Humans have more right to live than baiji dolphins

Great Debates
61

Bricker

I understand where you are coming from. Apparently, 99.9% of all the species that have ever existed have gone extinct. Extinction is a part of evolution. It is the natural way of things.

From an evolutionary standpoint, the baiji dolphin is a good candidate for extinction. It has a lot of the earmarks of a species about to bite it. It’s tremendously overspecialized, having evolved into a very narrow niche, and, it’s isolated itself into just one single river in the whole world. I’ve read up on this dolphin, including Douglas Adams’ excellent book Last Chance to See. Apparently, it has a very narrow temperature range and is specifically adapted for the murky waters and ecosystem of the Yangtze river. The thing is basically blind and prone to sunburn, slow and fat, and really couldn’t compete or survive anywhere else.

Species do this all the time, they overspecialize, something changes, and they die out due to their own fragility and inability to adapt to change.

Without man, this dolphin probably had its days numbered no matter how you slice it. The next ice age would probably take it out, or some other predator would exploit its vulnerability and take it out.

It’s not even wrong for mankind to drive species to extinction. We, too, are a part of evolution. Like any other species, we compete and we leave our mark. I, for one am glad that we kicked the Neanderthal’s ass and wiped them out. I’m glad we and our ancestors are such collosal badasses of evolution that we’ve managed to outeat, outkill, and outfuck everything else and become the dominant species on the planet.

So, I don’t boo-hoo for every evolutionary dead-end and I don’t weap for the trilobyte in a knee jerk fashion.

I’ll even give the Chinese a lot of credit for their care. If this dolphin had lived in the Mississippi or the Hudson I’ll bet we would have wiped it out about 150 years ago.
But, there are other considerations as well. Extinction is final, and is not something to be simply shrugged at. Biodervisity is important on any number of levels as is our impact on the environment. Enlightened self-interest tells us that we should be careful about what we destroy, for such destruction is permanent.

Then too, there are still other considerations.

I think this is a wonderful world we have and that these are beautiful creatures. Probably, I never would, but it makes me sad to think that I can never take my child to the Yangtze and let her see what by all account were enchanting and lovely and unique creatures.

If we ever go instead I will say "Do you see this polluted river? Before it was filled with condoms, and sewage and filth, and before they put in this giant dam and changed the course of this river to power the city, people used to be able to come here and fish and if they were lucky they would see these beautiful white dolphins that could be seen nowhere else in the world. Instead we have a dam. People have power that they need. They have the river as an artery of commerce. It is true that the power and commerce are good… but so were the dolphins.

It’s a shame that we are not good enough and careful enough and didn’t give enough of a shit to expend the effort so that we could have both, because the fact that we didn’t doesn’t say anything good about us."

Killing off other species without good reason isn’t good custodianship of our assets. If it was us versus the dolphin and one of us had to go, I’d be first in line with a tuna net. But, it’s not, and there isn’t really a good reason why we had to kill this thing off.

Aesthetics means something, bioderversity means something. A pandemic of manmade extinctions means something as a warning sign for our own wellbeing as a species. Nature is wonderfully self-correcting as regards species that get out of control.

I suppose we could live on a planet covered in concrete and steel and live on algae, soy beans and other mass-produced consumer crops without anything else, but to me life seems so much more interesting with all these other creatures in it.

I don’t think the dolphins have any right to life as a species any more than we do. In fact, the older I get the more I come to believe that there is no such thing as “rights” in the sense that most people use the word. Rights, I believe, are not something somebody else has intrinsically that you can violate. Rights are something you give and extend to others. They represent restraint and civilized behavior and enlightened self-interest.

In that latter sense, I wish we’d extended those dolphins the right to exist, and I am very sorry to see them go.

62

Scylla, you’re basically making the biophillia argument, which definitely has merits.

So, Bricker, are you ever going to sit down, and like, get an argument as to why we should or shouldn’t accord something legal rights? Or are you instead just going to continue to carefully beg the question at every turn?

