The Debate on the Expansion and Restoration of Nature

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume VII, p. 124 of the PDF edition · English translation

37.1. A way of minimizing natural harms that escapes the common objections

Consider the following objections to the proposal of minimizing/preventing natural harms:

(1) Intervening in nature is wrong in itself. (2) If we cannot predict the long-term consequences, it is better not to intervene. (3) We only have a duty not to harm, not a duty to help. (4) Such a proposal is too demanding. (5) It is not acceptable to alter natural territory. (6) There is nothing that can be done on a large scale right now. (7) It is hard to keep such harms from reappearing. (8) Such a proposal requires technology that does not yet exist. (9) Such a proposal requires an enormous amount of resources. (10) All interventions that cause suffering and death should be rejected.

We discussed each of these objections in previous chapters. This chapter will point out a way of minimizing natural harms that escapes all of these objections, even if they were plausible.

Suppose we ought not to intervene in nature to minimize natural harms. Imagine that natural harms no longer existed. Should we intervene in nature to recreate them? It is possible to minimize natural harms on a large scale simply by avoiding certain interventions that help natural processes maximize suffering and death.

Intervention in nature is practiced massively for anthropocentric and environmentalist goals. One type of intervention in particular contributes very efficiently to maximizing natural harms: the expansion of natural territory (such as the expansion of forests), or its recreation where desertification has occurred. Where there is vegetation, there will be many sentient beings reproducing by maximizing the number of offspring, and therefore maximizing suffering and death, given the extremely low survival rate (as we saw in Chapter 3). The result is also an increase in suffering due to other natural harms that are inherent to all natural ecosystems. Of course, some animals in these ecosystems would probably have positive lives. However, given the relationship between birth rates and survival rates, the number of beings who would be born into a life full of suffering and to a premature death would always be vastly greater. Thus, the net balance of expanding/restoring nature is enormously negative.

By avoiding this kind of practice, the reduction in suffering and death would be so great that even if animal exploitation were abolished, the number of individuals who would no longer be born only to experience intense suffering would pale in comparison¹⁶⁹. For example, we could avoid creating areas rich in biomass that give rise to harms to many small animals. In their place, environments could be created with components that do not lead to a maximization of the number of births of sentient beings¹⁷⁰.

The proposal of avoiding the expansion/recreation of natural territory escapes objections 1 and 2 because it does not require intervening in nature (it only requires avoiding certain interventions). It escapes objection 3 because it involves refraining from harming, not helping. It escapes objection 4 because it is easy to carry out. It escapes objection 5 because it does not require altering natural territory. It escapes objection 6 because it prevents natural harms on a large scale and can be done today. It escapes objection 7 because it permanently prevents the harms resulting from each expansion/restoration. It escapes objection 8 because it does not require technology that does not yet exist. It escapes objection 9 because it costs no resources at all. Finally, it escapes objection 10 because it is the expansion/restoration of natural territory that is an intervention, and it causes a gigantic amount of suffering and death.

Many people who raise those objections to the proposal of helping wild animals also advocate the expansion of natural territory. This is a sign that the concerns involved in those objections are not the real reason they oppose the proposal of helping wild animals, since the expansion of natural territory violates all of those concerns.

The expansion/recreation of the natural environment is usually seen as something with a positive net balance.

However, most people do not know that this practice maximizes the suffering and the number of deaths of animals. Once we are aware of this fact, is it still possible to defend such expansion/recreation? Below we will discuss some attempts.

37.2. Concern for future generations

Could our obligations toward future generations of sentient beings justify expanding/restoring natural territory? There are at least two ways of understanding obligations toward future generations¹⁷¹. The first holds that, if a future generation will exist, we have a duty to ensure conditions for its members to have a satisfying life. However, it holds that there is no obligation to bring that generation into existence. The second would agree that we have an obligation to ensure that the future generation has minimal conditions of well-being. But it will also hold that we have an obligation to bring that future generation into existence.

