Anthro-OOO KAff Answers

***Anthro K Answers

Alt Answers/Permutations

Alt Fails2ac Alt doesnt solveand if it does its worse for non-humansTibor Machan 4 (Tibor, Distinguished Fellow and Prof. @ Leatherby Center for Entrepreneurship & Business Ethics @ Chapman U., Putting Humans First: Why We Are Natures Favorite, p. 11-13) Now, one can dispute Hospers, but only by averting one's gaze from the facts. If animals in fact did have rights as you and I understand the concept of rightsrights that entail and mandate a hands-off policy toward other rights possessorsmost of the creatures now lurking in lawns and jungles, at the very least all the carnivores, would have to be brought up on murder charges. This is what all the animal rights champions fail to heed, including Ingrid Newkirk, radical leader of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), who holds that it is unacceptable for us to use animals in any way at all.13 This is why they allow themselves such vile thoughts as that "the world would be an infinitely better place without humans in it at all."'4 If the scenario is absurd, it's so not because the concept of animal rights has been unfairly reduced to absurdity but because there is nowhere else to go. The idea of animal rights is impracticable to begin with; any attempt to visualize the denizens of the animal world benefiting from and respecting rights must collapse into fantasy willy-nilly. The concept of rights emerged with the rise of human civilization precisely because it is needed by and applicable to human beings, given the specifically moral nature of human beings and their ambition to live with each other in mutual harmony and to mutual benefit. Rights have nothing to do with the lives of wolves and turtles because of what animal rights champions themselves admit, namely, the amoral nature of at least the bulk of the animal world.15 Advocates of animal rights in at least one way do admit the vast gulf between animals and humans and that humans alone are equipped to deal with moral issues. When they address us alone about these matterswhen they accept all the carnage that is perpetrated by other living things, including what would be infanticide and worse if human beings were to engage in itthey clearly imply that human beings are indeed special. They imply, first and foremost, that people are indeed the only living beings capable of understanding a moral appeal. Only human beings can be implored to do right rather than wrong. Other animals just don't have the capacity for this. And so the environmentalists don't confront them with any moral arguments no matter how politically incorrect the animals may be toward one another.

Alt Fails1ar Their framework is exclusionary and excludes the general publicBeth Mendenhall April 2009 undergraduate student studying Philosophy and Political Science at Kansas State University She is also a co-president of her universitys debate team. The Environmental Crises: Why We Need Anthropocentrism http://www.bsu.edu/libraries/virtualpress/stance/2009_spring/5Menderhall.pdfThe weakly anthropocentric view avoids the difficulties of justifying an environmental ethic from either end of the spectrum. On one hand, it avoids controversy over the existence of intrinsic value in non-human organisms, objects, and ecological systems. This is one important characteristic of a nonanthropocentric ethic like Deep Ecology finding intrinsic value in all living things.3 By intrinsic value, I mean value that exists independent of any observer to give it value. For example, a nonanthropocentric ethicist would see value in an animal that no human could ever benefit from or even know about, simply because of what it is. While possibly justifiable, an ethic that treats all living things and possibly even ecological systems as intrinsically valuable may seem very radical to a large portion of the public. It seems that even the philosophical community remains divided on the issue. On the other hand, our ethic avoids making felt human desire the loci of all value by showing how considered human values can explain the value in our environment. In other words, what humans value, either directly or indirectly, generates value in the environment. In this way, we avoid unchecked felt preferences that would not be able to explain why excessive human consumption is wrong. Avoiding these controversial stances will contribute substantially to the first advantage of a weakly anthropocentric environmental ethic: public appeal. The importance of public appeal to an environmental ethic cannot be overstated. We are running out of time to slow or reverse the effects of past environmental degradation, and we will need the support of society to combat them effectively. Hence, the most important advantage of a weakly anthropocentric ethic over a nonanthropocentric one is public appeal because many people feel that nonanthropocentrism is just too radical and contrary to common sense. For many, all value does come from humans, since they believe we are the only species capable of rational thought. Opinions about the environment are certainly changing, but anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that most reasons given for increasing environmental protection all reduce to anthropocentrism. For example, the 2004 book The Meat You Eat, by Ken Midkiff, explains why factory farming should be rejected, with a focus on its detrimental effects to human health. The vegan and vegetarian movements have increasingly focused on this angle of the factory farming debate, perhaps because of the broader appeal of human-focused motivations. As Midkiff says, It is simply impossible to raise animals in concentrated operations and to slaughter these animals by the thousands without severe health consequences among humans. By treating these animals as units of production, the industrial methods, ultimately and inevitably, produce meats that are unfit to eat.4 Even if this justification for ending factory farming is not one defended by deep ecologists, isnt actual change more important? Common justifications for species protection include parents wanting their children to know what an elephant, or a leopard, or a panda look like, how the beauty of animals increases human satisfaction in much the same way that an art gallery would, or the genetic information they can provide which might cure human diseases. In fact, almost every justification printed or aired in major news media reflects a anthropocentric bias. For example, an April 2008 article from the BBC, entitled Species Loss Bad for Our Health, surveys a wide range of threatened species whose biology could hold secrets to possible treatments for a growing variety of ailments.5 President-elect Barack Obama has consistently spoken about global warming in terms of its impact on future human generations. In a 2007 speech at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, he stressed the urgency of the issue by saying that the polar ice caps are now melting faster than science had ever predicted this is not the future I want for my daughters.6 As for the last premise, most people agree that human consciousness is intrinsically valuable. That is the reason why this value needs little explanation. Even if this justification isnt perfect, I believe that the ecological ends justify the philosophical means.Alt fails to appeal to the public- only an anthropocentric view can spur actionBeth Mendenhall April 2009 undergraduate student studying Philosophy and Political Science at Kansas State University She is also a co-president of her universitys debate team. The Environmental Crises: Why We Need Anthropocentrism http://www.bsu.edu/libraries/virtualpress/stance/2009_spring/5Menderhall.pdfFor a system of ethics to be successful, it must be both internally consistent and widely acceptable. There is danger in getting so caught up in the first requirement that we find ourselves defending views that most human beings would be unwilling to accept such positions are doomed to be ignored by most outside the philosophical community. Environmental ethics, which seek to explain the ethical relationship between humans and the environment, are no exception. The main point of contention among environmental ethicists revolves around the question of anthropocentrism. Anthropocentrism is the evaluation of reality exclusively in terms of human interests and values. As a way of viewing the world, anthropocentrism has a profound impact on our decision-making calculus. I believe that an anthropocentric environmental ethic can be both internally consistent, and widely accepted, by confirming the intuitions of environmentalists who seek to challenge human destruction of the natural world. In that way, our environmental ethic can effect more change in the way humans treat the environment, and be defensible to a critical audience. The decision to adopt an anthropocentric environmental ethic is one that is both pragmatic and ethical. Its practical appeal stems from its attraction to a wide audience, while its ethical appeal is generated by its concern for those animals, humans, and ecosystems suffering from the environmental crises.

