{"id":2757,"date":"2010-09-20T04:08:31","date_gmt":"2010-09-20T08:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=2757"},"modified":"2010-09-20T04:08:31","modified_gmt":"2010-09-20T08:08:31","slug":"morning-read-should-we-kill-the-killers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/09\/20\/morning-read-should-we-kill-the-killers\/","title":{"rendered":"Morning Read: Should we kill the killers?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times website has published a provocative essay<\/a> on its website this morning, asking whether it would be moral for humans to eliminate carnivores from the planet as a way to reduce the amount of suffering.<\/p>\n

Normally, I wouldn’t highlight an article like this one.\u00a0 It’s not a “local” story and it is, to put it bluntly, a fantastically goofy and wrong-headed idea.<\/p>\n

But as hunting season gets underway — I met a bear hunter coming out of the woods last night — it struck me as such a stark and fascinating example of how alien the natural world has become to many urban, academic Americans.<\/p>\n

Here’s a brief excerpt of Jeff McMahan’s essay<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Suppose that we could arrange the gradual extinction of carnivorous species, replacing them with new herbivorous ones.\u00a0 Or suppose that we could intervene genetically, so that currently carnivorous species would gradually evolve into herbivorous ones, thereby fulfilling Isaiah\u2019s prophecy.<\/p>\n

If we could bring about the end of predation by one or the other of these means at little cost to ourselves, ought we to do it?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

McMahan, a professor of philosophy at Rutgers, reaches this conclusion:<\/p>\n

It would be good to prevent the vast suffering and countless violent deaths caused by predation.\u00a0 There is therefore one reason to think that it would be instrumentally good if\u00a0 predatory animal species were to become extinct and be replaced by new herbivorous species, provided that this could occur without ecological upheaval involving more harm than would be prevented by the end of predation.<\/p>\n

The claim that existing animal species are sacred or irreplaceable is subverted by the moral irrelevance of the criteria for individuating animal species.<\/p>\n

I am therefore inclined to embrace the heretical conclusion that we have reason to desire the extinction of all carnivorous species, and I await the usual fate of heretics when this article is opened to comment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It seems plain that McMahan — and many in the animal rights movement — would prefer to impose their own moral and aesthetic code upon the wild.<\/p>\n

They see wild spaces as something that should be managed and shaped by humans, in much the way that we would manage a cornfield or a stocked fishing pond.<\/p>\n

In a recent essay in the Adirondack Explorer (no link available), North Country animal rights activist Jessica Ryle — founder of Adirondack Animal Rights — sounded a similar note.<\/p>\n

She suggested that it would be more humane to control whitetail deer populations using sterilization, rather than allow them to be hunted by humans.<\/p>\n

“One [method of sterilization],” Ryle wrote, “is immunocontraception, which triggers the animal’s immune response to prevent pregnancy.\u00a0 Immunocontraceptive drugs or vaccines can be delivered by bait, darts and plastic bullets.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hunters often speak of their respect and veneration of the natural world as it exists, as a place where suffering and death go hand-in-hand with the beauty and mystery of an ecosystem larger and far more ancient than ourselves.<\/p>\n

For my part, I prefer the hunter’s vision to that of McMahan and Ryle.\u00a0\u00a0 Your comments welcome below.<\/p>\n

<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times website has published a provocative essay on its website this morning, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2757"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2757"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2758,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2757\/revisions\/2758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}