However, neither position could justify expanding/recreating natural territory. The first does not require producing any new sentient being. The second seeks the existence of the greatest number of sentient beings with predominantly positive lives (and not the greatest number of sentient beings, period). It would never approve of an action that resulted in very few positive lives and an immensely greater number of lives in which suffering predominates. The norm in wild life is for this ratio to be 1 to hundreds, thousands, or millions (and even many millions, depending on the case). So, in fact, concern for future beings weighs very heavily against the expansion/recreation of natural territory.

37.3. Concern for the current generation

It could be objected that expanding/recreating nature may be necessary to ensure the well-being of sentient beings who already exist (or who will come to exist in the future regardless of what we decide).

One problem with this argument is that, given the predominant reproductive strategy (which maximizes the number of offspring), the number of beings who would be born only to suffer would

always be vastly greater than the number of those who are alive now or who would be born to have positive lives and would need the environment as a resource.

It could be objected that the beings of future generations who would be born to have negative lives do not yet exist and therefore do not count. However, if we decide to expand/restore nature, they will come to exist and, therefore, they do count. And in that case it could not be said that we are doing them a favor, since they would be brought into a life of extreme suffering. Moreover, the objection contradicts itself by saying that the good of beings who do not yet exist does not matter, while at the same time saying that it is necessary to expand/recreate natural territory out of concern for the good of beings of future generations who will exist anyway.

37.4. The appeal to environmentalist values

It could be argued that we should expand/restore natural territory because doing so would be better from an environmentalist point of view (for example, it would increase biodiversity and the number of natural ecosystems), even if the result is a world history with a greater amount of suffering and premature death of sentient beings.

This position assumes not only that the nonsentient entities valued in environmentalism have intrinsic value: it also assumes that they are more important than the good of sentient beings. However, we saw in Chapter 20 that: (1) the very idea that there is value beyond sentience is already controversial; and (2) there are reasons to prioritize preventing the suffering and death of sentient beings, even if the entities valued in environmentalism have intrinsic value. Therefore, those arguments will not be repeated here.

37.5. The concern about non-acceptance

Another objection claims that the expansion/recreation of natural territory is so widely accepted and seen as so important that opposing it would carry a serious risk of creating rejection of the proposal to minimize natural harms (and even of consideration for nonhuman animals in general).

Although this risk exists, it has to be weighed against the risk of losing the opportunity to prevent, on a large scale, the emergence of new natural harms, and also against the risk of losing the opportunity to begin questioning ideas that stand in the way of minimizing natural harms and of considering nonhuman animals, and that tend to maximize harms in general.

Discussing the morality of expanding/recreating natural territory is a way of questioning the points that keep people from taking the issue of natural harms seriously (for example, the romanticized view of the lives of animals in the wild and the veneration of what is natural).

Obviously, because it is a controversial topic, it is important to choose to present it to an audience capable of understanding it. But the same holds for any other controversial subject. For example, if someone has never heard of the problem of natural harms, it does not seem a good idea to introduce the subject through the problem of the expansion of natural territory. However, if someone already accepts the goal of helping nonhuman animals in general, there is no reason to hide the fact that the expansion of natural territory would harm them greatly.

37.6. The risk of human extinction

Another concern is that not expanding/restoring natural territory might increase the likelihood of natural catastrophes and climate change, which, in turn, might increase the risk of human extinction. According to this objection, because of this risk, expanding/restoring natural territory would be justified.

There are at least two reasons that could lead someone to think that the risk of the disappearance of the human species would justify expanding/recreating natural territory. We will discuss these reasons separately in the next two sections.

37.7. Concern for humans themselves

The first is concern for humans themselves (of the current generation or of future ones). But if human interests count as a reason in favor of expanding/recreating nature, then the harms to other animals must count as a reason against it. And, given the amount of individual harm and the number of individuals harmed, a nonarbitrary analysis would prescribe not expanding/recreating nature even if humans mattered much more than nonhumans.

37.8. The idea that the human presence has a positive net balance

The second reason is the thought that human extinction would have a negative net balance, taking into account all the sentient beings affected. Of course, humans also cause an enormous amount of harm to sentient beings in general. But, according to this view, even so, the overall net balance of the human presence could be positive, on account of three points:

The first is that humans in the future will probably be the only ones capable of minimizing natural harms. In the absence of humans and of technology to minimize natural harms, natural processes would maximize suffering and death for long ages. That is why it would be important to avoid not only human extinction but also the collapse of civilization.