Perm 2AC Dont default to offense/defense a risk of the link does not mean the 1AC forecloses a shift in species consciousness Zimmerman, 91 (Michael E., Heideggerean Scholar Tulane Univ. Deep Ecology, Ecoactivism, and Human Evolution published in ReVision Winter 1991 13.3. PDF accessed July 6, 2008 p. 123-127). Deep ecologists such as Arne Naess affirm the uniqueness of humankind and its potential for contributing to the Self-realization of all beings. Naess (1984) discusses humanity's potentialities for evolving into a species whose unique capacity involves appreciating the wonder of creation: It may sound paradoxical, but with a more lofty image of maturity in humans, the appeal to serve deep, specifically human interests is in full harmony with the norms of deep ecology. But this is evident only if we are careful to make our terminology clear. This terminology is today far from common, but it may have an illuminating impact. It proclaims that essentially there is at present a sorry underestimation of the potentialities of the human species. Our species is not destined to be the scourge [or cancerM.E.Z.] of the earth. If it is bound to be anything, perhaps it is to be the conscious joyful appreciator of this planet as an even greater whole of its immense richness. This may be its "evolutionary potential" or an ineradicable part of it. (p. 8) Insofar as Naess speaks of the "evolutionary potential" of humanity to become appreciators of the planet, he has something in common with the evolutionary views of Murray Bookchin. Bookchin (1990) argues even more emphatically (than Naess) that humanity's evolutionary potential includes the capacity for intervening in natural processes, even to the point of shaping aspects of evolution on Earth. Clearly, there is room for negotiation and compromise in the hitherto somewhat unsavory debate between deep ecologists and social ecologists in that both hold to some version of a "progressive" and "evolutionary" view of humankind. Deep ecologists cannot reasonably hope for a move toward nondualistic, nonanthropocentric attitudes without simultaneously affirming the notion that humankind has the capacity for evolution to a more mature stage of consciousness. Social ecologists are quite right in pointing out the dangers involved in rejecting out of hand the whole of modernity, especially its emancipatory political dimensions.

PermRoot Cause 2AC Perm do both, but reject the negatives root cause framing it misrepresents the intersectionality of oppression and causes ideological backlash only the perm can successfully subvert dominant structuresHayward 97 Dept of Politics, University of Edinburgh (Tim, Feb., Anthropocentrism: A Misunderstood Problem, Environmental Values, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 49-63, JSTOR)Taking this line of argument a step further it becomes evident that anti-anthropocentric rhetoric is not only unhelpful, but positively counterproductive. It is not only conceptually mistaken, but also a practical and strategic mistake, to criticise humanity in general for practices of specific groups of humans. If the point of anti-anthropocentric rhetoric is to highlight problems, to make them vivid in order to get action, then misrepresenting the problem is liable to make solutions all the harder. Something particularly to emphasise is that when radical critics of anthropocentrism see themselves as opposed to defenders of human interests they are seriously in error. From what has just been said about the specificity of environmental, ecological or animal harms merely being disguised by putting the blame on humans in general, it should be evident that those who are concerned about such harms in fact make common cause with those concerned with issues of social justice. The real opponents of both sorts of concern are the ideologists who, in defending harmful practices in the name of 'humans in general', obscure the real causes of the harms as much as the real incidence of benefits: the harms seldom affect all and only nonhumans; the benefits seldom accrue to all humans.5 Yet by appearing to accept the ideolo- gists' own premises, anti-anthropocentric rhetoric plays right into their hands: by appearing to endorse the ideological view that 'humans in general' benefit from the exploitative activities of some, the anti-anthropocentrists are left vulnerable to ideological rejoinders to the effect that challenging those activities is merely misanthropic. The opposite is in fact nearer the truth, I believe, because it will more often be the case that challenging such practices is in the interests of humans more generally.

Impact turnsSerious Alt = Genocide Our impact turns change how you evaluate offense/defense their risk of a link argument is genocidal logic humans should maintain their prejudice in favor of humans Linker, 5 Damon, Animal Rights: Contemporary Issues (Compilation), Thompson-Gale, p. 25-26 //BR It is a curious fact that in virtually all of human history, only in liberaldemocracies-societies founded on the recognition of the innate dignityof all members of the human race-have animals enjoyed certainminimum protections, codified in our own country in the Animal WelfareAct. It is a no less curious fact that these same liberal democracieshave become infected over the past decades with a corrosive self-doubt,giving rise in some educated circles to antiliberal, antiwhite, antimale,anti-Western, and now, with perfect logic, antihuman enthusiasms.The proponents of these various but linked ideologies march undera banner of justice and the promise of extending the blessings ofequality to one or more excluded others. Such piety is to be expectedin a radical movement seeking well-meaning allies; but it need notdeflect us from the main focus of their aggressive passions, which theeuthanasia-endorsing Peter Singer, for one, has at least had the candorto admit to. Can anyone really doubt that, were the misanthropicagenda of the animal-rights movement actually to succeed, the resultwould be an increase in man's inhumanity, to man and animal alike?In the end, fostering our age-old prejudice" in favor of human dignitymay be the best thing we can do for animals, not to mention forourselves.

