 The endangered Light-Footed Ridgeway's Rail (Rallus obselutus levipes) that I found in Famosa Slough, San Diego, California has not been found to benefit humans' material welfare and it is going extinct strictly due to human influence. It deserves our protection. In just this past week here are some of the biodiversity headlines discussing the path toward biodiversity extinction:
Malaysia seizes 337kg of pangolin scales worth nearly $1 million: Polar bear skin, 14,000 dead seahorses seized in illegal animal trade bust: North Atlantic's greatest survivors, Right Whales, hunted once more German court: Ancient forest can be cleared for coal mine: Alberta poison program kills more wildlife than wolves None of these headlines represent behavior necessitating human survival but rather human greed and exploitative behavior. This behavior is destructive and unnecessary but in a recent Washington Post Op-Ed, Dr. Pyron tells us the opposite, simply stating: “We don’t need to save endangered species. Extinction is part of evolution.” Dr. Pyron is misguided not only in his assessment but also his rationale. As a biologist Dr. Pyron was courageous enough to share his provocative perspective regarding the morality of biodiversity extinction that runs counter to orthodox conservation biology. Further, he brings up terrific points about the purposes of conservation as a pursuit generally and the need to ensure a “stable, equitable future for the coming billions of people.” His prescription can be seen as reasonable as well: “The solution is simple: moderation. While we should feel no remorse about altering our environment, there is no need to clear-cut forests for McMansions on 15-acre plots of crabgrass-blanketed land. We should save whatever species and habitats can be easily rescued (once-endangered creatures such as bald eagles and peregrine falcons now flourish), refrain from polluting waterways, limit consumption of fossil fuels and rely more on low-impact renewable-energy sources.” I can respect this mostly (minus his egregious disregard for the years of hard work by conservation professionals to delist the eagles and falcons directly in the face of a predominant culture of exploitation) and I don’t want to offer my rebuttal to his perspective as a tit-for-tat argument. His thoughts about the proper relationship between humans and the non-human world is a great discussion and not one which has been solved yet by humanity. There is still much to figure out about this relationship and the purpose and trajectory of human efforts are at the center of much of this argument. As a conservation social scientist, this is similar to the question I have about biodiversity conservation as well: what are we trying to achieve as humans? What I want to do, even though I am diametrically opposed to his perspective, is further the discussion to help co-create good answers and I want to do that by pointing out some flaws in his logic as well as offering comprehensive alternative prescriptions. Before I do that though, I want to discuss the paradigm he uses. I disagree with Dr. Pyron on a basic foundation of his argument, seeing the planet we share and have evolved integrally within from an anthropocentric viewpoint rather than a biocentric or holistic viewpoint. Innate to his perspective is a disregard for the worth of any individual plant or animal, let alone species, inasmuch as it doesn’t serve the human. This is a dangerous utilitarian approach that much civic injustice has been historically based upon (slavery, women’s rights, etc.) but also other historical (and current) environmental fights, such as establishing how “clean” air needs to be (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-environment-adviser-air-too-clean-pollution-good-health-pruitt-phalen-a8033881.html), how much do humans need a river to not catch on fire in Cuyahoga, and what level of DDT is acceptable. We forget that these same utilitarian arguments were made against cleaning air and water. As much as I see the evidence for the holistic viewpoint that I happen to share with many others, I can see the other side, that conservation from an anthropocentric view would see that “[t]he only reason we should conserve biodiversity is for ourselves, to create a stable future for human beings.” What is unacceptable though are the clear logical fallacies, cognitive dissonances, and unsound science to get him to the conclusion that “[t]he world is no better or worse for the absence of saber-toothed tigers and dodo birds and our Neanderthal cousins, who died off as Homo sapiens evolved.” Dr. Pyron’s argument follows rationales that exhibit fatal incongruities that are not new to conservation professionals:
The naturalistic fallacy says that you can’t automatically get an “ought” from an “is” – just because something is or has been a way doesn’t mean it should be that way. This is very clear in other venues: just because males are on the average physically larger than females does not mean that men are allowed to abuse women or should be socially dominant; just because humans have evolved tribally does not mean that violent conflict based on arbitrary tribal preferences is necessary; and just because humans have a predilection for high calorie, sugary foods, let alone opioids or other drugs, doesn’t mean we should have them. Because extinction has happened, because extinction is required for speciation doesn’t mean that we as humans should indiscriminately contribute to the 6th great extinction. What this shows us is that we are humans, not mere apes, and we have the choice to choose how we live, we get to choose how we develop our humanity. Conservation is a social construct that is housed in the realm of values stemming only in the most basic of ways from what is necessary for human survival and sustainability. The answer of why and how we should appropriately interact with non-human species is not an answer found in biology (even conservation biology) but rather in philosophy and the social sciences, informed by the natural sciences. EO Wilson calls this consilience. In this consilience do we figure out how groups of humans should behave. If we left that exclusively to biology we would be able to excuse any behavior (racism, sexism, class struggle, etc.) arbitrarily as we cherry-pick examples in nature as “natural” as has been done many times in the past. Dr. Pyron makes his second logical fallacy when he conflates human survival with excessive consumption. While he does speak to the dangers of McMansions in the Amazon, he doesn’t speak to cancerous deforestation in the Amazon, for example, to allow the cattle industry to feed the