[extropy-chat] Extinctions

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On 6/11/06, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:

> A) Only a very radical fringe puts other species above humans;

### I am glad they are only a fringe, but the threat of terrorism I am
exposed to (I sometimes use animals in my research) makes me acutely
sensitive to evironmentalist and animal-rightist rhetoric - all it
takes is a few hundred fanatics to put a monkey wrench in scientific
research.

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>
> B) Beef is not the best way to fully feed all people on earth well
> quickly so not giving everyone a beefsteak is not a bad thing;

### I am not really talking about not giving a beefsteak: of course,
nobody has a right to demand that a steak be *given* to him. What I am
opposed to is trying to *forbid* a steak to those who can buy it. And
serious species-saving would mean forbidding steaks to most people.

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>
> C) Our suburbs are grossly inefficient in many respects.  Better than
> hovels to be sure but not the model of human well-being.

### Should their inhabitants freely decide to leave them because of
this "gross inefficiency", that's fine. What I am opposed to is
forcibly evicting them to make space for bugs and slugs.

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>
> D) You are still claiming being serious about saving species is to be
> anti-human.  Give some proof or move on graciously please.

### So far, all the proposals floated in this thread are either
showbusiness, pie-in-the-sky, irrelevant, expensive, largely
ineffective, simple fraud, authoritarian, antihuman or any combination
of the foregoing.

If you can show me a single plausible (i.e. potentially economically
viable) method of significantly reducing human impact on the
environment, that would not grossly interfere with human lives, I will
concede the point.

As to moving on, graciously or otherwise, I won't. I like it where I am.

Rafal