Abandonment of humanist values leaves us unable to act to stop atrocities and threatens the survival of the universe.Violet B Ketels 96 (Associate Professor of English at Temple University, Havel to the Castle! The Power of the Word, 548 Annals 45, November, Sage)The political bestiality of our age is abetted by our willingness to tolerate the deconstructing of humanist values. The process begins with the cynical manipulation of language. It often ends in stupefying murderousness before which the world stands silent, frozen in impotent "attentism"a wait-and-see stance as unsuited to the human plight as a pacifier is to stopping up the hunger of a starving child.We have let lapse our pledge to the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust that their deaths might somehow be transfiguring for humankind. We allow "slaughterhouse men" tactical status at U.N. tables and "cast down our eyes when the depraved roar past."1 Peacemakers, delegated by us and circumscribed by our fears, temporize with thugs who have revived lebensraum claims more boldly than Hitler did.In the Germany of the 1930s, a demonic idea was born in a demented brain; the word went forth; orders were given, repeated, widely broadcast; and men, women, and children were herded into death camps. Their offshore signals, cries for help, did not summon us to rescue. We had become inured to the reality of human suffering. We could no longer hear what the words meant or did not credit them or not enough of us joined the chorus. Shrieking victims perished in the cold blankness of inhumane silence.We were deaf to the apocalyptic urgency in Solzhenitsyn's declaration from the Gulag that we must check the disastrous course of history. We were heedless of the lesson of his experience that only the unbending strength of the human spirit, fully taking its stand on the shifting frontier of encroaching violence and declaring "not one step further," though death may be the end of itonly this unwavering firmness offers any genuine defense of peace for the individual, of genuine peace for mankind at large.2In past human crises, writers and thinkers strained language to the breaking point to keep alive the memory of the unimaginable, to keep the human conscience from forgetting. In the current context, however, intellectuals seem more devoted to abstract assaults on values than to thoughtful probing of the moral dimensions of human experience."Heirs of the ancient possessions of higher knowledge and literacy skills,"3 we seem to have lost our nerve, and not only because of Holocaust history and its tragic aftermath. We feel insecure before the empirical absolutes of hard science. We are intimidated by the "high modernist rage against mimesis and content,"* monstrous progeny of the union between Nietzsche and philosophical formalism, the grim proposal we have bought into that there is no truth, no objectivity, and no disinterested knowledge.5Less certain about the power of language, that "oldest flame of the humanist soul,"6 to frame a credo to live by or criteria to judge by, we are vulnerable even to the discredited Paul de Man's indecent hint that "wars and revolutions are not empirical events . . . but 'texts' masquerading as facts."7 Truth and reality seem more elusive than they ever were in the past; values are pronounced to be mere fictions of ruling elites to retain power. We are embarrassed by virtue.Words collide and crack under these new skeptical strains, dissolving into banalities the colossal enormity of what must be expressed lest we forget. Remembering for the future has become doubly dispiriting by our having to remember for the present, too, our having to register and confront what is wrong here and now.The reality to be fixed in memory shifts as we seek words for it; the memory we set down is flawed by our subjectivities. It is selective, deceptive, partial, unreliable, and amoral. It plays tricks and can be invented. It stops up its ears to shut out what it does not dare to face.8Lodged in our brains, such axioms, certified by science and statistics, tempt us to concede the final irrelevance of words and memory. We have to get on with our lives. Besides, memories reconstructed in words, even when they are documented by evidence, have not often changed the world or fended off the powerful seductions to silence, forgetting, or denying.Especially denying, which, in the case of the Holocaust, has become an obscene industry competing in the open market of ideas for control of our sense of the past. It is said that the Holocaust never happened. Revisionist history with a vengeance is purveyed in words; something in words must be set against it. Yet what? How do we nerve to the task when we are increasingly disposed to cast both words and memory in a condition of cryogenic dubiety?Not only before but also since 1945, the criminality of governments, paraded as politics and fattening on linguistic manipulation and deliberately reimplanted memory of past real or imagined grievance, has spread calamity across the planet. The cancer that has eaten at the entrails of Yugoslavia since Tito's death [hasj Kosovo for its locus," but not merely as a piece of land. The country's rogue adventurers use the word "Kosovo" to reinvokc as sacred the land where Serbs were defeated by Turks in 1389!9 Memory of bloody massacres in 1389, sloganized and distorted in 1989, demands the bloody revenge of new massacres and returns civilization not to its past glory but to its gory tribal wars. As Matija Beckovic, the bard of Serb nationalism, writes, "It is as if the Serbian people waged only one battleby widening the Kosovo charnel-house, by adding wailing upon wailing, by counting new martyrs to the martyrs of Kosovo.... Kosovo is the Serbian-ized history of the Floodthe Serbian New Testament."10A cover of Siiddeutsche Zeitung in 1994 was printed with blood donated by refugee women from Bosnia in an eerily perverse afterbirth of violence revisited."We stand benumbed before multiplying horrors. As Vaclav Havel warned more than a decade ago, regimes that generate them "are the avant garde of a global crisis in civilization." The depersonalization of power in "system, ideology and appa-rat," pathological suspicions about human motives and meanings, the loosening of individual responsibility, the swiftness by which disastrous events follow one upon another "have deprived us of our conscience, of our common sense and natural speech and thereby, of our actual humanity."12 Nothing less than the transformation of human consciousness is likely to rescue us.Anthro k2 Solve Extinction Species egalitarianism causes mass die-off Timothy Luke, 97. Poly Sci, Virginia Polytechnic, Ecocritique, pg 26-27.Deep ecologys acceptance of otherness in nonhuman life and inanimate entities in the ecosphere is an important contribution. Deep ecologists identify a new normative ethic of personal responsibility in caring for Nature that has basic merit. Yet, as political philosophy, deep ecology has failed thus far to demonstrate how it can be implemented anywhere today. Like many revolutionary programs, deep ecology lacks a theory of the transition. There are no practicable means for changing the everyday life of everyone in the stage of advanced industrialism into an ecotopian community without tremendous costs. Many would agree with Snyder that we must change the very foundations of our society and our minds. Nothing short of total transformation will do much good.76 But, how does the United States with 250 million people, living because of the imports and exports of transnational corporate capitalism in and out of huge metroplexes, reinhabit its bioregions such that the human population lives harmoniously and dynamically by employing a sophisticated and unobtrusive technology in a world environment which is left nature? Current world urbanism assumes an obtrusive technology that renders the organic into the inorganic. What happens to Los Angeles, Chicago, New York? Where do these millions go and what will they do? If their corporate agricultural or municipal service supports are cut simply to return the L.A. Basin, Lake Michigans South Shores, and Manhattan to Nature, then Nature does know best how to copethese immense human populations will suffer and/or die. Deep ecological justice is postdistributional. It defines away distribution systems with human norms of fairness or equality as the apparatus of corrupt technoindustrial society. By calling for biospherical egalitarianism, deep ecology extends the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (as the freedom of self-realization) to nonhuman life and inanimate entities so that humans, for the first time, can truly enjoy their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in emancipated Nature. Justice is made into an attribute of all-selves-in-Self working toward their peculiar self-realization. Therefore, humans must alter their hitherto anthropocentric modes of existence, out of the new sense of fairness to otherness and other humans growing from ecosophical consciousness, to promote this new biocentric justice.

