I do not believe that there is an “overwhelming majority” of people who mistreat the environment to egregious levels. Rather, it is the few who have enough power and/or money to do it that make it look bad for the rest of the world.
The Kyoto Accord is a good and noble idea, but it is also a political football used by nations either to shame those who have not signed for being environmentally unfriendly, or to blame those who have signed for making demands that are not able to be reasonably met by nations who cannot afford to implement the structures necessary to comply and/or whose nations are too large to be able to comply in anything approaching a reasonable or timely manner.
In general however, with mankind’s path-of-least-resistance tendencies, there are some shortcuts or conveniences we indulge in simply because they’re easy and the consequences (both short and long-term) are minimal. Most of us do recognize however when the consequences of our shortcuts can and often do lead to undesirable results that may have devastating long-term consequences. The problem lies with the few who just don’t care – those who most often are rich enough to be able to either pay the petty fines levied on them for breaking the rules or hire top-notch defense attorneys to get them out of their messes. What really needs to be done is not to try and change those people but instead make the punishments significant enough to act as enough of a deterrent that they would rather find other means to go about their business.
It is one thing to waste food at a buffet – there are in fact some buffets that will charge you for wasted food or possibly ban you if you waste too much – such wastefulness is a shame but it doesn’t have any significant long term consequences to our health or safety or that of the environment. If it was well known and widely understood that buffets unilaterally charged you extra for wasted food however, I’d be willing to bet that a lot fewer people would be so wasteful.
true but the buffet has an owner and clear policies. When you enter, you agree to comply with whatever rule they impose and the charge is a measurable punishment, effective inmediately.
If China or the US refuse to curb their carbon habits, then who can punish them and how?. The obvious solution would be a boycott or embargo but I would like to see anyone try.
What is a small nation to do in the face of these juggernauts pumping CO2 in orders of magnitude higher than they can offset with their own internal policies?
If the choice was between us being alive and another species ,it would be a simple decision .But the choice between short term profits and the existence of a species. is the one we make often. They must die for money. The rights of animals is a dollar and cents equation, not a moral one.
In general, the actions taken are proportionate to the threat perceived. If the threat is imminent and potentially catastrophic, so too must be the response to it. This is an ideal but when the thread is aimed squarely as personal life and liberty and is in significant enough proportions then it is an act of self-preservation to respond with equal measure – even the most reticent of governments can see that. The problem is convincing them that the threat is indeed dire enough to warrant an equivalent response. If sanctions and embargos are the only sensible response to an imminent threat whose consequences outweigh those of said sanctions and embargos then any government not acting out of pure spite or malice would do so without question. This does leave smaller nations in the lurch since their sanctions wouldn’t have an appreciable effect, but this is all the more reason to convince those nations whose actions would prove detrimental to the offenders that the threat is real, it is here, and it requires urgent attention.
Only for the immoral. The rights of a species not to die at our hands is an issue of morality for anyone who has morals.
Comparing apples and orangutans. The right of the unborn to live is not in question, that is simply how you choose to frame the question. For others, including myself, it is a question as to whether that right overwhelms and negates a woman’s right to make decisions concerning her body, or must surrender her bodily functions to a state or religious authority.
Morality is not always a black and white proposition. There are certain moral absolutes: It is wrong to kill for reasons other than an immediate and present threat to life, yours or someone else’s. (Corollary: Threats that are not immediate but are extremely likely to repeat, such as recidivism in serial killers, is an exception) It is wrong to rape under any circumstances. It is wrong to steal another’s property. (Stealing for reasons of personal survival are up for debate – but not this one) No one of any reasonable mind will debate these. Other situations are not as clear cut. The age of consent, for example. Polygamy. And yes, abortion, which you have brought up above. I’m not going to debate that here because its relevance in this debate is peripheral at best.
The idea, however, that the morality of extinguishing an entire species – deliberately or incidentally – because their existence in a particular area unfortunately coincides with major shipping routes where large boats play havoc with their navigation abilities and wounds or kills them with their propellers is similarly up for debate is a absurd. The baiji dolphins didn’t exactly choose to live there because they happened to like the neighborhood – or rather, if they did, they did it a hell of a long time before we ever used those waters. They evolved to specialize in thriving in that specific environment. It’s not like they could pack up in a huff and move to a different neighborhood because their new neighbors were bringing down the property values with the parties and the loud music. We invaded their territory and proceeded to take it over, and in the blink of an eye (evolutionarily speaking) we killed them off. We were the interlopers in this scenario, and we effectively annexed their land and slaughtered the inhabitants. Can you seriously say that there is a moral ambiguity here? Are you saying that there’s no possible way we could have found a way to conduct business in a manner that wouldn’t have pushed the baiji dolphins to extinction? Because it strikes me as the height of hubris to say that our way of doing certain things – things that convenient, but not at all critical to our survival – is more important than the survival of an entire species of mammal.
No, Bricker. But honest people get to at least argue and debate over what is and isn’t moral and how we should decide what is and isn’t moral: an argument your OP simply dodged and/or refuses to countenance.
