Saving Endangered Species Isn't an Issue of Morality

"I don't recall a lot of people crying when we wiped out smallpox."

-Me
circa 1993


The second hour of the Diane Riehm show today was devoted to a discussion of the Endangered Species Act, how species get listed as "endangered," the effect of doing so and whether it is appropriate to take economic factors into account when deciding whether to place a species on the list or not. I only came into the program about half-way through, but I caught a caller who was upset that the Congressman (I didn't catch which Congressman) was arguing that we absolutely should take into account potential job losses and economic diminishment when making the "moral decision" over whether to attempt to save a species from extinction.

The call very forcibly reminded me of a similar conversation I had with a few friends years and years ago, back when I was still in school. We were having lunch and one of my friends asserted that humans have absolutely no moral right to cause the extinction of any species, and that if a species goes extinct either through our actions or our inactions then we are morally culpable.

I took issue with this statement, despite the fact that I consider myself an environmentalist and am generally in favor of not seeing any species driven off the planet. What made my friend's opinion risible to me was not the result she sought to achieve by her argument, but the way she got there:

"I don't think I can agree with that," I told her, "of course we have the moral right to eliminate some other species, given the appropriate circumstances."

"Like what?" she asked.

"Well, like if that species is a threat to us, especially if that species is an existential threat to us. In fact, you can disregard morality completely to get to this point. Nature itself is all about species competing for resources, and if there are not sufficient resources for two species to cohabitate then the better adapted species survives and other dies off. If you are concerned about 'preserving the environment' then I think you have to recognize that extinction is just as much a part of the ever-evolving 'environment' as is every living species at any given time."

"Oh, that is just bullshit. Look, we're the dominant species on the planet right now and we can basically do whatever we want without threat that some spotted owl or something is going to wipe us out. You're just making an argument to justify letting us do what we want to anyway . . . pillage and loot the world around us and turn it into a cinder."

"No, I'm not, I'm just pointing out that 'saving species' isn't necessarily an issue to be resolved through a moral lens. I don't recall a lot of people crying when we wiped out smallpox." (Years later I would see a similar point being made in a funnier way by P.J. O'Rourke, but I'm telling you I came up with the joke first.)