Anthro k2 Environment Human-centeredness is key to environmental sustainability David Schmidtz, 2k. Philosophy, University of Arizona, Environmental Ethics, p. 379-408Like economic reasoning, ecological reasoning is reasoning about equilibria and perturbations that keep systems from converging on equilibria. Like economic reasoning, ecological reasoning is reasoning about competition and unintended consequences, and the internal logic of systems, a logic that dictates how a system responds to attempts to manipulate it. Environmental activism and regulation do not automatically improve the environment. It is a truism in ecology, as in economics, that well-intentioned interventions do not necessarily translate into good results. Ecology (human and nonhuman) is complicated, our knowledge is limited, and environmentalists are themselves only human. Intervention that works with the systems logic rather than against it can have good consequences. Even in a centrally planned economy, the shape taken by the economy mainly is a function not of the central plan but of how people respond to it, and people respond to central plans in ways that best serve their purposes, not the central planners. Therefore, even a dictator is in no position simply to decide how things are going to go. Ecologists understand that this same point applies in their own discipline. They understand that an ecologys internal logic limits the directions in which it can be taken by would-be ecological engineers. Within environmental philosophy, most of us have come around to something like Aldo Leopolds view of humans as plain citizens of the biotic community.[21] As Bryan Norton notes, the contrast between anthropocentrism and biocentrism obscures the fact that we increasingly need to be nature-centered to be properly human-centered; we need to focus on "saving the ecological systems that are the context of human cultural and economic activities." [22] If we do not tend to what is good for nature, we will not be tending to what is good for people either. As Gary Varner recently put it, on purely anthropocentric grounds we have reason to think biocentrically.[23] I completely agree. What I wish to add is that the converse is also true: on purely biocentric grounds, we have reason to think anthropocentrically. We need to be human-centered to be properly nature-centered, for if we do not tend to what is good for people, we will not be tending to what is good for nature either. From a biocentric perspective, preservationists sometimes are not anthropocentric enough. They sometimes advocate policies and regulations with no concern for values and priorities that differ from their own. Even from a purely biocentric perspective, such slights are illegitimate. Policy makers who ignore human values and human priorities that differ from their own will, in effect, be committed to mismanaging the ecology of which those ignored values and priorities are an integral part.Eating Animals Good The alternative leads to more animal death eating animals is the most ethical thing to do Pollan, 6 Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley. An Animals Place, 11-10, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9500efd7153ef933a25752c1a9649c8b63&pagewanted=6. //BRThe farmer would point out that even vegans have a ''serious clash of interests'' with other animals. The grain that the vegan eats is harvested with a combine that shreds field mice, while the farmer's tractor crushes woodchucks in their burrows, and his pesticides drop songbirds from the sky. Steve Davis, an animal scientist at Oregon State University, has estimated that if America were to adopt a strictly vegetarian diet, the total number of animals killed every year would actually increase, as animal pasture gave way to row crops. Davis contends that if our goal is to kill as few animals as possible, then people should eat the largest possible animal that can live on the least intensively cultivated land: grass-fed beef for everybody. It would appear that killing animals is unavoidable no matter what we choose to eat.When I talked to Joel Salatin about the vegetarian utopia, he pointed out that it would also condemn him and his neighbors to importing their food from distant places, since the Shenandoah Valley receives too little rainfall to grow many row crops. Much the same would hold true where I live, in New England. We get plenty of rain, but the hilliness of the land has dictated an agriculture based on animals since the time of the Pilgrims. The world is full of places where the best, if not the only, way to obtain food from the land is by grazing animals on it -- especially ruminants, which alone can transform grass into protein and whose presence can actually improve the health of the land.The vegetarian utopia would make us even more dependent than we already are on an industrialized national food chain. That food chain would in turn be even more dependent than it already is on fossil fuels and chemical fertilizer, since food would need to travel farther and manure would be in short supply. Indeed, it is doubtful that you can build a more sustainable agriculture without animals to cycle nutrients and support local food production. If our concern is for the health of nature -- rather than, say, the internal consistency of our moral code or the condition of our souls -- then eating animals may sometimes be the most ethical thing to do.There is, too, the fact that we humans have been eating animals as long as we have lived on this earth. Humans may not need to eat meat in order to survive, yet doing so is part of our evolutionary heritage, reflected in the design of our teeth and the structure of our digestion. Eating meat helped make us what we are, in a social and biological sense. Under the pressure of the hunt, the human brain grew in size and complexity, and around the fire where the meat was cooked, human culture first flourished. Granting rights to animals may lift us up from the brutal world of predation, but it will entail the sacrifice of part of our identity -- our own animality.Surely this is one of the odder paradoxes of animal rights doctrine. It asks us to recognize all that we share with animals and then demands that we act toward them in a most unanimalistic way. Whether or not this is a good idea, we should at least acknowledge that our desire to eat meat is not a trivial matter, no mere ''gastronomic preference.'' We might as well call sex -- also now technically unnecessary -- a mere ''recreational preference.'' Whatever else it is, our meat eating is something very deep indeed.Management Good Human management ensures long-term species survival predation by other animals is more vicious than predation by humans Pollan, 6 Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley. An Animals Place, 11-10, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9500efd7153ef933a25752c1a9649c8b63&pagewanted=6. From the animals' point of view, the bargain with humanity has been a great success, at least until our own time. Cows, pigs, dogs, cats and chickens have thrived, while their wild ancestors have languished. (There are 10,000 wolves in North America, 50,000,000 dogs.) Nor does their loss of autonomy seem to trouble these creatures. It is wrong, the rightists say, to treat animals as ''means'' rather than ''ends,'' yet the happiness of a working animal like the dog consists precisely in serving as a ''means.'' Liberation is the last thing such a creature wants. To say of one of Joel Salatin's caged chickens that ''the life of freedom is to be preferred'' betrays an ignorance about chicken preferences -- which on this farm are heavily focused on not getting their heads bitten off by weasels.But haven't these chickens simply traded one predator for another -- weasels for humans? True enough, and for the chickens this is probably not a bad deal. For brief as it is, the life expectancy of a farm animal would be considerably briefer in the world beyond the pasture fence or chicken coop. A sheep farmer told me that a bear will eat a lactating ewe alive, starting with her udders. ''As a rule,'' he explained, ''animals don't get 'good deaths' surrounded by their loved ones.''The very existence of predation -- animals eating animals -- is the cause of much anguished hand-wringing in animal rights circles. ''It must be admitted,'' Singer writes, ''that the existence of carnivorous animals does pose one problem for the ethics of Animal Liberation, and that is whether we should do anything about it.'' Some animal rightists train their dogs and cats to become vegetarians. (Note: cats will require nutritional supplements to stay healthy.) Matthew Scully calls predation ''the intrinsic evil in nature's design . . . among the hardest of all things to fathom.'' Really? A deep Puritan streak pervades animal rights activists, an abiding discomfort not only with our animality, but with the animals' animality too.However it may appear to us, predation is not a matter of morality or politics; it, also, is a matter of symbiosis. Hard as the wolf may be on the deer he eats, the herd depends on him for its well-being; without predators to cull the herd, deer overrun their habitat and starve. In many places, human hunters have taken over the predator's ecological role. Chickens also depend for their continued well-being on their human predators -- not individual chickens, but chickens as a species. The surest way to achieve the extinction of the chicken would be to grant chickens a ''right to life.''

