Why help the victims of nature?
This chapter presents the three central arguments of the volume.
1. The argument that the reasons exist
Why should we prevent the harms humans cause to animals? Because those harms are bad for the animals: they cause pain, fear, and death.
But hunger, disease, and cold caused by nature are also bad for animals, for the same reason. So the same reasons we have to prevent human-caused harms apply to natural harms.
2. The argument about the strength of the reasons
If what gives us reasons to prevent a harm is how bad it is, then the strength of those reasons depends on the size of the harm, not on where it came from. Terrible pain caused by a disease counts just as much as terrible pain caused by a person.
This knocks down two views:
- the view that we have no reason to help with natural harms;
- the view that we have reasons, but weaker ones.
3. The argument about how much the criterion weighs
Now imagine, just for the sake of argument, that human-caused harms should count more. Even then, natural harms are so enormous, in the number of victims and in the amount of suffering, that we would still have strong reasons to try to reduce them.
In short
- The reasons to prevent human-caused harms also apply to natural harms.
- The strength of the reasons depends on how big the harm is, not where it came from.
- Even if human-caused harms counted more, natural harms would still call for action.