63

But “the way we want to live” is an arbitrary concept. Some people want to live their lives in complete anarchy, ascribing to no law or religion and just doing whatever the hell they please, be it good or foul of nature. That doesn’t mean they should be allowed to. This is why we have laws in place to prevent it. We are therefore back to a collective and general agreement on morality, and it is generally agreed upon that bringing a species to extinction by our own hands is a bad thing that we ought to do whatever we can to prevent. The baiji dolphin wasn’t cramping our style or threatening our way of life. They posed no threat to life or limb, they didn’t compete with us for food in any significant way, they didn’t make a sport of leaping out of the water and saying rude things about the parentage of passersby. They were just there, and for their troubles they were over-fished and wounded by propellers and couldn’t properly recover because the noise from said ships interfered with their sonar. So, they die. They all die so we can preserve the resident peoples’ way of life. Could it have been prevented? Possibly. Probably, even. I’m sure that if, at a point when it was still quite possible to save the species, a focus group sat down and worked out a set of rules and regulations and put in place the means to effectively enforce them, they could have been saved and this debate would never be happening, nor would my MPSIMS OP.

The issue of “rights” as Bricker has posed it is a straw man. This isn’t an issue whose validity requires a codified set of laws and/or regulations. This is about rights as a moral construct, not a legal one, and while morality may be just as human a concept as legal rights, it is much more basic and can be agreed upon by a far wider range of people. We can all agree that murder is wrong. We can all agree that rape is wrong. We can all agree that genocide is wrong. We apply these as laws in practically every country on the planet in order that there be some written reference to it so that it can be enforced it in a way that satisfies the rules of evidence in a court of law, but we all know, with or without legal canon, that these things are wrong on the most basic of levels. We therefore know almost instinctively that there are some basic human rights that everyone possesses. We have the right not to be murdered, raped, or have our race destroyed. To that end we most of us try and live our lives within certain boundaries that do not (or try not to) impinge upon the basic rights of others. We even extend a certain amount of these rights to plants and animals and the ecosystem at large. The extent to which we do this is largely a personal decision, but most of us do it to at least some degree. Morally, we know it is wrong to abuse animals despite the fact that we deem them to be of lesser importance. We also know it is wrong to abuse the environment, be that the pillaging of the rainforests or the pollution of our waters – both for personal, professional and ecological reasons. Most of us know at some level that the fish in our waters, the creatures of the rainforests – the rainforests themselves – have a right to exist because they are part of the ecosystem that give us the ability to live our lives the way we want, and we have a right to exist. We cannot deny this right to exist on the grounds that it is inconvenient to us or fails to meet the legal standards of human rights. It is therefore disingenuous to claim that the extinction of a particular species of dolphins is justified because it had no right to exist, or that proof of its lack of right to exist is borne out by the very fact that it has ceased to exist in the first place.

64

Bricker

[Quote]
In this MPSIMS thread, the claim is made that humans have no more right to live than baiji dolphins. I contend that such a sentiment is meaningless – no species has any particular “right to live” – the extinction of a species is unremarkable in the history of our planet, and the only objective way to determine a species’ “right to live” is to see if it’s living. If it’s become extinct, it had no right to live.

[Quote]

From your OP,if applied to human beings; it would follow, in this case, that if a group of people were living in their settlement, which they had abided in for millennia, and were rather abruptly killed off due to total disruption of their livelihood and means of survival, with no means of petition or defense, it would be OK, because they weren’t cut out to survive in the mean old world. Too tough bad.

Then comes in the argument about human vs animal rights.

Your legal mind is far beyond mine, so, I’d like to challenge you: If you were to construct, on a ground level, terms of rights for non-humans, how would you do that? Do you think it preposterous, or possible?

An observation: Read this thread through, so must have been on the last one. It was brought up that the Baiji dolphins were extremely specialized to their environment, so thought weak in terms of adaptation, and asking for a problem. Yet, this is a trend with modern human endeavors, especially science, to be more specialized in job task. The reason we hope that will work (ie, microbiologists don’t have to focus on getting a crop out of the field to feed their family come winter), is based on cooperation. We don’t require every individual to perform the basic tasks for survival. If it all fell to shit tomorrow, most of us would starve soon, flailing, and not adapted to life on Earth at that basic level. Don’t cast specialization stones.

65

Now picture this scenario.

The whole world sits around a big tree and we decide to be more careful with nature. Progress continues at a reduced pace but there are plants flowering and birds chirping all around.