Impact TurnsLol AliensThe rules of anthropocentrism would be justifiably applicable to extra-terrestrial lifeHuebert and Block 7 (J.H. and Walter , 2007, J.D. - University of Chicago and Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair in Econmics - College of Business Administration - Loyola University, "Space Environmentalism, Property Rights, and the Law" 37 U. Mem. L. Rev. 281, Winter, lnSome observers, such as Roberts, believe that bodies "with the potential for harboring biotic or prebiotic activity" present a special case for which different rules must apply. Roberts states that where life exists or even potentially exists, we must apply the "precautionary principle," which would place the burdenof proof on those engaged in a "challenged activity" and prohibit development that threatensevidence of past life or the existence of present or "potential" life. n96We disagree.First, we note that there is no evidence that life exists or has ever existed anywhere in the solar System except Earth. n97Further, there is a strong consensus that to the extent that life might exist or have ever existed elsewhere, such as on Mars or Europa, it is limited to extremely simple microscopic organisms. n98The likelihood of sentient or even plant life existing elsewhere in the solar System appears to be zero, and the question of life on planets outside the solar System is very hypothetical, even for an article on space law. n99Therefore, a presumption against the existence of actual life where no evidence to the contrary exists seems proper.Further, space environmentalists have failed to make the case that environmental regulations are necessary to protect whatever extraterrestrial life (or evidence thereof) may exist. Humans are fascinated by the prospect of the existence of any kind of extraterrestrial life. Anyone who bothers to go to space for any purpose is likely to be interested in checking for signs of past or present life on his property (or prospective property) before acting in a way that might destroy it. For the intellectually uncurious, there would still be financial incentives. For example, scientific or environmental organizations could offer prize money for discovery of evidence[*303]of extraterrestrial life; a property owner who discovers evidence of life could sell scientists, journalists, and others rights to access, study, and publicize information about the discovery. Only governmental intervention (e.g., stripping individuals of property rights when something of scientific interest is found on their property) is likely to cause incentives to run in any other direction. n100Suppose there were the proverbial "little green creatures" discovered on Mars or on any other planet humans colonized. What rights would they have? What obligations would we have to respect these rights? If they were smarter/stronger than we, the shoe of course would be on the other foot. There are several options. If they had the intelligence/ability of dogs or cats, then we would treat them as we now do those animals. But suppose they were an intermediate between us and the smartest of earth animals (chimps, porpoises), or had human qualities but looked like a cross between an octopus and a giraffe. According to Rothbard, n101if they could communicate with us, promise to respect our personal and property rights, and adhere to such undertakings, then and only then would we be obligated to treat them as we do each other (well, better, hopefully).Embracing aliens leads to extinction Leake, Writer for the Sunday Times, 10[Jonathon, The Sunday Times, Dont talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking 4/25/10 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7107207.ece ,accessed 6/21/11,HK]THE aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at leastaccording to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist but thatinstead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact.The suggestions come in a new documentary series in which Hawking, one of the worlds leading scientists, will set out his latest thinking on some of the universes greatest mysteries. Alien life, he will suggest, is almost certain to exist in many other parts of the universe:not just in planets, but perhaps in the centre of stars or even floating in interplanetary space. Hawkings logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved. To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational, he said. The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like. The answer, he suggests, is that most of it will be the equivalent of microbes or simple animals the sort of life that has dominated Earth for most of its history. One scene in his documentary for the Discovery Channel shows herds of two-legged herbivores browsing on an alien cliff-face where they are picked off by flying, yellow lizard-like predators. Another shows glowing fluorescent aquatic animals forming vast shoals in the oceans thought to underlie the thick ice coating Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter. Such scenes are speculative, but Hawking uses them to lead on to a serious point: thata few life forms could be intelligent and pose a threat. Hawking believes thatcontact with such a species could be devastating for humanity. He suggests thataliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldnt want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach. He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is a little too risky. He said: If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didnt turn out very well for the Native Americans.The completion of the documentary marks a triumph for Hawking, now 68, who is paralysed by motor neurone disease and has very limited powers of communication. The project took him and his producers three years, during which he insisted on rewriting large chunks of the script and checking the filming. John Smithson, executive producer for Discovery, said: He wanted to make a programme that was entertaining for a general audience as well as scientific and thats a tough job, given the complexity of the ideas involved.Hawking has suggested the possibility of alien life before but his views have been clarified by a series of scientific breakthroughs, such as the discovery, since 1995, of more than 450 planets orbiting distant stars, showing that planets are a common phenomenon. So far, all the new planets found have been far larger than Earth, but only because the telescopes used to detect them are not sensitive enough to detect Earth-sized bodies at such distances. Another breakthrough is the discovery that life on Earth has proven able to colonise its most extreme environments. If life can survive and evolve there, scientists reason, then perhaps nowhere is out of bounds. Hawkings belief in aliens places him in good scientific company. In his recent Wonders of the Solar System BBC series, Professor Brian Cox backed the idea, too, suggesting Mars, Europa and Titan, a moon of Saturn, as likely places to look. Similarly, Lord Rees, the astronomer royal, warned in a lecture earlier this year that aliens might prove to be beyond human understanding. I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we cant conceive, he said. Just as a chimpanzee cant understand quantum theory, it could be there are aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains. Indigenous Peoples

Turnindigenous peoples

Eliminating divisions between human and animal causes the conscious destruction of indigenous cultures.Staudenmaier 4 (Peter, Ambiguities of Animal Rights, Institute for Social Ecology,http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20040611140817458)The unexamined cultural prejudices embedded deep within animal rights thinking carry political implications that are unavoidably elitist. A consistent animal rights stance, after all, would require many aboriginal peoples to abandon their sustainable livelihoods and lifeways completely. Animal rights has no reasonable alternative to offer to communities like the Inuit, whose very existence in their ecological niche is predicated on hunting animals. An animal rights viewpoint can only look down disdainfully on those peasant societies in Latin America and elsewhere that depend on small-scale animal husbandry as an integral part of their diet, as well as pastoralists in Africa and Asia who rely centrally upon animals to maintain traditional subsistence economies that long predate the colonial imposition of capitalism. These are not matters of taste but of sustainability and survival. Forsaking such practices makes no ecological or social sense, and would be tantamount to eliminating these distinctive societies themselves, all for the sake of assimilation to standards of morality and nutrition propounded by middle-class westerners convinced of their own rectitude. Too many animal rights proponents forget that their belief system is essentially a European-derived construct, and neglect the practical repercussions of universalizing it into an unqualified principle of human moral conduct as such.13 Nowhere is this combination of parochialism and condescension more apparent than in the animus against hunting. Many animal rights enthusiasts cannot conceive of hunting as anything other than a brutal and senseless activity undertaken for contemptible reasons. Heedless of their own prejudices, they take hunting for an expression of speciesist prejudice. What animal rights theorists malign as sport hunting often provides a significant seasonal supplement to the diets of rural populations who lack the luxuries of tempeh and seitan. Even indigenous communities engaged in conspicuously low-impact traditional hunting have been harassed and vilified by animal rights activists. The campaign against seal hunting in the 1980s, for example, prominently targeted Inuit practices.14 In the late 1990s, the Makah people of Neah Bay in the northwestern United States tried to re-establish their communal whale hunt, harvesting exactly one gray whale in 1999. The Makah hunt was non-commercial, for subsistence purposes, and fastidiously humane; they chose a whale species that is not endangered and went to considerable lengths to accommodate anti-whaling sentiment. Nevertheless, when the Makah attempted to embark on their first expedition in 1998, they were physically confronted by the Sea Shepherd Society and other animal protection organizations, who occupied Neah Bay for several months. For these groups, animal rights took precedence over human rights. Many of these animal advocates embellished their pro-whale rhetoric with hoary racist stereotypes about native people and allied themselves with unreconstructed apologists for colonial domination and dispossession.15 Such examples are far from rare. In fact, animal rights sentiment has frequently served as an entry point for rightwing positions into left movements. Because much of the left has generally been reluctant to think clearly and critically about nature, about biological politics, and about ethical complexity, this unsettling affinity between animal rights and rightwing politics an affinity which has a lengthy historical pedigree remains a serious concern.That risks extinction. Stavenhagen 90 (Rodolfo, Professor @ the United Nations University,The Ethnic Questionpg. 73The struggle for the preservation of the collective identity of culturally distinct peoples has further implications as well.Thecultural diversity of the worlds peoples is a universal resource for all humankind. Thediversity ofthe worldsculturalpoolis like the diversity of the worlds biological gene pool.A culture that disappearsdue toethnocide orcultural genocide represents a loss for allhumankind.At a time when the classic development models of the post war era have failed to solve the major problems of mankind,people are again looking at so called traditional cultures forat least some of theanswers.This is veryclear, for example,as regards to agricultural and food production, traditional medicine,environmental management in rural areas, construction techniques,social solidarity in times of crises, etc.The worlds diverse cultures have much to offer our imperiled planet. Thusthe defense of the collective rights of ethnic groups and indigenous peoples cannot be separated from the collective human rights of all human beings.

