In the realm of biological conservation and biodiversity, there are some who believe that we should not go out of our way to save species, and that since humans are natural, we should just live moderately but without regret if we cause the extinction of other species. In 2017, biology professor Dr. R. Alexander Pyron wrote an article that espouses this viewpoint. In this article, I will argue that such a viewpoint is fundamentally dangerous to humanity. You can access his article on the Internet Archive.
Let’s examine the core of his viewpoint:
Extinction is the engine of evolution, the mechanism by which natural selection prunes the poorly adapted and allows the hardiest to flourish. Species constantly go extinct, and every species that is alive today will one day follow suit. There is no such thing as an “endangered species,” except for all species. The only reason we should conserve biodiversity is for ourselves, to create a stable future for human beings.
He goes on to say this:
[W]e are a part of the biosphere just like every other creature, and our actions are just as volitional, their consequences just as natural.
In other words, because human beings are natural like every other creature, we should just operate in our own way, not concerned with extinctions. The problem with saying that our consequences are natural is essentially irrelevant. Metaphysically, everything is natural. We all came from the same cosmic big bang and hence we could just as well say that all actions are natural. That is true, but also meaningless when it comes to ethics. We could also say that killing is natural, so we should let killers of human beings go free. But that’s ridiculous: naturality has nothing to do with ethics, and it should not be a guiding principle for it.
If we are to have any discussion at all, we must accept that we are beings that can make choices, and we must institute some form of morality and philosophy without appealing to naturality. The very fact that we have enough intelligence to observe and make logical deductions from our observations means that we can “hack the game” of evolution to some extent, and our morality must be based on something that goes beyond our seemingly natural instincts.
A discussion of what is natural is thus completely irrelevant, since metaphysically, everything is natural. Moreover, the metaphysical use of natural goes against the more common use of the word. Indeed, in common parlance, natural generally refers to some intuitive notion that most people have that human beings have gone far and away from what we traditionally call “nature”. Perhaps separating us from nature is exactly the kind of thinking that has caused our “unnatural” behaviour in the first place, and hence is not a good way of thinking either, but that does not mean one should confuse this common concept with the more metaphysical notion of “natural”, under which human beings are just as natural as everything else.
Finally, I think it is rather irresponsible of Pyron to even talk of naturality and use it as an argument, because people who are not familiar with these concepts will see Pyron’s stance as a justification to care even less about the environment. It’s a sneaky way to give a moral justification of the killing of life and upholding a human supremacist view of the world. Unfortunately, Pyron’s viewpoint is one that many people will take because they don’t want to think too much about the horrors of ecological disaster.
Of course, Pyron does not advocate doing whatever we want. He still believes we should act responsibly, within reason, because we still have the power to eradicate ourselves. But according to Pyron, such an eradication of ourselves should be our only concern. He says,
We don’t depend on polar bears for our survival, and even if their eradication has a domino effect that eventually affects us, we will find a way to adapt.
Yes, it’s probably true that we don’t depend on polar bears for survival. On the other hand, the United States doesn’t depend on India for survival either, and one could certainly survive without the other. So if there’s a natural disaster in India, the United States should just be concerned with their own survival and not help India or any other country at all, right? Or to go one step further: I certainly don’t depend on most other individual people for survival, so if I saw someone drowning in a river, I shouldn’t help them, right? Of course, Pyron would say we should help the drowning person, because he does place the human species above animals:
We should do this to create a stable, equitable future for the coming billions of people, not for the vanishing northern river shark. Conservation is needed for ourselves and only ourselves. All those future people deserve a happy, safe life on an ecologically robust planet, regardless of the state of the natural world compared with its pre-human condition.
But my point is that as soon as you introduce prejudice against some species, or human supremacy, you introduce a lack of respect for all life, without which we will have a society of very selfish individuals, like we have today.
Of course, Pyron is right about one thing: extinction is part of evolution, and with or without us, millions of animals will go extinct and millions more will evolve and take their place.
However, what Pyron fails to consider, is that there may only be two real choices for a moral philosophy: either having a respect and equal care for all life, or no respect at all. I call this the moral life dichotomy hypothesis.
That might seem a bit strange at first, because most current societies seem to have more respect for human life than for the lives of animals, but I don’t really see that to be true. Rather, it’s much more likely that our laws and social norms that we enact to protect human life is much more a matter of practical choice for self-survival. A belief that human beings are sacred and above animals is a useful thought process to bind human societies, but it is not necessarily a moral philosophy.
So, I seriously doubt that there could be a continuum between “protecting other species like we protect our own” and being “reckless creatures who destroy everything”. A life of moderation is not possible, because without a fundamental eco-philosophy of supreme respect for nature, the only other path is an intense drive to create new technology and ultimate self-destruct.
In other words, a vision of a society living in moderation that eradicates some species but not so many so that we ourselves start suffering is simply impossible. This vision completely ignores the reason why humanity has gotten to this perilous point in the first place: it is precisely because we lack equal empathy towards other creatures that we have a society based on unsustainable technological advancement.
And while there may be a few individuals who believe in moderation, the overall average of such a society will always be bent on destruction and resource extraction. In other words, without a philosophy that puts all creatures on equal footing; without equal respect for all life, we introduce conditions that keep unsustainable technological conquest going. And that’s true even with more sustainable energy sources: if we have clean and even more abundant energy, we will simply use more resources and expand our desire to create even more technology, that in turn will eradicate all life.
People like Pyron are the greatest enemy of good. Their theories of a stable and mostly sustainable society that takes the middle road of accepting the eradication of some species to make room for billions of people sounds plausible, but it simply cannot be. Personally, I would much rather live in a world with the Northern River Shark than in a world with Dr. Pyron.
People like Pyron believe such things because such a society might even work, if all people were like Pyron, but they are not. Most will use the natural potential for inequality in a high-energy society to push for total expansion of the human-technological complex and eventually find their way into technologically-augmented life to such a degree that normal life is no longer possible, and almost all species are extinct.
Concluding, we cannot put humans first and that humans should just survive like other species. Such a view is immoral precisely because we have the conscious capability to realize it is immoral. This conscious capability endows us with a responsibility and moral imperative to return to a more harmonious existence with nature that uses much less energy. Such a harmonious existence is necessary because there is no middle road, and that is true despite the fact that species go extinct and more evolve. In other words, we can either choose a harmonious existence with nature and respect all life equally, or we can choose the road of total domination by technology. And if we choose the latter, then eventually, technology will become so advanced so that we will be the ones who will be replaced by the machines that have themselves evolved.