NEWS STORY, BBC: A man is believed to have been killed by a crocodile in northern Australia - the second fatal attack there in less than a week. The 56-year-old man was scuba diving with a friend on the Cobourg Peninsula, in the Northern Territory. In a separate incident last Saturday, Briton Russell Harris was killed while snorkelling near Groote Eylandt. Would anyone are to reconsider any viewpoints expressed in some earlier discussions here at Not PC? I said in Protecting a predator when decrying a ban on hunting sharks, "This directly pits the anti-concept of 'intrinsic values'-- which environmentalists employ to say things should be protected 'as is, where is'--against real human values, such as the value of human life, from which all real value is actually derived...A similarly stupid three-decade Australian ban on hunting crocodiles has seen numbers jump from 5,000 to 70,000, and an increase in savage croc attacks." This was met with opposition which ranged from saying I was "swept up in ... hysteria" to questioning whether this is such a big deal. The issue was engaged again in A new environmentalism: Putting humans first, where a new ethic and an alternative to blanket protection was discussed.
What's wrong, I ask you, with 'farming' wild animals so that everyone wins, instead of protecting predators and having human beings killed. Some debate on that matter has already been joined following these deaths. Graham Webb says very sensibly that opposition to ending the hunting ban is "absurd when you have animals eating people..."
"How would Melbourne or Sydney people go with crocodiles in their backyards? I can tell you, they would lose their patience very quickly," Professor Webb said. "Nothing is to be gained from being cruel to animals. But our conservation program up here is at stake because landowners have to have an incentive to put up with crocodiles -- it's important that landowners see crocodiles as an asset."
Categories: Environmentalism, Ethics
17 comments:
the world is a dangerous place. no matter how many crocodiles and sharks you kill this is still going to be true!
aids, malaria and hepatitis are all natural things that kill many more people than wild animals. if you want to vent your anger at people dying needlessly, vent it at these things.
but you don't: you're pushing an agenda here - that we'd all be better off if all goods were privately owned. it's a nice idea, and one i'd quite like to agree with, but i fail to see how you can privatise something like (for example) the oceans.
feel free to educate me on this (got any posts on this topic?) because it'd really solidify my anti-government stance if you can explain it...
cheers
Hi there Andrew,
The world is indeed a dangerous place, one of the reasons long-term, sustained human action is necessary to make it less so; this is one reason why human efforts to help make nature more humane should be recognised with legal protection in the form of property rights, to protect those who are in the pursuit of long-range human action in that end, and to encourage more of it.
There's been plenty of blogging here on a libertarian view of environmentalism, most of them archived down there on the right-hand sidebar. Feel free to browse, but here's two that are immediately relevant to your questions -- the first on malaria, the second on property rights in the oceans:
55 million dead and still counting
Barbed wire for Kaikoura's whales
Have a look too at the website of the Environment Probe organisation, and the also the book by the woman who heads the organisation, Elizabeth Brubaker: Property Rights in the Defence of Nature.
As you asked specifically about oceans and, presumably, the fish etc. within them, you might also enjoy some of her material on that subject, including:
How to Save Fish . . . and Fishers
Beyond Quotas: Private Property Solutions to Overfishing.
Making the Oceans Safe for Fish: How Property Rights Can Reverse the Destruction of the Atlantic Fisheries.
Enjoy! :-)
Your normally well reasoned agruments fall apart here because you proceed from the assumption that human life is somehow intrinsically superior to other forms of life. This planet is far better off with fewer people and anything that reduces the number of people on the planet (especially without causing collateral damage) is a good thing. When the evolutionary pressures on the human species were removed, we ended up with a bunch of stupid, fat people beeding out of control and overcrowding our small planet. Give me the sharks and crocks any day.
Until such times as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.
David Graber, biologist, US National Park Service, 1989.
Honorable representatives of the great saurians of older creation, may you long enjoy your lilies and rushes, and be blessed now and then with a mouthful of terror-stricken man by way of a dainty.
John Muir, founder of the US Sierra Club, 1989.
This planet is far better off with fewer people and anything that reduces the number of people on the planet ... is a good thing. When the evolutionary pressures on the human species were removed, we ended up with a bunch of stupid, fat people breeding out of control and overcrowding our small planet. Give me the sharks and crocks any day.
GG&K in the thread above.