Biotech

TurnbiotechRejecting anthropocentrism collapses biotechnologyprevents GMO cropsSmith 8 (Wesley,The Silent Scream of the Asparagus: Get ready for 'plant rights.'http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2010625/posts?page=101)Why is this happening? Our acceleratingrejection of the Judeo-Christian world view,which upholds the unique dignity and moral worth of human beings,is driving us crazy. Once we knocked our species off its pedestal, it was only logical that we would come to see fauna and flora as entitled to rights.The intellectual elites were the first to accept the notion of "species-ism," which condemns as invidious discrimination treating people differently from animals simply because they are human beings. Then ethical criteria were needed for assigning moral worth to individuals, be they human, animal, or now vegetable. Rising to the task, leading bioethicists argue that for a human, value comes from possessing sufficient cognitive abilities to be deemed a "person." This excludes the unborn, the newborn, and those with significant cognitive impairments, who, personhood theorists believe, do not possess the right to life or bodily integrity. This thinking has led to the advocacy in prestigious medical and bioethical journals of using profoundly brain impaired patients in medical experimentation or as sources of organs. The animal rights movement grew out of the same poisonous soil.Animal rights ideology holds that moral worth comes with sentience or the ability to suffer. Thus, since both animals and humans feel pain, animal rights advocates believe that what is done to an animal should be judged morally as if it were done to a human being. Some ideologues even compare the Nazi death camps to normal practices of animal husbandry. For example, Charles Patterson wrote in Eternal Treblinka--a book specifically endorsed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals--that "the road to Auschwitz begins at the slaughterhouse."Eschewing humans as the pinnacle of"creation" (to borrow the term used in the Swiss constitution)has caused environmentalism to mutate from conservationism--a concern to properly steward resources and protect pristine environs and endangered species--into a willingness to thwart human flourishing to "save the planet." Indeed, the most radical "deep ecologists" have grown so virulently misanthropic that Paul Watson, the head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, called humans "the AIDS of the earth," requiring "radical invasive therapy" in order to reduce the population of the earth to under a billion. As for "plant rights," if the Swiss model spreads,itmay hobble biotechnology and experimentation to improve crop yields. As an editorial in Nature News put it:The [Swiss] committeehas come up with few concrete examples of what type of experiment might be considered an unacceptable insult to plant dignity. Thecommitteedoes not consider that genetic engineering of plants automatically falls into this category, but its majority viewholds that it would if the genetic modification caused plants to "lose their independence"--for example by interfering with their capacity to reproduce.Biogenetic Crops save billionsReason 2K (Ronald Bailey, Interview with Norman Borlaug: Noble Peace Price Winner and Professor at Texas A & M University, Billions Served, Aprilhttp://www.reason.com/news/show/27665.html)Despite occasional local famines caused by armed conflicts or political mischief, food is more abundant and cheaper today than ever before in history, due in large part to the work of Borlaug and his colleagues. More than 30 years ago, Borlaug wrote, "One of the greatest threats to mankind today is that the world may be choked by an explosively pervading but well camouflaged bureaucracy." As REASON's interview with him shows, he still believes that environmental activists and their allies in international agencies are a threat to progress on global food security. Barring such interference, he is confident that agricultural research, including biotechnology, will be able to boost crop production to meet the demand for food in a world of 8 billion or so, the projected population in 2025. Meanwhile, media darlings like Worldwatch Institute founder Lester Brown keep up their drumbeat of doom. In 1981 Brown declared, "The period of global food security is over." In 1994, he wrote, "The world's farmers can no longer be counted on to feed the projected additions to our numbers." And as recently as 1997 he warned, "Food scarcity will be the defining issue of the new era now unfolding, much as ideological conflict was the defining issue of the historical era that recently ended." Borlaug, by contrast, does not just wring his hands. He still works to get modern agricultural technology into the hands of hungry farmers in the developing world. Today, he is a consultant to the International Maize and Wheat Center in Mexico and president of the Sasakawa Africa Association, a private Japanese foundation working to spread the Green Revolution to sub-Saharan Africa. REASON Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey met with Borlaug at Texas A&M, where he is Distinguished Professor in the Soil and Crop Sciences Department and still teaches classes on occasion. Despite his achievements, Borlaug is a modest man who works out of a small windowless office in the university's agricultural complex. A few weeks before the interview, Texas A&M honored Borlaug by naming its new agricultural biotechnology center after him. "We have to have this new technology if we are to meet the growing food needs for the next 25 years," Borlaug declared at the dedication ceremony. If the naysayers do manage to stop agricultural biotech, he fears, they may finally bring on the famines they have been predicting for so long.

