Try this for a headline:
8.8 million children die as world spends billions on education
It doesn't really work, does it? It also wouldn't work if you were to substitute 'libraries' or 'caring for the old' for 'education'. It wouldn't work because, though the deaths of children that could be prevented by a redeployment of global resources are a proper focus of moral concern - and pressing moral concern - these comparisons might be taken to imply that there's something wrong with spending money on education or libraries or caring for the old, when there isn't. Even if the implication were only the weaker one that saving the lives of children shouldn't be neglected and should be given at least as much attention as those other purposes, the intended contrast effect won't work. This is because, unless you assume that all resources should be diverted towards saving the lives of children, spending billions on education, libraries and caring for the old must surely be all right. So, now consider this real headline from a Canadian newspaper:
8.8 million children die as world spends billions on pet food
Does the writer think that people shouldn't keep pets? Or that they shouldn't feed them? Almost certainly not. Yet, the comparison tends to suggest a belittling attitude to the keeping of pets - as though, while there are children dying of hunger, there are certain things we shouldn't do, and keeping pets is one of them. But, applied to most human activities that aren't blatantly immoral in themselves, this can't be a valid point. It can't be, for the reason I gave here a few days ago: namely, that we all have a right to freedom, which may properly be used to pursue our own legitimate ends; and that the obligation to help others sits alongside that right - it doesn't undo it.
The problem of world hunger, grave as it is and demanding of the attention of us all, doesn't have any disparaging implication with regard to the keeping of pets or to many other activities that may seem trivial beside the problem of world hunger: spending on entertainment, or sport, or holidays. It is quite right to emphasize the moral scandal involved in the global insufficiency of attention to the incidence of child mortality, but doing so does not require comparisons implicitly disapproving of quite unobjectionable human activities.