GG&K may have been joking -- I certainly hope he was -- but in the 'Protecting a Predator' thread people expressed surprise and made objection to me using the quote above from David Graber, saying it was unrepresentative of 'mainstream' environmentalists. Uh huh. Frightening isn't it when someone expresses precisely that emotion in front of your eyes then
I was also told that I was "putting the question in a loaded fashion" when I said in the 'New Environmentalism - Putting humans first' thread "do you agree that humans should be put first in the hierarchy of nature? And if so, do you agree with my conclusion from the article to which you objected; that is, in an 'environmentalism ... that...eschews any idea of 'intrinsic values' or deep ecology, and embraces instead the idea of seeking and advancing those environmental values that support and enhance human life.'"
You see why the anti-concept of 'intrinsic values' needs to be rejected? It's an anti-concept, since it wipes out the idea of real values. Values cannot be intrinsic -- what you're saying when you posit an intrinsic value is actually to say 'I value this.' Put it another way: The question of Value always implies a valuer. Hence, value implies the question: 'Valuable to whom, and for what.' Such values may be objective or subjective, but they ain't intrinsic.
'Value' is a uniquely human concept -- the whole question of value only has importance for a human valuer since there's no point in producing ethics for other species -- they ain't gonna listen to you. As PJ O'Rourke said, you can keep telling the lion it's wrong, but he'll still rip the guts right out of Bambi.
So it's not to say that "human life is somehow ...superior to other forms of life " -- although we are that to each of us -- but that the whole question of value only has relevance to human life.
So as I said before, what's wrong with an environmentalism that puts humans first? The only other alternative is the view expressed in the quotes above.
PC, may I remind you that in those previous threads you espoused a desire not just to rescind protection, but to actively control (cull) animal populations that pose a danger to human life.
As pointed out previously, the number of species that cause death to humans is vast. The damage wrought to the eco-system by arbitrarily re-balancing populations due to a putative threat assessment would be vast, and naturally in the end, it would be US that suffered the most.
I would remind you also, that even after specifically saying that you would address the points I raised, you never rose to the challenge of finding ONE source outside of your oft-quoted cabal of libertarian/anarcho-capitalist sources to strengthen your outlandish claims that mainstream environmentalism subscribes generally to a 'deep ecology' mindset.
I'll say again - humans are important primarily in their capacity to provide stewardship for the eco-system.
"Would anyone care to reconsider their viewpoints?" - No.
Shit happens. They were in the crocs territory. The females can be particularly vicious ;-)
Crocs *are* farmed in Australia. I have a Hermes Birkin crocodile bag (one of the most coveted fashion accessories ever) to prove it. So there.
im all for killing off crocs and wiping out misquitoes with ddt and filling in swamps(lets call them what they are none of this wetlands crap)
the only vital ecosystem is that of human interaction
My scientist brother has just arrived here from Far North Qld to do a couple of lectures - so I will put your opinion to him Peter. Your position being you would like to see crocodiles and great whites exterminated beause they have no "intrinsic" value to humans, right?
"Your position being you would like to see crocodiles and great whites exterminated because they have no "intrinsic" value to humans, right?"
Yes Ruth. Spot on. I spent all this time, gave you all those links, and said all that stuff just so I could say "Kill them all, let God sort them out." Subtleties, context and reasoned argument really are lost on you, aren't they.
Sheesh, be nice if someone bothered to read what I've actually said before summarising for me. It would save me a lot of time. If you just want to caricature what I'm saying, why ask for my permission first.
"michael fasher said...
im all for killing off crocs and wiping out misquitoes with ddt and filling in swamps"
Michael - you are welcome to kill all the crocs and mossies on YOUR land and fill in YOUR swamps too.
Me? I'll keep the crocs and harvest them because girls pay big $$$ for croc-leather handbags. I like a swamp or too because ducks like them, and I like to hang out where ducks are - just me and my 12 ga shotgun.
As for Mossies - I haven't got a lot of use for them yet. But then up until 10 years ago the same could have been said for leeches. Then some bright spark started using them to control bleeding in patients with recently reattached appendages. Course they have to be farmed in order to keep them clean but there you go.
If we encourage private property rights then both of us can follow our individual eco-moralities and without forcing the other to do something he doesn't want to. You can turn your land into a car-park for my nature & hunting reserve/croc-farm and we'll split the profits? Sound fair?
For anyone with eyes to see there is a miny lesson in this hypothetical.
PC, how much do you want to bet that those red & green tinted glasses the previous posters were wearing are throughly opaque?
Den, you said: "PC, may I remind you that in those previous threads you espoused a desire not just to rescind protection, but to actively control (cull) animal populations that pose a danger to human life."