We get to the point where the new united world builds its first colony ship and the human diaspora is about to begin colonizing the galaxy.

A massive asteroid turns us all into a puff of methane.

If we had continued our previous path of nature destruction, we could have launched that ship earlier and not be extinct.

Underwater, before being also anihilated, a dolphin laughs.

66

The flipside of that is that the dolphins might be the only thing that can save us from the meteor. Didn’t you see Star Trek IV?

67

Care to stuff that strawman further? Or are you done?

68

Because massive Earth-killing asteroids customarily materialize out of nowhere, and a human society preparing its full-scale migration into space wouldn’t have noticed a huge frickin’ rock heading for them before it was too late to do something about it.

Sorry. Can’t picture it.

69

Lawyers trying to argue ecology. :rolleyes:

70

Tanbarkie, Pazu, maybe their scientists determined that there was some sort of space lichen on that asteroid that they couldn’t unjustly exterminate. :slight_smile:

And it doesn’t have to be an asteroid. Could be a supervolcano, a nutjob going nuclear, a dolphin insurrection, the hand of Dog. Whatever.

Now seriously, yes, it is a straw man. I am actually a very “save the whales” kinda guy. Still, try to see through the silly scenario

The point must be made that choosing the path of putting “ecology” vs “progress” might prevent us from a technology or a window of opportunity that is what could ultimately decide if we survive as a species or not.

The ultimate resource is human intelligence and the more people on this rock thinking, and producing there are, the more chances of a breakthrough there is.

If we all sit and eat flowers from here on, the only sure thing is that we will eventually perish and fail as a species.

71

But it isn’t a feast or famine dichotomy. There is just as much or as little evidence that becoming flower children will lead to our eventual demise as being rapacious greedy pigs would. There is absolutely no sensible reason at all that we can’t progress as a species while at the same time taking care that we don’t do so at the expense of the rest of the planet. Balance is the key, and being the only indigenous species capable of conceptualizing that, it falls to us to see it happen – or not, as the case may be. Does it mean that the pace of progress needs to be tempered a little, or at least altered in such a way as to make concessions for natural conservation? Yes. Is that possible? Maybe. Should we try? Absofreakinloutly. All things in moderation, after all – and that means all things. To do otherwise is to outpace nature, and if we do that, we will lose it one piece at a time. Not may. Will.

72

Mindfield, I agree with you 100%. But a doubt just keeps nagging at me.

I think that maybe our preservation efforts are misguided. We seem to be too obsessed with preserving the status quo and that is the most unnatural thing I can imagine. Nature is a monster of change and evolution, not of stasis.

We try to make shorelines stay where they are when they have moved forever. We try to preserve every single species when extinction is a normal occurrence. We want every measurable parameter to stay exactly where it was the day we started measuring it when they have been always fluctuating.

There is a problem of perception that I believe stems from the fact that extinction is a discrete observable event where evolution is a gradual effect that happens in a time scale beyond our natural grasp.

Maybe it is the extinction of *Extantius sapii * at the hands of disolved aromatic hydrocarbons that will make room for the great amphibian radiation that will give way to a super intelligent race that will be the one to harness the full solar output and then colonize the galaxy.

But we find *E. sapii * so cute and deserving of life that we feel we must protect it at all costs and all we are doing is stopping nature. Because its extintion is something we can see and feel responsible for while the great amphibian radiation is something that will happen over the next billion years. (and being replaced by walking frogs just sucks for us as a species, of course)

73

Well, Bricker, although my comments in the MPSIMS thread are not particularly related to this OP, you invited me specifically into this thread.

so, I will repost my comment there in this post, under the assumption that some sort of answer is pending:

To rephrase my comments for this thread, I would posit that the question is not “Do humans have more of a right to live than Baiji dolphins”, but do we have the ability to continue to survive and thrive in a world of shrinking biodiversity?

74

Humans have more right to live than paintings, but I rarely hear anyone complain that people are sad when a masterpiece is destroyed.

75

Only when we create it. If extinction is a result of natural processes, such as a local shift in environment wiping out a species that only exists within a very confined space, the time frame is more extensive. If the river dolphin was common two hundred years ago, and the only change to its environment is man-made, its a very safe bet that its extinction is man-made as well.