Not that we have any chance of succeeding but our effort is a serious one. Why is it ok to try an exterminate cockroaches or the influenza virus? Are they not biodiversity? Are they somehow lesser than dolphins?
What makes the “accidental” extintion of these dolphins more immoral than the deliberate attempt at exterminating malaria?
Malaria and influenza are harmful and potentially fatal. They are a threat to our survival. This much falls under Darwin’s purview. Cockroaches – well, they’re just bothersome, but it is highly unlikely that even despite our best efforts, they will ever be eradicated. They are virtually a model of survival and are in no danger of extinction. I’m certain however that if they were, entomologists would be trying their hardest to prevent that from coming to pass. Dolphins on the other hand are neither bothersome nor a threat. In this case, they just happened to be in the way of “progress.” There are no good reasons they should have been killed much less rendered non-existent.
Only if you succeed in getting that choice of words accepted by your interlocutor, rather than “fetus” or “lump of flesh” or “potential human” etc. The very substance of the abortion debate, IOW. But you’re merely assuming your conclusion there, hmm?
Given that you’ve already make the “blanket assertion” that there are *no * rights that exist outside of the written law, your claim that there is nevertheless a morality (a rights-free one, by your own definition, and therefore a tenuous one at best) outside the written law is quite odd indeed.
Perhaps you’re just arguing for the sake of refusing to admit not having an argument?
We had no need to do it, nor did we even benefit by it in any way, nor did any other species, except perhaps some river fish. We could have prevented it, but just couldn’t be arsed.
But malaria affects our own health and even our own survival, without creating any identifiable benefits to us or to any other species.
I certainly agree. There are certain moral propositions that, while they may not from a strictly objective point of view be provable, are so widely accepted by the vast majority of people that they can not said to be seriously a subject of dissent.
Here’s where you lost me. I don’t agree with the suggestion that this falls into the “so obvious it’s not debateable” category. Clearly the Chinese don’t agree. I don;t see a particular groundswell of reaction from humans around the world when considering this issue. I don’t even see a unanimity of reaction among the people that consider the issue catefully.
On what basis, then, do you allege that this proposition is so obvious as to be beyond debate?
On the basis that they all died because some small few people couldn’t be arsed to find a more eco-friendly way to conduct business. They became extinct not because it was an us-or-them scenario. Not because their presence in any way threatened our very existence. Not because they prevented us from advancing as a species. Not because they competed heavily with us for food nor placed a strain on our economy in any way nor even bothered us by making strange noises in the middle of the night. No, they became extinct because they were in the way of business that wanted to use those waters for its own end. An end, I might add, that were in no way vital to our existence and only fattened a few wallets and filled a few store shelves.
My point here is that it could have, and should have, been prevented at next to no cost to mankind. But it wasn’t because people were too damn lazy to do so. It is, in other words, not merely killing but exterminating an entire species for the sole sake of convenience. On what basis do you consider the morality of this debatable?
Because plenty of other species have become extinct for even more trivial reasons, or reasons just as uncontrollable by the unfortunate species in question. Because you have failed to demonstrate that the items you cited are universally regarded as moral imperatives.
Look, try to follow this reasoning closely: you asserted that this is as unambiguous a moral issue as “It is wrong to kill for reasons other than an immediate and present threat to life.” I disagreed. In support of your assertion, you have merely repeated descriptions of the factors that led to the extinction. But it’s obvious that I don’t accept that these factors have the moral weight you wish me to assign to them. When we discuss killing for people, in contrast, we can note that all societies have some version of the prohibition against the taking of human life. We can infer from this the generally unquestioned applicability of this as a moral imperative. But when we consider placing business and laziness interests above the survival of a species, we do NOT find a near-constant agreement that this is a moral imperative. YOU are suggesting it, yes, but merely repeating it over and over does not make it so.
If you are to prevail in your claim that this is a moral issue so unambiguous as to be in line with “It is wrong to kill for reasons other than an immediate and present threat to life,” then you’ve got to show that it is as unquestioningly accepted as “It is wrong to kill for reasons other than an immediate and present threat to life,” is. I can easily show that it ISN’T – the present situation and many others show that many of us are quite willing to place business interests ahead of other species’ survival.
So – where do you get off claiming it’s a unquestionable moral imperative? Isn’t it obvious it’s just something you WISH were seen as a universal moral imperative?
I am confident that somewhere there was some guy for whom passing his boat through those dolphin’s habitat meant the difference between feeding his children or not. True that most likely it wasn’t the person with the capacity to make a decision over that boat’s route. And most likely the guy who made that decision didn’t make it in consideration of this, but you know where I am heading.
Plus, a moral decision based on the utility of (or threat posed by) a species is not a moral decision at all. Moral decisions are choices between two goods, not between a good and an evil (that would be economy, I guess).
We don’t have a moral obligation to protect the weak because they do us good (or at least they do us no harm). We protect them because they are weak. If we choose to not protect a species because it is harmful to us, then not protecting the dolphins is a matter of degree, not of principle. Different people draw the line at different places.