world’s unregulated demand for cheeseburgers. Survival and corpulence are not the same. Dr. Pyron asks us for moderation and I would ask the same but a moderation of his definition of necessity. This is similar to a “moving the goal-post” error: if we decide that it is appropriate to extinguish the species we are now because it is necessary for human “survival,” what happens when we push that boundary through our consumption and new species and habitats fall within our crosshairs and rationalizations? This cycle, justified by the conflation of survival with greed, is perpetual. The corollary to the “moving the goal-post” error is the shifting-baseline syndrome: we get accustomed to what we experienced previously and romanticize that previous, arbitrary baseline. Going forward, we think that baseline is what we should attain but continue the destructive behavior throughout, instead of focusing on what we want to achieve as humanity. Excusing other species’ extinction through the necessity of human survival is not only a rationalization of extinction but also a rationalization of excessive consumption. This rationalization leads to another of Dr. Pyron’s major incongruities: the drive to discharge guilt. There are several other errors in his article, including: misreading Soule’s seminal paper, misinterpreting the history of human interaction with their environment as non-stewardship, and underestimating the sliver of favorable conditions within which the Holocene has provided us. However, the fact that his article hinges on the concept of whether we should feel bad or not is quite telling. Consciously or not, he identifies a main driver behind human behavior and asks us to dismiss the guilt we feel. This is sociopathy. We do feel guilt and we need to figure out why. As much as all of us want to survive and thrive, we don’t want to contribute to a genocide. Without a critical examination of the behavior that leads to one feeling guilt, the drive to discharge guilt without integrating our understanding of the behavior is repression. And repression is not the way to virtue. Pyron is telling us that we don’t need to feel bad. And, actually, I agree: we don’t need to feel bad for existing in a world where no other species is looking out for survival; we’ve done well to harness the scary world and create us our home. The problem is when “not feeling bad” excuses destructive behavior and allows future maladaptive behavior. This is an issue of guilt and Freud has said that “such people [those experiencing guilt] allow themselves to do any bad thing which promises them enjoyment, so long as they are sure that the authority will not know anything about it or cannot blame them for it; they are afraid only of being found out. Present-day society has to reckon in general with this state of mind.” Pyron’s attempt to assuage and release guilt is all too blatant an attempt of trying to discharge the feeling of guilt rather than incorporating and dealing with the exploitative behaviors that cause the destruction of habitats and the genocide of species. Dr. Pyron’s greatest contribution in his Washington Post Op-Ed is pushing the question of how to achieve a sustainable human future through the lens of human and non-human relationships. This is not an unprecedented question, as it can be traced back to Malthus and further, but the scholarship has been steadily increasing in the last couple decades. The most recent thinker to approach this question innovatively is the economist Kate Raworth through her recently published book, Doughnut Economics. Kate Raworth takes the work of systems thinking in conservation and the 9 Planetary Boundaries developed by the Stockholm Resilience Center and compiles them with sustainable development goals of the United Nations to create Doughnut Economics. The Doughnut Economics idea, and the book she published in March 2017 of that name, gives us our ceiling and our floor; or, “the safe and just space for humanity” within the middle of the doughnut. The twelve social components that create the floor are derived from the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals as identified in 2015. The combination of both the social and biogeophysical global boundaries is the first comprehensive discussion that applies practical and objective metrics. If we are searching to assuage our guilt, we should do it by examining our behavior through a comprehensive lens, we need to do it using a tool like Raworth’s Doughnut. Further, there is not only systems prescription but also a proposed trajectory. Astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev says there is only one general linear progression for a civilization: use of energy. Proposed in 1964, the Kardashev Scale identifies three sources of potential energy and labelled their corresponding civilization a ‘Type’: Type 1 Civilization: the use of energy that hits the earth from the sun; Type 2 Civilization: the use of energy of the sun; Type 3 Civilization: the use of energy of the host galaxy. Kardashev further explained that we are currently at a Type .8. That transition from a Type .99 to a Type 1.1 will be the most difficult because it will require a paradigm shift that will disrupt all aspects of society (psychological, economic, cultural, etc.) because previous modes of thinking will be inadequate. However, making that transition will necessitate equitable energy access, universal basic needs development, and a sustainable future with more security for more people and non-human species. But let us use Dr. Pyron’s warranted and critical examinations of the relationship between the human and non-human world to create us a world of human survival, true human survival. Let’s get us to a place where the human species can feel proud not only of our masterful accomplishments of harnessing an environment indifferent to our existence but also proud of the very pinnacle of humanity: our capacity to create beauty and express compassion as we grow. This is not done through mindless destruction as an planet-killing asteroid would do. This is not achieved through deadly expansion as a non-sentient virus would do. As much as we are a powerful species with survival needs, only one species of millions, we are a sentient species that has the choice of how we proceed in our adaptation. We haven’t figured out how to appropriately cohabitate with our planet’s other species, habitats, and biogeophysical properties. It is through dialogues such as this with Dr. Pyron that I hope we will get ever closer to that goal. But, we cannot excuse our genocidal behavior in the process
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