The second is that, in the absence of humans, the places currently occupied by humans would probably be occupied by animals that reproduce by maximizing their offspring, and therefore the result would be a greater amount of suffering and premature death.

The third is that, as we saw in Chapter 36, human practices that destroy natural ecosystems, despite also causing suffering and death, have a positive net balance. This is because such interventions, precisely because they destroy ecosystems, prevent the birth of an immensely greater number of sentient beings who would have lives full of suffering (even though that is not the goal of such interventions).

Thus, according to this view, if the presence of humanity has a positive net balance, and if not expanding natural territory is a threat to humanity, expanding/recreating natural territory would have a positive net balance in the long run, even if it has a negative net balance in the short run.

We will discuss these points in the next sections.

37.9. The risk that humanity will come to expand suffering

The concerns listed in the previous section are certainly important. However, we must also take into account the possibility that the human presence may come to have a negative net balance in the future, even if it has had a positive net balance so far. This would happen if in the future humanity were to carry out activities that maximize suffering and death far beyond anything that has existed until then. Below we will see two examples of such activities¹⁷².

One example would be if in the future humanity manages to develop space colonization. In that case humanity would expand life beyond Earth, probably recreating in many other places the natural processes that result in the maximization of suffering and death. For example, terraforming¹⁷³ and panspermia¹⁷⁴ aim to create, beyond Earth, the conditions for other celestial bodies to become habitable. There are already projects underway in this direction, whether to ensure that humans can live on other planets in the future¹⁷⁵ or to maximize the number of living beings throughout the universe¹⁷⁶. This would increase enormously the number of sentient beings who are victims of natural processes, to the point of making the suffering of the animals living on Earth a grain of sand in comparison¹⁷⁷.

Another example is if in the future it becomes possible to create sentient beings in digital media. This could be useful for simulating universes inside a computer, for example. Such a practice would also have the potential to increase by many orders of magnitude the suffering and death that exist until then¹⁷⁸.

These possibilities already show that it is uncertain whether the presence of humans in the world, taking the long term into account, is better or worse. This would depend, among other things, on whether or not the humans of the future will expand nature. In turn, whether or not this will happen depends on whether the humans of the future will be guided by environmentalist and anthropocentric values or by consideration for all sentient beings. Therefore, it seems that the most plausible stance is to leave open whether the human presence over time will have a positive or a negative net balance.

37.10. Is the expansion of nature really necessary to save humanity?

Suppose that the presence of humanity turns out to have a positive net balance and that we should therefore prevent human extinction and the collapse of civilization. This does not necessarily imply expanding natural territory, since there are ways of preventing climate change or reducing its harmful effects without creating new environments such as forests. One example is pursuing energy efficiency and renewable energy¹⁷⁹. And even if it were justified to expand/recreate nature in order to avoid disasters or climate change, this would not justify the expansion/recreation of nature for other purposes.

37.11. Conclusion

If the preceding arguments are sound, we should avoid expanding/recreating natural territory as much as possible. As we have seen, the cases in which expansion/recreation could be justified are those in which all the other options would result in something even worse. If such cases exist at all, they are a small fraction of the practices of expanding/recreating natural territory.

Given that avoiding such expansions/recreations requires no expenditure of resources and prevents a gigantic number of sentient beings from being born only to suffer, avoiding the expansion/recreation of natural territory is currently one of the most efficient ways of preventing natural harms (and probably harms in general) on a large scale.

Expanding/recreating nature produces an amount of suffering and death immensely greater even than if a gigantic factory farm were created in the same place, since, as we saw in Chapter 3, natural processes are much more efficient at producing suffering and death than even factory farms.

When we look at a natural territory (for example, a forest), we do not have this impression because, looking from the outside, what we see is a beautiful landscape. This “veneer” keeps us from realizing that the reality for the animals who live there is constant extreme suffering from the beginning to the end of their (short) existences, and that the number of animals who meet this fate continues to be maximized indefinitely by natural processes.