We’re a virus with shoes

The argument

Bill Hicks, one of America's most popular comedians, once said, "isn't humanity neat? Bulls***. We're a virus with shoes". The line is a joke, but the argument made here is that as an ecological description it is close to literal — a virus being something that spreads through a host, consumes it, and gives nothing back. The ecological case is made on that basis. Humans wreak havoc on almost every ecosystem on earth: clogging up the earth's rivers with pollution, pumping the oceans with plastic, and making the deserts warmer through man-made climate change. What makes the comparison apt, on this view, is the pattern rather than any single harm — the damage is not confined to one habitat or one region but appears wherever the species does, and it follows human settlement the way an infection follows a bloodstream. Beyond the damage done incidentally, there is the damage done deliberately. Humans knowingly breed hundreds of millions of animals each year, who live — often in conditions of unimaginable cruelty — for the sole purpose of eventually being slaughtered for our own gastronomic gratification. This is the harder half of the argument to answer, because it cannot be described as a side effect of development or as a cost that better technology might reduce. It is chosen, repeated annually at enormous scale, and undertaken for pleasure rather than necessity. Humanity therefore causes untold devastation, and proponents of this position draw the conclusion that the immediate extinction of all humans would not be a tragedy but, as they put it, an objective triumph — since it would signal the end of a species that causes unimaginable pain and suffering to every other species on the planet. The tragedy, on this accounting, is the continuation rather than the ending.

Context

Humans have a hugely detrimental impact on the earth. There is no area on earth that we have not sullied with our footprint. Plastics have been found in the snow in Antarctica and the deepest point of the ocean— the Mariana trench, some 36,000 feet below the surface. Extinction is now happening at a rate 1,000 times faster than at any other time in earth’s history, and the greenhouse gases we produce are putting the future of earth as a life-sustaining planet at risk.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Humans are not the only ones responsible for altering the earth’s landscape and killing other species. Nature is not a bastion of serenity and peace. Other animals kill each other, often in brutal ways. Some species of wasp lay their egg in another species and lets the larvae eat their way out while the beast is alive. But if this species became extinct it would be seen as an unmitigated tragedy. Animals and plants can even modify the environment to the detriment of natural ecosystems. Beavers dams cause rivers to stagnate. Inflated deer populations cause deforestation, as do many arboreal diseases. But, again, if the beaver or the deer became extinct, we would deem it a tragedy. Humans have a significant impact on the earth, but the extinction of any species is always a tragedy. Every species offers something unique, be it the wasp or the human. We offer the earth something no other species can; comprehension and rational thought. Therefore, it would be a tragedy if humankind were to become extinct. Also, animals have no moral standing. As Kant argues, the suffering we cause to other species and the environment is not objectively “immoral” because neither the earth nor other animals have the cognitive capacity to deserve “moral rights”.

Rejecting the premises

Rejecting P 3: Just because we have a negative impact on the environment doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be a tragedy.