The whole human race - if it's our extinction or theirs, I'd rather it be ours

The BBQ Pit
81

In the original spirit of the debate, I’d never willingly extinguish a species (admittedly I do kill some forms of vermin, and bacteria and viruses and such, but their species have nothing to fear from me). I wouldn’t kill a Stellar’s Sea Cow. I don’t want to kill anyone, I at least aspire to hold myself to a higher standard that “see, want, take,” I’m not interested in having more than one or two kids if any, and if I do have them I plan to care for and educate them to the best of my ability, and I’m human, so where do I fit in to all this? Should I die or undergo forced sterilization? Does it matter that I am not a killing machine at this junction and try to act on my feelings of compassion for other species when I can? How many other people would need to have similar feelings for the human race as a whole not to be deemed a race of killing machines?

In a more practical vein, is the consensus that we should be using this generation in particular to stem population growth by forcing a number of us not to have kids? How would one determine who gets to have them? I’m all for establishing proper socioeconomic development and educational opportunities for third-world women, but is the extra population resulting from them presently really the one focused on as being the most destructive to the world’s other species? I am curious.

82

I like to end my lectures on the conservation of tropical forests with the following quote from Charlie “Mr. Explorer” Douglas, who rambled about remote areas in New Zealand in the late 1800s:

The point being that it’s hard to talk to a hungry person about conservation. Usually, however, it doesn’t come down to quite that grim a choice. I think Lemur866 has expressed the real situation rather well.

83

[…beaming with pride…] :slight_smile:

But mindful that one aw-shit wipes out a hundred atta-boys.

84

We are capable of considering and adjusting; we just don’t.

Am not.

Lemur, rather than violating human rights, we give humans the choice and the chance to do the right thing, and humans regretfully decline to do so. We all have our excuses for not doing the right thing (and starving and seeing your kids starving are pretty good reasons for doing wrong things), but we still end up in the same situation. All the good intentions in the world won’t make any difference at all when we face the extinction of humanity, and that is what we are talking about here.

Let me make a simple statement here; I am 100% in favour of making difficult decisions NOW, so that we don’t have to make impossible decisions in a couple of generations, or worse yet, have all decisions taken away from us in an unstoppable slide to extinction. I am growing to understand that humanity as a whole will not do hard things now to make things better in the long run, and we will earn our just rewards for that. But I’m not the one making the decisions and setting policies; the decision-makers are not driven by considerations of long-term effects; they are only driven by what it takes to get re-elected and/or profits.

85

Bah! Just take some genetic samples and in 50-100 years we can clone them back into existence when we want to.

86

Pretending that there is no difference between humans and other animals is absolutely silly. We are members of the most amazing species and our impact on our environment is hard to overstate. The earth has survived much larger extinctions than anyone think we might be responsible for but we may not. Much as species die off and evolved in the wake of climate changes, they are also dying off and evolving in the wake of a new powerful environmental factor… Humans.

We need biodiversity for selfish reasons but we do not need to preserve the ecological niches and necessity of every last species on earth. If the earth has changed… if we have changed the conditions here on earth so that there is no more room for large predators, how far do we have to go preserve an ecological niche for them. Is it enough to just cordon off some national parks? Can we just put them in zoos? Do we let them roam the streets of NYC and let them eat our children?

87

Human beings are not kudzu, nor caulerpa taxifolia, nor sea urchins. We’re not mindless weeds; we don’t have to simply destroy everything in our path.

It took me a long time to realize this: We should not exterminate humans for the crime of stupidity, for mankind can actually help fight the depradations of other noxious organisms. But we ought to reconnect with a hard-line conservationist viewpoint which will punish harshly crimes against the ecology & biodiversity base. This sort of law is not completely new, but was subsumed into the idea of, “the king owns the land” in many cases, & thus has been deplored by “modern thought”–whether classical liberal, humanitarian, egalitarian, or techno-utopian progressive.

Poaching should be a capital crime, period.

If you destroy the life in a river, even if it’s an accident, you will be slowly & torturously poisoned to death, & the state will confiscate (even dismantle if necessary) any business the pollution from which does this. This will force a strict compliance, for you must love the resources of the future world more than your own life or be forced to behave as if you do.

88

The problems with your position, col_10022, are threefold:

A. The human race is not a monolith. You are not more happy because more humans are alive. In fact, due to the increased competition, you are in more danger of hunger. Due to the greater breeding ground for human diseases, your children are still in danger of dying of completely new & interesting plagues, & the fact that we will soon be surrounded by our own wastestream makes that even surer.

B. The human race isn’t going to live forever in a world that it takes over. We’re not really self-sustaining. Heck, we’re not even going to improve our chances. First, an overpopulated single species with an unsustainable food source base will hit a famine the likes of which the world has never seen, & lead to the collapse of unsustainable societal more–like prohibitions on murder & cannibalism, or, really, humanism in general. Destroying other species only staves this off & makes it even more horrible when it hits. (So in the end you destroy the very thing you most believe in.)

Second & less obviously, due to the growth of the human foodstream/wastestream combined with the growth of total human population, the chances for new virus evolution developing the virus of our extinction only increase.

