Just some interesting questions on the environment to start a discussion.
Is the Earth in danger caused by the human interference and ecological destruction?
Is the Earth a resource that we can use for our own benefit or do things external of us have value in themselves?

I would say that the ecological destruction caused by humans is in fact destroying the ecological integrity of the Earth. I think people don't understand how connected we are to nature and that we are in fact part of nature and not above it. I also don't believe that this shallow, or anthroprocentric (human centered), approach is appropriate in dealing with the situation because it doesn't go to the real problem. The real problem is that we see ourselves above nature because we see ourselves as so rational and non-human that we are better than nature and we have dominion over it. The solution is to adopt a ecocentric perspective towards ecology, a deep ecology. One where we understand that all living things have the same value to grow and develop as us and the only interference we have is to satisfy our own vital needs.

As liberal as I tend to be on social issues, the environment is not one. I have fairly anthropocentric views. I'm no tree hugger.

I'm all for regulating pollution to a reasonable extent, insofar as to protect human health, but that's about it. The reality is that homo sapiens is the only sentient species on Earth. We are the only species capable of complex, emotional thought and artistic expression. So it's reasonable to value ourselves above the rest of nature. That's not to say that wanton cruelty to other creatures is acceptable, but it's perfectly natural to be concerned primarily with our interests as a species.

As a matter of fact sentience is just whether or not a thing can suffer. Almost all animals can suffer, so if that is the criteria then would it not also apply to any thing that has sentience? As for we are the only species capable of complex, emotional thought and artistic expression why is that a good reason to value ourselves above nature just because it's something that we posses? It's like saying a man is better than a woman because we have a penis. Placing value on things that we posses for no reason other than we posses it and other things don't is just a short sighted view if what actually matters.

There's no "matter of fact" about sentience. It's all a matter of personal philosophy. But most Westerners believe that humans are the only sentient animals on Earth.

The reason that's justification for giving ourselves a greater value is that other animals are only concerned with survival; they have nothing to contribute to the experience of life. Again, that doesn't mean it's okay to torture and kill animals for no reason, but it does mean that they're basically less important. A slaughtered human could have had the potential to bring love into a broken heart or compose a powerful symphony. A slaughtered cow could have had the potential to eat some grass.

I am not a deep ecologist. However, I am heavily into environmental stuff. The thing that a lot of people seem to forget is that ecological destruction has bad impacts on humans. Say, for instance, that some activity kills off a lot of phytoplankton. You might think, "Who care? It's some algae." But phytoplankton makes up the base of the food chain in the ocean killing it off would have repercussions for fisheries. I do also consider the natural world to have some value if only because we derive enjoyment from it. It is beautiful and therefore we should not destroy it.

The current way things are going could well result in ecological collapse. In fact, I heard today that there was a paper published in Nature warning about that. In about a thousand years things would re-stabilize to a new equilibrium, but that transition would not be pleasant for us, considering that we are economically dependant on the world's current ecology. So essentially I believe in environmentalism because I consider it necessary to protect our interests as a species. That means that we need some pretty drastic reforms in order to make our societies sustainable.

Disclaimer: That is the logo of the Green Party of Canada that I'm using as my avatar. Use that information as you will to aid in your evaluation of my statements.

Oznoz, that's a shallow outlook on life. For millions of years life flourished on Earth, ebbing and flowing with the natural geological cycles and emerging more resilient and more diverse. Earth was beautiful before the beautiful contributions of humans, so it's all perspective. The fact that we're capable of destroying millions of years of ecosystems and diversified life in truly the few hundred years that we've modernized ourselves is quite ugly, and arguably a hazard to everything that inspired and continues to inspire our sentience in the first place. How can we value ourselves highly if we destroy the very place that makes us unique? Human culture is dependent upon our environment, and destroying it is an attack on humanity itself.

Oznoz, 2 points. Being sentient means they you are able to feel and sense things. It is quite obvious that other animals share this. Sentience is actually the basis of Peter Singer's animal liberation, a theory in which I disagree, but I just wanted to make that clarification. The second point is that human beings can grow and flourish within a natural world. It was not necessary for us to have dominion over the Earth in order that Beethoven can compose. The Native American culture gives testimony to that. Culture can flourish within a world inhabited by other species that are given the same value to grow and flourish.

