"Kay" wrote in message
...
In article , Tumbleweed thisaccountneverr
writes

"Kay" wrote in message
...
snip

Should we regard the earth as our habitat, and whatever we do to make
it
better for us is therefore good, even if it is bad for other species?

Sounds like a good idea to me*. I'm presuming for example, that if you
had
lice you wouldn't leave them on your body, even though that is 'good for
you' and 'bad for lice'?

But would I, if I had the opportunity, eradicate them entirely from the
earth?
Bad for an individual louse is not the same as bad for lice as a species

Its the start. Logically, if you would eradicate them from yourself, that is
equivalent to saying you believe they should be eradicated totally. How
would you propose to not eradicate human lice? Would you mandate that some
people should keep them for the benefit of the lice species?



Or is the earth something that should be preserved even if it means
curing our instincts to dominate?

The earth cant be "preserved".

OK - bad choice of word. What I'm trying to get at is the concept of
'treading lightly' - not having a disproportionate effect. Atm we are so
numerous and so technologically capable that simply going about our
business can have a hugely harmful effect on the world - we have to

I think you''ll have to define 'harmful' and I suspect it will boil down to
what is good for us, rather than what is good for 'the world' (whatever
'good' and 'the world' means*). For example, you might say 'if we change
the ecosystem too much in direction X, that will cause us problems, so we
shouldnt do it'. Or 'if we eradicate species Y, future generations wont gain
enjoyment from them, or, that will cause a knock-on effect on the
ecosystems which will damage us. Unless you'd say something else?


consciously think about the effect we are having and take measures to
reduce it if we are to balance our effect to be at a similar level to
that of other species.

Why should we do that? And how would you measure it? How would you define
the level? Whats the number of seagull equivalents to people? Or hedgehogs?
Or nematodes?


But even if it could, then that would be
gross interference in itself, if for example you 'preserved' every
species
that was going extinct, even if that extinction was nothing to do with
us.
That would definitely be a bad thing, from the POV of letting nature
operate
unhindered by us.

But I wasn't advocating that, as I hope is now clear.

Nope, I'm not quite sure what you are advocating.



And neither of those questions is relevant to global warming etc
because
if we mess up the earth it will mess us up too. So whether our motives
are to look after it for its own sake or to further our success as a
species, it's still a sensible thing to do.


*Well that should obviously be taken into account when deciding what to
do
with our habitat as per the first point. But eradicating, for example the
malaria parasite ,I'm betting you'd regard as a good thing even though
its a
'very bad thing' for the malaria parasite.

That's not a question I could answer without knowing where the malaria
parasite fits in with the rest of the world. Do we know enough to know
we could eradicate it without unexpected effects elsewhere?

Ah, the good old 'precautionary principle'. If we operated by that,we would
never do anything. Besides which, *not* doing something is also making a
choice that has repercussions. Perhaps if we didnt eradicate the malaria
parasite, it would in 500 years evolve into a new strain that was far more
virulent and killed billions of people and perhaps also infected pandas and
made them extinct? There are too many 'what ifs' to use the PP as an excuse.

And malaria is the same issue as lice. Thought experiment.....**you** have
the last colonies of several hundred each of human lice, fleas, ticks etc.
Do you kill them? **you** are the last person with malaria. Should you take
the drug that will cure you?


Malaria is a bad thing for the individual human. There may be ways to
control its ill effects without targeting the parasite itself (OK we
haven't found any yet). But on the global scale, part of the problem is
that we have struggled to the top of the heap so successfully, so that
as a species we have a huge effect on the world.

I see nothing wrong with having a huge effect on the world. It also depends
how you measure it, as to what 'huge' is.


We are now actively
trying to curb global warming - if we don't bother, what might the
scenario be?

FWIW, even if we did bother (and I see few signs we are) it would have
little effect on GW, that train left the station some considerable time ago.
By little effect, I mean that, for example, if Kyoto was established *now*,
it would make the difference that instead of the temp being 'X' in one
hundred years time, it would be 'X' in 104 years time. Perhaps better to
spend the money on whatever the effects of GW would be, or on clean water or
something else?

Does earth heat up to the extent of being home only to a
few specialised bacteria, or do increasing floods etc take their toll on
the human species and put a natural limit to the process?

What increasing floods?

--
Tumbleweed

*wooly phrases that everyone uses and means something different by.

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