C. We don’t need biodiversity for “selfish reasons.” We need it for objective reasons. By “we,” I mean the atoms that make up the Earth. Your human body is a temporary form, not your true essence. The more apocalyptic argument is as follows: Earth’s environment changes, & through viral evolution, species may self-destruct. If, when humans vanish, there isn’t sufficient biodiversity to take up the slack, well, so much for any hope of intelligent life re-evolving on this planet.

The more near-term argument is that only getting to be human is relatively boring. What kind of sick fuck do you have to be not to realize that otters have amzingly cool lives? People like you are depriving my component atoms of more pleasant if less intellectual reincarnations. Note the plural; I’m not talking about the transmigration of souls, I’m talking about the persistence of matter.

89

First off, humanity is not, even to the this day, the form of life that has the most impact on Earth’s environment. That would be plants, mostly planktonic algae. They are responsible for generating the second most common gas in our atmosphere, oxygen. Because of plants, we can have fun things like fire and rust and aerobic respiration. They also have made life very difficult for anaerobic bacteria, which was the dominate form of life before photosynthesis came along.

So, plants not only caused a huge extinction, but also fundementally changed the way things work on this planet. They did it by spewing out waste. And yet, when plants do it, it’s considered natural and wholesome.

Look folks, like or not, humans are a part of nature too. We evolved on this planet, and we and everything we do is a part of this planet. We are nature, and all the cities and computers and SUVs and porn that we make is part of nature too. And, yes, so are the extinctions we cause.

Extinctions are part of life on Earth. Species compete with each other for resources. Those that can’t compete litter the fossil record. Nature is not some unchanging pristine wonderland of harmony without Mankind around to much things up. It is a brutal and nasty place where weakness means death, not just to you but perhaps to your entire species. It happens all the time, and it will continue to happen with or without our consent, until the sun goes red giant.

Don’t get me wrong, I like tigers too. I don’t want to see them die, individually or as a species. However, it will happen. The world that tigers evolved in doesn’t exist anymore. The new world likes adaptable, nocturnal hunters like leopards. We can try to conserve the tigers all we want, but we cannot stop the inevitable. They cannot compete against an aggressive, organized species vying for top predator. Even if they survive humanity, they will not survive whatever out competes us.

90

Its really all about us.humans. Whether or not we put animals before humans, their relative values are based on our values alone. Pondering my feelings aroused by this thread, it haunts me that I would consider the extinction of the tiger as more tragic than the extinction of a population in lets say Darfur.

Norway rats are completely another matter.

91

Not as bad as sick fucks like you that think people should be totured and killed for polluting. Go to hell, fucking psychopath.

92

Cite? :wink:

93

Here’s my deal. All the “people are the best” folks trot out the people are sentient, sapient, have feelings, can see the big picture, etc. line.

But we* don’t do anything with our supposed awesomeness. We don’t take care of the world. We make excuses for why it’s okay for us to do destroy whatever we want. We don’t look at the big picture. And what happened in the past–before we realized our footprint and what we could do to minimize it–does not excuse the fact that we suck now.

*humans as a whole

94

Been to the rain forest lately? All that clear-cutting ain’t from beavers, pal. :stuck_out_tongue:

95

What makes you think that our purpose is to take care of the world? Personally, I think our purpose is to get off the planet before some nutter blows the whole thing up. And if we take the tigers (or their DNA) with us, then so much the better.

96

I think you finally said something in this thread I can agree with. As to your question, I still hold out hopes we can preserve this world while we are going about your noble mission.

Jim

97

The idea of humans ruining this planet and then going to a new one without having learned a damned thing makes my blood run cold. Fortunately we aren’t anywhere near being ready to do that, and hopefully we will die out as a species from our own excesses before we can infect another innocent planet.

I like your ideas about hardline conservatism, foolsguinea. It’s more complicated than that, of course - you kill a guy who’s poaching, and his eight kids have no father now. But if the poor fathers of eight kids know they will be killed if they poach, maybe they will find a better way. Maybe they and their wives will decide not to have eight kids.

I think the “fucking psychopath” is the guy/guys who decide that profits are more important than clean air and rivers. That to me is truly psychopathic (actually, it’s more sociopathic - doing as you please with no concern for consequences for anybody else).

98

As I said before, you are under no obligation to wait for the rest of us to die off before you do. It amazes me that people would be willing to kill off entire human populations for the sake of a couple of tigers, but aren’t willing to take one for the ‘team’ themselves. It is rather hypocritical if you ask me.

99

I admire your spirited defense of wildlife.

However, I have a life-sized picture in my head of him hunting tiger, the open end of his “Star Trek” pillow case wrapped around his fist. 6 D cell batteries gently clank inside. From his perch 15 feet above the forest floor he watches the great cat approach.

The orange and black feline passes below, unaware that for the sake of Rollo the AIDS junkie, he must die.

Just a few more seconds…ok now he is right below…

Breathlessly, silently Max Torque springs his trap, descending on the tiger with fury and rage. He lands on the beast and begins to rain blows down with his sack of D cell death.

A few minutes later, the tiger thinks, not bad, but kind of fatty… He gives himself a halfhearted tongue bath and takes a nap.

Somewhere, halfway around the planet, Rollo tip s a 40oz in respect to his homie.

So no worries, I think the cats have this one covered.

100

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”
M. Gandhi

This is a bold statement. If you really mean this, then you should pen a well written treatise on why the individual should sacrafice himself for the betterment of the planet, then gather followers for a mass suicide.

Otherwise you are full of bluster and BS.