Although I would agree with some of what AstroGeek said, I think it can lead to an ineffective solution. The problem is not only what we do but it's fundamentally how we view the world. If we view the world as something that needs to be protected for our own benefit then the constant deforestation would be permitted if we were to replant as many trees, over even more, then we cut down. But that ignores the ecosystems we destroy, the ecosystems are not vital to our survival but the trees are. Also, deserts have no use to us unless they contain oil but by creating technologies to try to make deserts areas where we can have agriculture, Afghanistan is an example, then we destroy the ecosystem that exists there.

But there's a difference between looking pretty and making a significant contribution. Beautiful and majestic as they may be, nearly every other creature will live life and die without doing anything unique.

Sentience is more up to interpretation than you think. I view it as the ability to process complex emotional and intellectual thought. Perhaps dolphins share this, but for the most part, we're alone. And of course humans can flourish in a natural world. But that doesn't mean we need to devote our lives to protecting nature. We're more important as far as our own interests go.

A significant contribution to what? The universe, mankind?

Is living not unique in and of itself? Any scientist will acknowledge the statistical improbability of life, and the fact that it has not just existed but flourished here on Earth is, as far as we are aware, amazing. Earth spawned sentient beings like humans not despite but entirely due to its environments. Human sentience, achievements, and "contributions" do not exist without the environment from which we've spawned.

Let's have a little reverence for the thing that makes us so great, and capable of "contributing" so much.

But what gives us this sworn duty to defend the environment? Why are we obligated to protect it beyond just sustainable levels? Humans have fought for survival just like any species. Nature is not kind. It's entirely neutral, and thus there's no reason to revere it.

Our sentience gives us this duty, though it is in no way sworn. We can either understand and preserve the spark of our greatness, or cast it away and treat it as an irrelevant fact of our existence and rise to prominence.

The former offers more fulfillment and inspiration to humans as a species, while the latter significantly drains our pool of resources. Humans are master manipulators, and that's how we have overcome the neutral processes of nature. Would it not be smarter to preserve indefinitely so that we may exploit indefinitely?

And "sustainable levels," (which you use in place of "minimal biodiversity") in a biosphere seems abstract to me. One of the first things that we learn in biology is the interconnectedness of populations within an environment, and even environments with other environments. I fail to see proper cause for us, very natural beings, to assume that we can survive outside of this function.

Any "contribution" that you state has a direct and necessary relation to the environment in which it found its origin.

Or duty is to live in the environment intelligently without exploiting it and destroying it for the sake of progress. Animals strive for complexity so emotional complexity is just one biological features we have. Other creatures have different kinds of complexities and beauties. Just because they don't share certain traits that we have, we are still connected to them as Poster_Undefined pointed out. We are not protectors of nature but we exist within nature and therefore we have a duty not to destroy it and exploit it for our own selfish interests that do not enhance the quality of life but only enhance greed and power of the certain individuals over everyone else. We must be able to see when progress is something that enhances life and allows people to become who they are and when progress becomes a cancerous growth.

What I believe in is promoting the interests of the human species. When the interests of other species conflict with ours, it's only natural to dominate. When they don't, we can let them be. And this is the basis for everything I've said in this thread so far.

I'm not saying we can completely destroy nature and expect to survive - we need food, water, clean air, and other resources from the earth. We must preserve as much of the environment as we actually need. Beyond that, there's no reason to feel guilty for exploiting the earth to further our interests.

The very fact of our existence as advanced life forms capable of sentient thought is a testament to how we instinctively manipulate our environment to serve our own interests as a species. If we're given a choice between progressing as a species and holding ourselves back for the benefit of other creatures, we have no moral obligation to choose the latter.

The discussion here mainly seems to focus on conjecture.
Earth is not in any 'danger' from human activity only a large amount of complex organisms are.

A good example of this is that the Ocean's Carbon Compensation Depth is rising due to increased levels of CO2 in the Ocean. Carbon today is pretty much insoluble in our sea surface waters but after about 1000m in the Pacific and ~5500m in the North Atlantic Carbon dissolves into the ocean. Also rising is the Lysocline which is pretty much the rate of dissolution.
This is part of a natural process to balance the pH levels of the seas however the process naturally takes place over thousands of years and life cannot adapt to the rate of change now.

