Save the rain forest
Eat a vegetarian.
Today’s dilemma is a few examples of environmental activists fighting the good fight by hammering spikes into trees so that they can’t be felled; burning down houses that encroach on nature reserves; and destroying GM crops. But when two-thirds of America’s soy bean crop is GM (as it was in 2001), then it’d seem that it’s going to be an uphill battle.
Presumably, spiked trees will survive having spikes driven into them. Burning down houses adds to air pollution. And humans have been genetically modifying anything and everything for centuries. When farmers do it, it seems to be all right. When scientists do it, people think in terms of some rubbish Hollywood film or those innumerable Star Trek episodes when some experiment would always go predictably wrong.
The discussion at the back of the book is about Aldo Leopold who viewed humans as part of rather than separate from nature so that even those who think they’re defending nature are still excluding humanity from it.
Presumably, spiked trees will survive having spikes driven into them. Burning down houses adds to air pollution. And humans have been genetically modifying anything and everything for centuries. When farmers do it, it seems to be all right. When scientists do it, people think in terms of some rubbish Hollywood film or those innumerable Star Trek episodes when some experiment would always go predictably wrong.
The discussion at the back of the book is about Aldo Leopold who viewed humans as part of rather than separate from nature so that even those who think they’re defending nature are still excluding humanity from it.
Pain bad; pleasure good. Tomorrow’s final dilemma from the world of environmental ethics.
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