No More Extinctions

My friends on the left want us to stop driving another species to extinction because of our modernization of the world. The lost of natural habitat due to housing development, commercial exploitation, or agriculture has driven many species to extinction. There is no denying it. Those with a naturalist bent have my admiration for trying to prevent the loss of so many species. They have made us consider an externality that once was totally ignored.

However, what bothers me is their belief in their own nobility and that they hold a higher moral ground. Extinction is a normal way of life. If there were no extinction, then evolution could not occur – there wouldn’t be enough room. Extinct species far out number living ones by such a large magnitude that the number of currently living species is insignificant.

The question that comes up for the naturalist is how do you tell which extinction is natural and which is man-made? If you keep a species alive that would have died out naturally, then haven’t you committed as an unnatural act as the man-made extinction. If effect you have disrupted the natural order. The all-inclusive or shotgun approach to the prevention of extinctions is no better than the degradation of nature with no regard of the environment. While you tree huggers may think you hold the higher moral ground, you are actually here in the gutter with the rest of us.