Space Col

Animal experimentation and exploitation is critical to NASA zero-gravity birthing tests that are a pre-requisite to space colonization. Lakdawala 2K (Seema, BORN IN SPACE 3..2..1..BLASTOFF,http://www.cse.emory.edu/sciencenet/undergrad/SURE/Articles/2000_art_lakdawala.html)Human kind hasalways had a need to explore, first the exploration of the new world and now as the majority of the world has been explored and mapped, we have set our sights a bit higher. We now havea craving forthe outer limits;exploration of the solar systemsof other galaxies isnt very far away.Along with exploration comes colonization. As space exploration increases, the need for colonization will come soon. We have already begun taking preliminary steps with the NASA Space Station.Hopefully theMedaka fish birth andtheresearch on zebra fish will give us the key we need to understand how to make it possiblefor future vertebrate animalsto be born in space.Belief in humanity is the vital internal link Michael Zey, professor at the School of Business Administration at Montclair University, executive director of the Expansionary Institute and internationally recognized expert on the economy, society and management. Future Factor, 2004 p223-225The formidable impediment that could conceivably prevent the species from achieving its destiny, the barrier standing between humankind and its goals, is ourselves, or more to the point, cultural and political influences that threaten to upend scientific progress and choke humanitys advancement. Not everyone embraces the vision presented in this book regarding humankinds natural destiny. In fact, many vehemently and vigorously oppose any vision that posits that mans destiny involves imposing his will and his consciousness on the world. As we enter the twenty-first century, two major camps in this debate are engaged in a battle for the soul of the species. One side, the expansionary, insists that humankind is destined to aggressively expand human potential and reconfigure the universe. The other side wants to restrict humans activity within predefined parametersthey hope humankind will learn to live in balance with nature. This battle rages throughout many fields, in academia, in the grade schools, in the media, and in the natural and social sciences. The stakes in this war are extremely highif the camp I label regressionary wins, I believe that our species will cease progressing, will stagnate, and possibly will disappear. At the core of this philosophic and political war is the debate over the very definition of humanness, and the place of humankind in the cosmic hierarchy. By now you know where the expansionary philosophy places humans: humankind is at the epicenter of cosmic activity, a uniquely gifted species endowed with a special destiny. The opponents of this vision are attacking the idea of the centrality of humanity. They are attempting to define humanity downward, negatively comparing the human species to other entities, including lower primates, smart machines, even supersapient aliens that manifest intellectual and physical qualities that dwarf the capabilities of man. Our own dominant cosmology, the Big Bang theory, conspires to undermine humankinds sense of importance. These ideas wafting through the culture have real impacts in the political and cultural spheres. Obviously, if we come to believe that humanity is just another species, no better or worse than other beings(or machines) populating the planet or the universe, we will deny ourselves the right to impose our will onother animals, nature, the biosphere, or the universe. A corollary of this world view is the belief that humankind is a deeply flawed species dangerous to the planet and the cosmos. Many use such suppositions as a justification, a guiding principle, for political and social activities aimed at thwarting technological innovation and scientific research. Later in the chapter we will examine how powerful forces will use legislative, regulatory, and other means to prevent the introduction of such new technologies as genetic engineering, cloning, the use of nuclear power, and high-speed transport. The Assault on the Idea of Humankinds Uniqueness If the human race is to fulfill its destiny to vitalize the planets and beyond, and eventually create the Humaniverse, its members must possess a strong belief in humanitys uniqueness and its special role in the universe. They must envision humanity as a species of unlimited possibilities whose potential is only beginning to be realized. Any ideology that undermines our beliefin our abilities, our potential, and ourselves becomes a roadblockon humanitys pathway to destiny. Unhappily, our educational and cultural institutions now provide the public a view of humanity that is less than complimentary. These institutions promote whar I label equivalency, the idea that the human species is merely the intellectual equal of a host of other entities. This notion of equivalency at one time equates us to other living species, at other times claims that our smart machines such as robots or computers are our superiors. Last, some claim we ate the inferiors to that which we cannot see, feel, or even prove. The belief in aliens, creatures from outer space, even the legitimated search for them, has undermined much of our sense that we are the universe s intelligent agent. We can only conclude from such a viewpoint that the human species possesses no unique abilities or rights relative to these other beings. Increasingly, a movement is afoot to establish an equivalency between the human species and certain other species in the animal kingdom. An organized effort even exists to have certain higher primates recategorized as sapient beings, according them legal rights that traditionally have been delegated exclusively to humans. This movement is gradually and insidiously eroding the distinction between humans and animals. The obfuscation of the differences between (hum)man(s) and beast will have adecidedly negative impact on human progress. Clearly, once the population is truly convinced that the human being is not so much Homo sapiens but just another ape, a smart chimp, as it were, we will live down to the expectations of our new status. Creativity and genius will simply not emerge from individuals who have been convinced that they are the intelecrual equivalent of orangutans. One may argue that the Great Apes Proposal and other such movements only seek to raise apes to the level of humans, not lower humans to apes. My response is that the vast majority of the public has a fairly good idea of what an ape actually is, how it lives, and what its limited capabilities are. They can only surmise that by equating apes to men and women we are defining humanity downward! Establishing in the legal system and the culture itself the idea that apes are our equals will wreak havoc with human progress and our ability to reach our destiny. Why would we desire to establish a Humaniverse and imbue the cosmos with human consciousness and intelligence, if we doubt the innate uniqueness and the superiority of humans? If we have any hope of winning the battle for the future, the educational system and the media must communicate to the public the scientific case for human uniqueness and superiority.Colonization solves inevitable extinction. Matheny 7 (Jason, PhD Student in School of Public Health @ Johns Hopkins, Risk Analysis: An International Journal, Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction, 27:5, Wiley InterScience)As for astronomical risks, to escape our sun's death, humanity will eventually need to relocate. If we survive the next century, we are likely to build self-sufficient colonies in space. We would be motivated by self-interest to do so, as asteroids, moons, and planets have valuable resources to mine, and the technological requirements for colonization are not beyond imagination (Kargel, 1994; Lewis, 1996). Colonizing space sooner, rather than later, could reduce extinction risk (Gott, 1999; Hartmann, 1984; Leslie, 1999), as a species' survivability is closely related to the extent of its range (Hecht, 2006). Citing, in particular, the threat of new biological weapons, Stephen Hawking has said, "I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet" (Highfield, 2001). Similarly, NASA Administrator, Michael Griffin (2006), recently remarked: "The history of life on Earth is the history of extinction events, and human expansion into the Solar System is, in the end, fundamentally about the survival of the species."

