Exactly. Nature is great at producing highly intricate and adaptive self-propagating systems, but it has no regard whatsoever for the well-being or consent of those who have to live in it. If a species overpopulates and destroys its own habitat, many (or potentially all) organisms of that species will die off in order to restore balance to the ecosystem. Nature carries on. For those that nature kills off, that’s not much consolation.
The sad thing is we’re taking a LOT of species down with us. Species that are needed for the recovery of the environment. Eventually another animal will fill the niche but that just makes recovery take that much longer.
In the abstract, I don’t find it sad when species go extinct. That’s how nature works. The species that can’t adapt quickly enough die out and make way for those that can. What I find abhorrent is that all of the current environmental disasters (as well as some “natural causes”) are killing off individual beings who never instigated violence against anyone, and who cannot (and presumably would not) consent to being hunted and killed, having their habitats destroyed, being eaten from the inside out by parasites, experiencing organ failure due to microplastic exposure, and so on. Recovery of the environment matters only to the beings who depend upon it. The environmental and climate disaster in the abstract is just the transition to a new state (George Carlin’s “the Earth plus plastic”), and it’s only when one considers the effect on non-consenting sentient beings that it becomes a tragedy on an almost incomprehensible scale.
The crime is not destruction of the environment; it’s the violence against those living in the environment who do not consent to the destruction.
Exactly. Nature is great at producing highly intricate and adaptive self-propagating systems, but it has no regard whatsoever for the well-being or consent of those who have to live in it. If a species overpopulates and destroys its own habitat, many (or potentially all) organisms of that species will die off in order to restore balance to the ecosystem. Nature carries on. For those that nature kills off, that’s not much consolation.
The sad thing is we’re taking a LOT of species down with us. Species that are needed for the recovery of the environment. Eventually another animal will fill the niche but that just makes recovery take that much longer.
In the abstract, I don’t find it sad when species go extinct. That’s how nature works. The species that can’t adapt quickly enough die out and make way for those that can. What I find abhorrent is that all of the current environmental disasters (as well as some “natural causes”) are killing off individual beings who never instigated violence against anyone, and who cannot (and presumably would not) consent to being hunted and killed, having their habitats destroyed, being eaten from the inside out by parasites, experiencing organ failure due to microplastic exposure, and so on. Recovery of the environment matters only to the beings who depend upon it. The environmental and climate disaster in the abstract is just the transition to a new state (George Carlin’s “the Earth plus plastic”), and it’s only when one considers the effect on non-consenting sentient beings that it becomes a tragedy on an almost incomprehensible scale.
The crime is not destruction of the environment; it’s the violence against those living in the environment who do not consent to the destruction.