I don't believe that's what I suggested. I'm suggesting in practical terms what Graham Webb and others have been suggesting and practising for years: ending hunting bans, and establishing protection by recognising and granting private property rights in wild animals so that locals currently being done over by wild animals can instead use them as a resource. This is the way to safely live together with animals that can otherwise be killers (in the form of crocs and lions for example) or just destroyers or crops and agriculture (such as elephants for example), and it matches the way western animals were domesticated for our benefit, and the benefit of the domesticated. When there is value to humans in protection rather than destruction, then humans will protect rather than destroy. As they say cows aren't extinct.
As I've already said before, there are already successful examples of this in operation with wild animals: private Southern African wildlife parks; the limited recognition of private property rights in animals in Kenya; at least half a dozen crocodile farms in the Northern Territory -- including Graham Webb's own Wildlife Management International organisation's farm, and from one of which Ruth's Hermes bag probably came.
In ethical terms, what I'm asking for is a recognition that human beings need to transform nature in order themselves to survive -- we either transform or starve -- and a recognition of this fact is the essential starting point for all environmentalism that puts humans first, and thereby finds any sort of harmony between man and nature; an environmentalism that seeks, in Frank Lloyd Wright's words, to make human life more natural, and nature more humane.
Den you also said: "I would remind you also, that even after specifically saying that you would address the points I raised, you never rose to the challenge of finding ONE source outside of your oft-quoted cabal of libertarian/anarcho-capitalist sources to strengthen your outlandish claims that mainstream environmentalism subscribes generally to a 'deep ecology' mindset."
Oh, I thought that mindset was obvious enough. I'm not sure who the "cabal of libertarian/anarcho-capitalists[s]" are that I oft quote, or what sort of evidence you're after, but it seems manifestly clear that mainstream environmentalism does not recognise mankind's right of survival, does not put human beings first (indeed, quite the opposite), and values the so-called 'intrinsic values' of wild nature and natural processes over to the human value of human wealth and happiness -- all these ideas are in opposition to the so-called 'anthropocentric' view that 'deep ecology' specifically opposes, and might be said to be characteristic of the 'deep ecology' mindset.
We could start for instance with your own statement that clearly puts humans second, and is put without supporting argument as if it is self-evident (it isn't, BTW): "[H]umans are important primarily in their capacity to provide stewardship for the eco-system." As Phil H. says in response, "Why?"
I could mention how mainstream environmentalists opposed the fighting of the fires that tore apart Yellowstone Park -- these fires were "natural" and so sacrosanct; I could mention the opposition by environmentalists to the harvesting of the Pacific yew from 1989 to 1997 in a bid to develop paclitaxel (Taxol), a revolutionary anti-cancer drug; or the local Green party's opposition to Ruakura's research to find a cure for multiple scleroris; or the worldwide opposition to the production of Golden Rice, which can help with third-world anaemia, blindness and death.
Or I could point out that mainstream environmentalists are happy to continue with the DDT ban, despite it not even being clear that DDT is toxic to birds as claimed, and despite the ban arguably being responsible for the deaths by malaria of 55 million people due to malaria.
Or I could just offer you these views below from environmentalists within the mainstream, and that make clear that positions I've mentioned above are not surprising, given the view within mainstream environmentalism that human beings come second, at best. (I've included the Muir and Graber quotes just so they're all in one place:
- World Wildlife Fund leader Prince Phillip of England to the UN in 1990: he wished to be reincarnated as "a killer virus to lower population levels."
- "Honorable representatives of the great saurians of older creation, may you long enjoy your lilies and rushes, and be blessed now and then with a mouthful of terror-stricken man by way of a dainty." - A benediction to alligators by John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, quoted with approval as "a good epigram" by environmentalist Bill McKibben in "The End of Nature" (New York: Random House, 1989) pg. 176
- "We have wished...for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us back into the stone age..." - Environmentalist Stewart Brand in "The Whole Earth Catalog" [Stewart might recently have seen the light, if his recent comments are anything to go by, that that "Over the next ten years ... the mainstream of the environmental movement will reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbanization, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power."]