It isn’t a matter of the patient dying of natural causes and being supported by artificial life support, it is that we shot the victim and watched it bleed to death.

Extinction is a fact of nature, sudden extinction is not. For Gaia, a couple hundred years is less than an eyeblink. Natural calamities, like giant meteor strikes, can wreak havoc in very short time frames. Absent such cosmic intervention, the calamity is us.

76

I guess my question is answered: Bricker has no argument concerning rights, just a thin sneer and a begged question to keep him comfort.

77

Man doesn’t want to keep every parameter the same. Man wants to control every parameter, because Man wants nature to work around his plans. Man also knows it doesn’t work this way, but not for lack of trying. The desire to control and dominate while ignoring the cost to nature however is what is directly and single-handedly responsible for the extinction of the baiji dolphin, and that extinction is almost certainly not something that would have happened on its own, at least not in our lifetime and possibly not for hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions of years. They have lived and thrived on this planet for millions of years already, so it isn’t like natural selection didn’t have ample opportunity to snuff them. That was all our doing, and it was thoroughly preventable. “We didn’t know they were that close to extinction” isn’t an excuse, either. In what way would the desire to prevent their extinction – or the extinction of any other creatures by our own hands misguided?

Extinction is only a discrete and observable event when there are so few of them left that we can comfortably count them, and then only when their numbers have been reduced to such levels by demonstrably natural events such as a loss of habitat or food through equally natural means such as climate change, geological or astronomical events of significant proportions. This is not one such case. The events surrounding the extinction of the baiji dolphin are demonstrably unnatural. It had nothing to do with dissolved aromatic hydrocarbons or solar radiation or an unfortunately excessive affinity for twinkies. Humans killed them, one by one, and at a rate that any kind of natural extinction process can only whistle incredulously at.

While humans may have a tendency to anthropomorphise certain creatures they deem “cute,” and this perception may play a part in the desires of some to want to save one species over another if a choice was necessary, this can be disregarded as a practical matter. Saving creatures from natural extinction may be attempting to go against nature, but again, this was not a natural extinction by any definition. To say that attempting to save the baiji dolphin from extinction is going against nature might as well be saying that we shouldn’t be trying to save the rainforests from deforestation or the ozone layer from chlorofluorocarbon buildup. By your definition they are all natural events that shouldn’t be curtailed because they fly in the face of natural evolution, and that is a patently false assertion. We are the reason there’s a hole in the ozone layer. We are the reason the rainforests are dwindling. We are the reason there is no longer any such creature as the baiji dolphin. We. Us. Human beings. Our greed and rapacious nature and insistence on dominating everything that crosses our path. This is most certainly not natural.

78

Agreed.

I guess the problem is that “humans” believe they can outrun the destruction of their habitat and reap the benefits of progress before the collapse of life-as-we-know-it.

Sadly, in the case of our current crop of policy makers, this is true. They have the means to get over whatever hardship might come to them in their limited lifespans as a consequence of their pillaging of the environment. To them, a change of course has a price that is not corresponded by what they will benefit from it.

Democracies don’t build pyramids.

79

ok, sorry to double post. Here where I guess I stand:

Take Kyoto, for example. A noble idea, measurable goals, an attack on a real problem that needs to be addressed *pronto * (hoping we are not already too late). The problem is that the contribution of the signataries is offset many times over by those outside of it.

If you kill and steal, I will not use that as an excuse to do the same. I will do the right thing no matter what the rest of the world is doing. So far so good. But as a virtuous life is its own reward, the same is not true with the environment.

If I am at a free all-you-can-eat buffet, the responsible thing is to put on my plate what I want to eat. You can always come back for more if you want more, right? But if you see these 3 giants that are just piling it up, eating straight from the table, puking over the food to make room to eat some more, what is the logical thing to do? (they also carry big guns, btw)

You could just proceed as usual and when the food is over, it is over for all and good night.

You can’t really hoard it as it will spoil. You could hoard some items, I guess but as a long term policy.

What is an ecologically responsible person/country to do in the face of an overwhelming majority that is not being respectful of the environment?

80

triple post now. I meant to say:

You can’t really hoard it as it will spoil. You could hoard some items, I guess but NOT as a long term policy.