The divergence does not lie in a focus on the short or the long term

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume V, p. 18 of the PDF edition · English translation

Consider below two different types of interventions affecting animals in the wild²⁸ and two common but mistaken beliefs about both.

(1) There are environmentalist programs that involve killing large numbers of wild animals in the name of preserving biodiversity and ecological balance²⁹. A common view is that these interventions harm some animals now in order to prevent even greater harm to many animals in the long term.

(2) By contrast, there are proposals for helping wild animals that are focused on concern for the good of the animals themselves, and not on environmentalist goals³⁰. A common view is that these proposals benefit some animals now while neglecting the risk that this will further increase suffering and death in the long term.

According to these two common beliefs, both perspectives share the same goal (benefiting animals), and the difference between them would be that one takes into account the long-term impact of actions and the other does not. We will see why both beliefs are mistaken if we look at which criteria animal advocates and environmentalists would use to evaluate how good or bad the complete history of the world would be³¹. In this way, we will avoid any confusion that might arise about what each of these perspectives aims at in the short and the long term.

Animal advocates will evaluate how good or bad the complete history of the world is on the basis of how sentient beings are positively or negatively affected. Environmentalist perspectives, by contrast, will evaluate it according to the degree to which ecosystems exhibit characteristics such as complexity, diversity, rarity, and aesthetic properties, how well they represent certain ideals, whether or not they contain only members of native species,

how little they have been transformed by humans, and so on.³² In environmentalism these characteristics are valued intrinsically (and not instrumentally, to secure the good of animals).

This means that environmentalism would say that, if a complete history of the world exhibits ecosystems in those configurations to a greater degree, then it is better, even if it is much worse for animals (for example, even if it contains much more suffering and premature death, fewer positive lives, and so on).

Accordingly, the goal of environmentalist practices of exterminating wild animals is not to prevent more suffering and premature death from occurring from then on. The goal is to ensure that ecosystems exhibit those properties, even if this increases the amount of suffering and death from then on.

On the other hand, in programs to help wild animals that are motivated by concern for the animals themselves, what is aimed at is precisely to ensure that, from then on, the best history of the world for the animals affected comes about. Therefore, the belief that the proposal to help wild animals helps some animals now and neglects the long-term impact of such actions is also mistaken.

In short, programs to help wild animals that are motivated by concern for the good of the animals themselves aim at exactly what common sense mistakenly believes environmentalism aims at: that there be less suffering and premature death from then on. This mistaken belief about what each of these perspectives aims at is one of the factors that lead many people to reject the proposal to help animals and to accept environmentalist measures.