- "You think Hiroshima was bad, let me tell you, mister, Hiroshima wasn't bad enough!" - Faye Dunaway as the voice of "Mother Earth/Gaia" in the 1991 WTBS series "Voice of the Planet"
- "Given the total, absolute, and final disappearance of Homo Sapiens, then, not only would the Earth's Community of Life continue to exist but...the ending of the human epoch on Earth would most likely be greeted with a hearty 'Good riddance!'" - Paul W. Taylor, ethics professor at City University, NYC, in "Respect for Nature" (Princeton Univ Press, 1989) pg. 115
- "If you'll give the idea a chance...you might agree that the extinction of Homo Sapiens would mean survival for millions if not billions of other Earth-dwelling species." - The "Voluntary Extinction Movement," quoted by Daniel Seligman in "Down With People," in Fortune magazine, September 23, 1991
- "The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable, but a good thing..." - Editorial in The Economist, December 28, 1988
- "A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people...We must shift our efforts from treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. ...We must have population control...by compulsion if voluntary methods fail." - Paul Ehrlich, "The Population Bomb" (Ballantine Books 1968) pg. xi, pg. 166
- "...Man is no more important than any other species...It may well take our extinction to set things straight." - David Foreman, "Earth First!" spokesman, quoted by M. John Fayhee in Backpacker magazine, September 1988, pg. 22
- "I see no solution to our ruination of Earth except for a drastic reduction of the human population." - David Foreman, "Earth First!", quoted by Gregg Easterbrook in The New Republic, April 30, 1990, pg. 18
- "If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human populations back to sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS." - Earth First! periodical, quoted in "Access to Energy," Vol.17 No.4, December 1989
- "As radical environmentalists, we can see AIDS not as a problem but a necessary solution." - Earth First! periodical, quoted in "Planet Stricken" by Alan Pell Crawford and Art Levine, Vogue magazine, September 1989, pg. 710
- "I founded Friends of the Earth to make the Sierra Club look reasonable. Then I founded the Earth Island Institute to make Friends of the Earth look reasonable. Earth First! now makes us look reasonable. We're still waiting for someone to come along and make Earth First! look reasonable." - "Mainstream" environmentalist David Brower, quoted by Virginia Postrel in Reason magazine, April 1990, pg. 24
- "We are not interested in the utility of a particular species, or free-flowing river, or ecosystem to mankind. They have...more value - to me - than another human body, or a billion of them...Until such time as Homo Sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along." - David M. Graber, National Park Service biologist, in a review of Bill McKibben's "The End of Nature," in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, October 22, 1989, pg. 9
- "Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society...all potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing." - Herr David Brower, founder of Friends of the Earth, quoted in "The Coercive Utopians" by Rael Jean Isaac and Erich Isaac (1985 Regnery Gateway Inc.)
- "I got the impression that instead of going out to shoot birds, I should go out and shoot the kids who shoot birds." - Paul Watson, founder of "Greenpeace," quoted in "Access to Energy" Vol.17 No.4, December 1989
- "We, in the Green movement, aspire to a cultural model in which the killing of a forest will be considered more contemptible and more criminal than the sale of 6-year old children to Asian brothels." - Carl Amery of the Green Party, quoted in "Mensch & Energie," April 1983
- "A reporter asked Dr. Wurster whether or not the ban on the use of DDT would not encourage the use of the very toxic materials, Parathion, Azedrin and Methylparathion, the organo-phosphates, [and] nerve gas derivatives. And he said 'Probably'. The reporter then asked him if these organo-phosphates did not have a long record of killing people. And Dr. Wurster, reflecting the views of a number of other scientists, said 'So what? People are the cause of all the problems; we have too many of them; we need to get rid of some of them; and this is as good a way as any.'" - Victor J. Yannacone, Jr., lawyer and co-founder of the Environmental Defense Fund, on EDF co-founder Dr. Charles Wurster, at a May 20, 1970 speech at the Union League Club in New York City. Published in the Congressional Record as Serial No.92-A of Hearings on Federal Pesticide Control Act of 1971, pg.266-267
- "Shit happens. They were in the croc's territory." - Ruth in response to the death of two human beings by crocodile attack.
hey pc,
cheers for the eco-links. been mulling over things for a wee while...
as you say, (government determined) quotas are an improvement, but i don't think they are the final answer to the problem. as mentioned in your articles, there is an inherent arbitrariness involved there.
likewise i think the branding idea fails for the following reason: whales are an anomoly. in essense they nice discrete lumps of fat with virtually no predators. yes, it may be technologically feasible to brand whales, but this currently not true for schools of fish. yes, it might not matter to a whale that there are sharks (and giant squid?!) in the ocean, but this is not true for fish.
