Is human destruction of nature responsible for COVID-19?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: Is human destruction of nature responsible for COVID-19?
Position1 of 2›: Yes, destruction of the environment caused the coronavirus pandemic
Argument‹2 of 2: Eating meat

Eating meat, something that is extremely negative for the environment, caused the coronavirus outbreak.

The argument

Coronavirus is a type of disease that can occur in both animals and humans, like SARS. COVID-19 most likely began in bats or pangolins. A study undertaken by virologists found that COVID-19 is 96% similar to a variation of coronavirus found in bats. Reports have traced the earliest occurrence of COVID-19 to an animal market in Wuhan, China. At this market, many types of animals including birds, snakes and rabbits are traded illegally. It is believed that from here the disease jumped from animals to humans, perhaps being transmitted from bat to pangolin first. Without reasons to be in close proximity to animals, without people eating meat - pangolins are sold because they're a delicacy - coronavirus would not have spread. Eating meat is already incredibly bad for the environment. Now, it has caused a global pandemic.

Premises

[P1]COVID-19 is a zoonotic disease found to be 96% similar to a bat coronavirus, most likely originating in bats or pangolins. [P2] It has been traced to a Wuhan market where animals including pangolins—sold as a delicacy—were traded, providing the close human-animal contact needed for the virus to jump species. [C] Therefore, because eating meat created that contact, human destruction of nature is responsible for COVID-19.

Counter-arguments

While COVID-19 has been traced back to a Wuhan animal market, it is not confirmed that this is how the disease spread from animals to humans.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Genetic similarity to a bat coronavirus establishes where the virus came from, not how it reached people, and 96% similarity denotes a related lineage rather than a direct ancestor — the intervening route is precisely what is unresolved. [Rejecting P2] The market is a place where early cases clustered, which is not the same as the point of transmission, as the counter says. The premise then generalises from trade in wild animals to eating meat as such, when farmed livestock is a different practice, and the position it is filed under concerns destruction of the environment — habitat loss and land conversion — a distinct claim from consumption that is never argued.