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Humans First
The other day, a friend of mine was asked to present the conservative view of climate change to an environmental group. He thought it fair to begin by letting them know where he stood:
If doing so would enable me to save one human baby, I would personally kill every polar bear in existence with my bare hands.
My friend was going for a certain humorous shock value, of course, but he really did state the correct scale of values, didn’t he?
Image Credit: Flickr user Amanda Graham.
Published in General
I agree. I think the conservationist versus environmentalist distinction is crucial. Environmentalists are trying to be God, and see the Earth from a universal perspective that transcends the human point of view. That’s not so much right or wrong as just impossible. Humans see the world from a human point of view and always will. The “shrinking our footprint” model should be discarded in favor of optimizing the use of natural resources for human needs. That approach will lead to an Earth that is changed (how could it not be?), but the Earth won’t be a wasteland either, because humans don’t want to live in a wasteland.
Here is my main problem with all the Nature vs. Man angst that people have. It creates a false dichotomy between man and nature. Humans like every other organism on this planet are part of nature. Everything we do, from digging wells to building space stations is by definition natural. Organisms alter the environment all the time to suit their needs or just because.
Current evidence points to the conclusions that today’s oxygen rich atmosphere was the result of eons of accumulation of cyanobacterial waste. The unthinking actions of this group of organisms literally reshaped the entire ecosystem and drove most organisms at the time to extinction. I don’t see why we should feel bad about our actions killing off a few species in that light. The planet and its resources are up for grabs and it is a first come first serve universe.
In the end all this preservation nonsense is just as much about human greed as oil drilling. It is all about us in the end and our own self gratification no matter how we slice it. Nature and the polar bears do not care what happens only we do.
I agree entirely. Another example is when flowering plants started replacing the prior occupants of plant niches, it disrupted existing food webs contributing to the Cretaceous extinctions (short story: dinosaurs had trouble eating flowering plants). In and of itself, it’s a shame that dinosaurs went extinct, but it was part of producing the world that we now live in.
Humans are a very influential species. We are inevitably going to cause disruption that will result in a mass extinction. We should try to minimize the disruption and the extinction, but not at the expense of prosperity. I very much doubt that the disruption we are causing is greater than the disruptions that caused the Permian or Cretaceous extinctions.
Mass extinctions are followed by adaptive radiations. I would expect many new species to arise in the next million or so years.
Peter,
You remorseless speciesist! How dare you suggest such a ruthless trade off!
Obviously, this is a question of political inclusiveness. We must extend the franchise to the animal kingdom. There are millions of polar bears, dogs, bats, vipers, spiders, slugs, and frogs who have no representation whatsoever. One being one vote. Why the snake vote alone could keep Harry Reid running the Senate for a millennium.
Peter, how could you be so thoughtless. I am shocked yes shocked!
Regards,
Jim
Please, snakes are far to ethical an animal to vote for Harry Reid, maybe slugs…
So you don’t use any medications then?
I’m reminded on one of the original ideas behind the Endangered Species Act: “We can’t just let a species vanish because it might hold some unique value to mankind.”
Anyone remember the issue with the Pacific yew a while back? IIRC, scientists discovered that some chemical in its bark showed great promise as a way to fight cervical cancer. When they applied for a permit to harvest one tree, they were denied because the species was endangered. I don’t know recall ultimately happened, but it helped convince me of the bogusness (I hope that’s a real word) of the ES Act.
OTOH, why can’t we save multiple samples of the DNA of these endangered species, build our dams and farms, then clone the plants or animals in a lab and put them back in the wild?
Of course I do. I do not disagree with the essential point expressed by Peter’s friend. And I don’t profess to being a purist of any ideology, though I do try to be conscious of my actions. There would be treatments I would try to avoid on the basis of animal testing, but I don’t kid myself that I wouldn’t put myself in front of any four-legged if need be to live. Definitely so for my kid. It’s like, I had a hamster once. And I have several pets, none of which are free. But I’ll never again have a pet that lives in a small cage. That makes me what? Inconsistent in action, for sure. But misguided? Not necessarily. I was put off by what I heard as glib overstatement, a cruel, false pitting of human existence as against that of the less advanced animals. For effect.
Val,
Don’t forget the weasels and the worms.
Regards,
Jim