Imagine the following conversation:
Lou: “Why should we stop causing global warming?”
Bud: “Global warming will lead to droughts, famine, deadly storms, rising sea levels, spread of tropical diseases, environmental refugees and war.”
Lou: “So why should we save the rainforests?”
Bud: “Think of all the new wonder-drugs waiting to be discovered there. The rainforest is the winter home of half the birds we love to see in our backyard feeders. And with the forest gone and the land destroyed, the people who live there will have to move to the cities and pick through trash for a living.”
Lou: “So why should we stop logging to save the Spotted Owl?
Bud: “A healthy forest filled with creatures like the Spotted Owl will attract thousands of hikers, campers and tourists, who will add more jobs and money to the local economy than any timber company ever can.”
Lou: “So why should we stop air and water pollution?”
Bud: “Pollution makes people sick, look at the rates of urban asthma, look at the leukemia rates in Woburn and Love Canal. We get tetanus and cadmium poisoning by swimming at polluted beaches. Polluted farmland grows unhealthy crops. Besides, pollution is ugly.”
Lou: “So why should we achieve zero population growth?”
Bud: “Human overpopulation leads to famine, disease and war, too much misery for too many people.”
Lou: “So basically, we should all be wise and caring environmentalists because it’s in humanity’s best interest, right?”
Bud: “Yes, absolutely! You’ve got it, Ollie!”
Lou: “I’m Costello, not Hardy, you’re mixing your metaphors again, anyway, so the best interests of humanity is the most important thing of all, right?”
Bud: “Well, uh’ that’s not exactly what I really mean, like, it’s the best interests of the planet, too!”
Lou: “But, if we weren’t here on the Earth, we wouldn’t care about the Earth, right? Like we don’t care about the Moon because there’s no people there, right?”
Bud: “Uh, I don?t get your point!”(actually, I do, I just don?t want to admit it.)
If you argue that we should save the Earth, or any part of it, for the sake of people, a clever anti-environmentalist can quickly destroy the logic of your reasoning. If environmentalism is good because it’s in humanity’s best interest, then humanity’s best interest trumps environmentalism every time. If you believe that humans are the most important and valuable life-form on Earth (or in the Universe, for that matter), you will find that the need to weigh the long term benefits of good environmental stewardship against the immediate benefits of a particular human activity will become ever more urgent and frequent. Because predicting the future is so prone to error, immediate almost always wins out over future. Stewardship loses.
Until recently, it seemed that humans really were unique ^ that we were the pinnacle of evolution, or, if you will, made in the image of God. Lately, though, we?ve pretty much proven to ourselves, through scientific research into animal behavior, that the human traits we cherish so highly ^ language, conscious self-awareness, tool use, mathematical ability, a sense of aesthetics ^ are each shared by other living creatures, to a remarkable degree. Given that we share a significant percentage of our genome with fruit flies, this should come as no surprise. But the implications are revolutionary, and (rightfully) humbling. In reality, we are far out on one tail of a continuous distribution of traits, talents and potentialities, upon which we can find every other species of living thing that exists, or has ever existed. We are NOT God’s gift to the Universe; we are NOT The Best And The Brightest, we are merely (so far as we know) the first.
So what does it mean, being the first? Consider: ten million years ago, our direct ancestors were lemur-like creatures living in trees, in social groups, using our more or less opposable thumbs to make simple tools, gather food and groom companions. Sound familiar? Seen any lemurs lately? Or raccoons? Or beavers? Or meerkats? Or parrots? Or low-land gorillas? No? Then check out the Discovery Channel. Where might those creatures be ten million years from now? Building cities that, for once, actually work, following our footsteps and learning from our mistakes? Or extinct before their time? Being the first means being pioneers. The intrepid souls who crossed the Bering land bridge circa 14,000 b.c. were pioneers. Lewis and Clark were pioneers. The women who, in the 1890’s, chained themselves to polling places to gain the right to vote, were pioneers. The Stonewall patrons who pushed back against police violence, were pioneers. We humans are pioneers. Nothing more, nothing less.
What does it mean, to be a pioneer? Does it mean glory, portrayal in pageants, a monument in front of city hall? Yes, but these are just the trappings, the expressions of pride and gratitude after the toil, hardship and pain are done. Gratitude for what, exactly? For doing what a pioneer is morally obligated to do, by virtue of having the bad luck in the first place to be a pioneer: making the way straight, easy and secure for those who will come after. As pioneers, we humans are morally obligated to make the way of evolutionary fulfillment straight, easy and secure for all species that now, or will, in the future, exist, in the reasonable belief that those who come after us will do so, in their turn, on scales larger than that of just a single planet orbiting just a single nondescript star.
Lou: “But wait a minute! Morally obligated?? Says who??”
Bud: “Says the Universe itself, going all the way back to the Big Bang, according to the quantum cosmologists.”
Lou: “HUH??? What’s the Big Bang?? And who’re the quantum what??? And what makes THEM so special???”
Bud: “More on that later. Stay tuned.”
David A. HammondM. Ed. Teacher Education, 2004