over to animals.' Uh, what? Why should Earth belong to us, as humans, and all the other life forces allowing us to survive be treated as inferior?

Also, whilst the current government is giving us our green and evironmently-friendly aims for the near future, they are now allowing mass building development across already well-built up areas, as well as greenbelt. Are we saving the planet, or destroying it faster than ever?