Also it is theoretically possible that increased fresh water from glacial melt in the North Atlantic will divert the Gulf Stream towards the equator which would have significant consequences for weather in Europe.

The environment isn't at sustainable levels, sustainable would be pre-agriculture.
You might not understand the contribution a cow makes to its ecosystem beyond "eating some grass" but I assure its more complex than that. Minerals are returned to the soil and microorganisms break it down, when the cow dies yet more minerals are returned and more organisms flourish within its corpse.
Processes like these control the mineral intake of the soil, soil that we then use as fertilizer. Most agricultural societies now work outside of this natural process as rapid mineral depletion of soils (that took thousands of years to become enriched) has caused us to look for oil to be used as fertilizer which is actually its chief use, not driving your car.

We're not instinctively manipulating our environments for much else than economic gain. We attach capital to energy and the economy asks for exponential growth that cannot happen with finite resources.
Humanity is like a greedy child gorging itself on maccas and asking why its suffering health issues when its only understanding of medicine is how much money each medical process costs.

We have run out of mass sustainability in producing food, we are running out of mass naturally clean water, we are running out of finite precious minerals that are used in the production of electronics and soon enough we will also run out of clean air due to deforestation and loss of photosynthetic plankton.
There is currently very little that is sustainable in our society and our unsustainable methods are destroying many complex natural ecosystems that affect not only themselves but abiotic sources as well as mankind. We have not risen above our own place in the natural order, we've taken on some other roles sure but we have not made ourselves exempt from our own casuality.
We are currently a very near sighted species whose primary concern is the financial market in an age where financial capital can no longer function as a marker for real capital.

Here is a good article on energy and its affect on the global market.

Most of the Earth's biodiversity and basic ecological integrity are at stake. This article, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... ies-evolve, outlines my point. It talks a little about E. O. Wilson who is the foremost expert on ants and biodiversity. Fun fact: the entire mass of ants on Earth (just a big pile of ants) has 4 times more mass than all the humans. If you enjoy the article go check out the biodiversity section of TED and watch the TED talks given by E. O. Wilson and Jane Goodall.

Oznoz, what are our interests? I say that we can use things to satisfy our vital needs, by when you speak of interests it almost sounds like whatever we want. For example, it's in my interests to drill for oil here so I'm aloud t do it even though it's conflicting with the interests of the plants, animals, and ecosystem to be alive. Our vital interests come first, all our other interests, such as killing endangered whales for speciality food comes second to the interests of nature. This not only applies to us but the entire biosphere. That's the only way species can live together, and they have to love together because they are so interdependent.

I think Carroll hit the nail on the head with that last post. Even if you believe that we're obligated to prioritize humans above everything else for whatever arbitrary reason you can come up with, the exploitation of Earth, our environment, our natural resources, and our ecosystems is simply incompatible with long-term survival on this planet.

Earth is rock, earth is unliving, we are not going to destroy it any more than volcanism has in the past.
At stake is the current biodiversity of the earth but that is not to say that life itself will not progress into complex life forms and ecological communities again.

There are more species of insects than species of all classes of animal combined. The number of named insect species approaches one million with perhaps thousands or millions still unknown.

We're not talking about destroying Earth itself, nor are we talking about general biodiversity (as far as I can tell). We're talking about Earth and biodiversity as they relate to the existence and propagation of our species, and correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't high school Biology tell us that the widespread destruction of biodiversity will lead to an environment unsustainable of human life?

I am addressing this question: Is the Earth in danger caused by the human interference and ecological destruction?


Has no-one read my post? I fucking well said that myself.

Mineral depletion is our greatest peril and is recycled by ecological systems, systems that we are rather systematically destroying due to multiple forces that have been accelerated by humanity and its search for resources. Our economy is a mining economy, and it powers our agriculture. Without mineral recycling we're essentially on borrowed time.

What you lack is an understanding of how fragile an ecosystem can be. If one animal becomes extinct another one could follow in it's path. While I agree that humans should strive to become better and progress, we should and can do this with minimal destruction to the environment. Oh and sentience is quite different to having culture.