Back to bloody ethics.
So, I do think that animals matter as individuals. But I do think that, well, plankton matters too. I mean, no plankton, no biosphere. I also appreciate the wonder of plankton and slime mold as well as parakeets and giant sloths. (BTW can you think of an animal with the initials s m, to match with slime mold? I couldn't.)
I think it's a problem that humans have removed ourselves from the give and take of things - in that we don't even really give our dead bodies back to the earth. We only give pollution and waste and instead, take, take, take. We are the epitome of the free-rider problem. And you get the hunting fraternity saying animals need to pay their way. A license to shoot a rhino - which may be $50,000 - helps to conserve the parks. Domesticated animals pay their way, don't they, why not wild ones? It seems like value has to be added up in dollars.
Why else should we let them live at all???
To me, the fact that land naturally managed is better for the environment is a good enough answer. For free, plants make fucking oxygen and animals do their ecosystem services. Yes, that's right, I am saying there's value in nature - it supports all life and it doesn't favour us. It favours whatever does what's needed to keep the show in the road. We do everything we can to deflate the tyres, flood the engine and block the exhaust.
We have this worry about predators - I've been reading more of the philosophy - and there are serious claims that predator conservation programmes should be scrapped and hunters should be allowed to kill them rather than herbivores. The supreme ignorance of what this would mean!! The idiocy. And the hypocrisy - when just buying a mobile phone or supporting governments that don't put the environment first - does more harm than any predator in a thousand lifetimes.
What would morality look like from CD's point of view? Why doesn't his view matter?
SPIDER MONKEYS