ah the sharks. even if we did assign ownership rights to them, who in their right mind would claim these? it just seems to me that the threat of litigation due to injury to humans/fish stocks means that the only sensible thing to do is destroy sharks.
so the rational response to these suggested property rights is to destroy all sharks, no matter how much some may value them?
i think the only solution is in absolute property rights, as mentioned in the above articles. to me, the question then is how do you build a fence in the ocean? (some sort of accoustic method perhaps). if this were possible then all sorts of things become possible, including ocean parks (for the conservationists), farms and the like.
so just as increases in technology have enabled us to increase the strength of property rights on land, similar developments are necessary beneath the waves before we can totally get rid of the government in that area. because in our current state some government intervention (quotas) is just better, i think.
thoughts?
the point that some of those "extreme" enviromentalists are trying to make, is something i quite agree with: we humans, with our evolutionary baggage, like to make babies. with every increase in productivity we make, population seems to increase similarly.
is there any need to have 10 billion the planet?
andrew screeched:
"we humans, with our evolutionary baggage, like to make babies."
Waddaya mean we white man?
Haven't you noticed that birth rates are almost level pegging with death rates in societies where private property rights and such are protected?
Now why would that be? Do ya think that in countries where both women and men are able to make a $$ and have something nice to spend it on that they'd rather make and spend $$ on themselves and their 1-2 children rather than act like breeder units and live in abject poverty because of it?
And so f-ing what if there are 10 billion people in the world. If the luddite-enviro-fascists would stop trying to stop the advance of technology, not only would humans invent more efficient ways to feed people (i.e. GE, aqua-culture) we'd also efficient ways use land (i.e. FLW's mile-high building concept - allow cities to expand upwards as opposed to outwards.)
But no, we can't allow that. To hard for your average luddite to imagine a city of mile-high buildings, more efficient crops, safe nuclear energy generation. And because they haven't the wit to imagine it they reason that such things must must be impossible.
The only thing luddites seem to be able to imagine is genocide, pandemics, streets flowing with human blood - thus they arrive at their solution to their supposed population-"bomb."
If you want to see the human race become extinct, have the courage of your convictions and top yourself.
"Yes Ruth. Spot on. I spent all this time, gave you all those links, and said all that stuff just so I could say "Kill them all, let God sort them out." Subtleties, context and reasoned argument really are lost on you, aren't they."
Fine - I was going to give you an expert's opinion, instead I see this. Must be why I get so many hits eh - people think I am dumb.I am sick of misogynists telling me this sort of shit.
Fuck you - you are off my blogroll permanently - no bastard speaks to me like that.
- "I am sick of misogynists telling me this sort of shit."
If true, 'twere better surely to be a misogynist than either a misologist, a misandrist or misanthrope. If indeed 'twere true. [Reminder: "Shit happens. They were in the croc's territory." - that was Ruth in response to the death of two human beings by crocodile attack.]
- "I was going to give you an expert's opinion..." Then give that expert the argument from which to give an opinion. And consider what is said before you choose to ignore it.
For example, you said: "Shit happens. They were in the croc's territory." But it's already been pointed out that with the hunting ban in place for more thirty years "the croc's territory" now includes much of Darwin's backyards, and almost all the waterways around Darwin. Where exactly are humans allowed to have territory, and what in your opinion makes saurian superior to sapiens?
- "Crocs *are* farmed in Australia." Indeed they are, as I'd already pointed out, and pointed you to an argument by Dr Graham Webb -- who owns and runs one of those farms, and is himself a pioneer in crocodile conservation -- for why they work so damn well for everyone and everthing concerned, and why hunting bans don't.
- "Your position being you would like to see crocodiles and great whites exterminated because they have no "intrinsic" value to humans, right?"
Wrong. My position is 1) an argument for a change in ethics that recognises that 'environmental harmony' can only begin once it is recognised that humans have a right to exist, and that they exist by using and transforming nature; 2) that there is no such thing as 'intrinsic values' -- the very concept is a nonsense; and 3) in practical terms, it is summarised here by Dr Graham Webb (in PDF).
- "Fuck you - you are off my blogroll permanently - no bastard speaks to me like that."
Your privilege.
michael fasher said...
[im all for killing off crocs and wiping out misquitoes with ddt and filling in swamps(lets call them what they are none of this wetlands crap)
the only vital ecosystem is that of human interaction]
Hey my friend "michael fasher" are you still alive? I thought that you're allready dead long time ago. How is the neck, is it still 'twitching' ? I hope that it has gone away as it scares alot of girls.
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