Space solves warming. Deepak Purang, writes editorials for Streedirectory.com, 2009, Space Sunshade May One Day Reduce Global Warming http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/14921/gadgets/space_sunshade_may_one_day_reduce_global_warming.htmlScientists have come up with new strategies to tackle the problem. Now a scientist has suggested an ambitious idea to contain global warming. Put sunshades in space. Thats right. University of Arizona astronomer RogerAngel suggests putting sunshades in space and has detailed his idea in a paper Feasibility of cooling the Earth with a cloud of small spacecraft near L1" in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He suggestslaunching a constellation of trillions of small free-flying spacecraft a million miles above Earth into an orbit aligned with the sun, called the L-1 orbit. This spacecraft would form a long, cylindrical cloud and would have a diameter about half that of Earth, and about 10 times longer. It is suggested that about 10 percent of the sunlight passing through the 60,000-mile length of the cloud, pointing lengthwise between the Earth and the sun, would be diverted away from our planet. This would result in uniformly reduced sunlight by about 2 percent over the entire planet and would balance the heating of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere. The use of space shade was first mooted by James Early of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1989. "The earlier ideas were for bigger, heavier structures that would have needed manufacture and launch from the moon, which is pretty futuristic," Angel said. "I wanted to make the sunshade from small 'flyers,' small, light and extremely thin spacecraft that could be completely assembled and launched from Earth, in stacks of a million at a time. When they reached L1, they would be dealt off the stack into a cloud. There's nothing to assemble in space." Angel proposes to design lightweight flyers made of transparent film pierced with small holes and would be two feet in diameter, 1/5000 of an inch thick and weigh about a gram, the same as a large butterfly. He suggests using MEMS" technology mirrors as tiny sails that tilt to hold the flyers position in the orbiting constellation. The weight of all flyers would be 20 millions tons. But conventional rocket launch system at $10,000 a pound would be too prohibitive. His alternative would cost only around $20 a pound. He suggests deploying a total 20 electromagnetic launchers launching a stack of flyers every 5 minutes for 10 years. The electromagnetic launchers would use hydroelectric power but even if it uses coal-generated electricity, each ton of carbon used would reduce the effect of 1000 tons of atmospheric carbon. Once propelled beyond Earths atmosphere the flyer stacks would be steered to L-1 orbit by solar-powered ion propulsion, pioneered by European Space Agency's SMART-1 moon orbiter and NASA's Deep Space 1 probe. "The concept builds on existing technologies," Angel said. "It seems feasible that it could be developed and deployed in about 25 years at a cost of a few trillion dollars. With care, the solar shade should last about 50 years. So the average cost is about $100 billion a year, or about two-tenths of one percent of the global domestic product." He added, "The sunshade is no substitute for developing renewable energy, the only permanent solution. A similar massive level of technological innovation and financial investment could ensure that. "But if the planet gets into an abrupt climate crisis that can only be fixed by cooling, it would be good to be ready with some shading solutions that have been worked out."Climate change kills species and global biodiversity causing extinction Mike Swain, Science editor for The Mirror, a London based news publication. 7-17-2008, Shock at a decline in species Lexis Almost a third of the world's wildlife has been lost in the last 35 years, a report has revealed. Numbers of species on land, in the oceans and in rivers and lakes fell by 27 per cent between 1970 and 2005. Land animal numbers have fallen by 25 per cent, marine species such as swordfish and hammerhead sharks by 28 per cent and freshwater by 29 per cent according to the Living Planet Index - produced by the WWF, the London Zoological Society and the Global Footprint Network. Report author Jonathan Loh said the fall was "completely unprecedented" in human history, adding: "You would have to go back to the extinction of the dinosaurs to see a decline as rapid as this." The main threats are pollution, habitat destruction, over-exploitation, invasive species and climate change. Colin Butfield, Head of Campaigns at WWF-UK, said: "Biodiversity underpins the health of the planet so it is alarming that despite increased awareness we continue to see a downtrend."Space solves scarcity just our solar system has infinite resourcesMarshall Savage, Founder of the Living Universe Foundation, 1994, The Millenial Project, p. 292-293Can our little solar system really support five billion billion people? The surprising answer is yes, and easily at that. There are stores enough in the solar system to support even very large populations for billions of years. In taking stock of the solar system, lets restrict our inventory to a tally of the available water supplies. We need a lot of different things, but water is the most fundamental of commodities. Life is, after all, mostly water50 to 90%. By comparison, carbon, nitrogen, and all other elements amount to only fractions of the mass of living tissue. Water has many vital roles: it is a metabolite, a carrier, a diluter, a humidifier, a cleaner, and, at least early in the next Millennium, a radiation shield. So lets make the broad assumption that, if the solar system has enough water to support a large population, it will have enough of everything else too. How much water does it take to make five billion billion people? The average person contains around 40 liters (10.5 gals.) of water.516 Five billion billion people would require 200 million cubic kilometers of waterjust for their own bodies. To provide such a population with the water needed for culturing algae, growing plants, cooling habitats, shielding from radiation, and other purposes, may require hundreds of times as much. For stock taking purposes, lets assume that the average water allotment will be the same throughout Solaria as that required in Asgard60 tons per capita.517 This would raise the total water demand to 300 billion cubic kilometers. The oceans, glaciers, rivers, and springs of the Earth hold 1,326 million cubic kilometers of water.518 If all the waters on Earth were collected into one gigantic reservoir, the pool would be 1300 kilometers across and 1000 kilometers deep. This amount of water forms a useful measure of one ocean mass. Total water demand by the end of the Third Millennium could equal 226 ocean masses. Where can it all possibly come from? As it happens, our solar system is richly endowed with this remarkable mineralthe stuff of life.519 The oceans of Mother Earth justifiably impress us, but they contain only a fraction of the water available in the solar system. The moons of Jupiter alone contain many times as much water as there is on Earth. For example, Callisto, the size of the Planet Mercury, is about half ice, and contains forty times as much water as there is on Earth. Europa and Ganymede hold similar reservoirs. (See Plate No. 12.) Water can also be formed chemically from elemental hydrogen and oxygen, which are both abundant. Finally, the Oort cloud holds another huge supply of water and other useful materials.520 Not counting the Oort comets, the moons and other small bodies of the solar system contain just about exactly 300 billion cubic kilometers of water. It is an interesting coincidence that this is just the quantity the human population will require by the year 4000 A.D. What is true of water is equally true of all the other elements and compounds needed to support the Solarian civilization. Jupiter alone weighs two and a half times as much as all the other planets combined. Even a very large civilization could not exhaust this store house in billions of years.

Transhumanism

Speciesism is key to TranshumanismCALVERLY 6 (David; Center for the Study of Law, Science and Technology Arizona State University, Android Science and Animal Rights, Does an Analogy Exist? Connection Science, 18:4, December)Even more fundamentally, there are concerns that arise at the earliest stages of development of a machine consciousness. The endeavour itself is replete with moral and ethical pitfalls. If the same logic as urged for animal rights, or for the rights of foetuses, is applied to a machine consciousness, some of these issues could have the potential to curtail radically the development of a conscious entity. If part of the process of developing a machine consciousness is an emergent learning process (Lindblom and Ziemke 2006), or even a process of creating various modules that add attributes of consciousness such as sentience, nociception, or language, in a cumulative fashion, some could argue that this is immoral. As posed by LaChat (1986: 7576), the question becomes Is the AI experiment then immoral from its inception, assuming, that is, that the end (telos) of the experiment is the production of a person? . . . An AI experiment that aims at producing a self-reflexively conscious and communicative person is prima facie immoral. Must designers of a machine consciousness be aware that as they come closer to their goal, they may have to consider such concerns in their experimentation? Arguably yes, if human equivalence is the ultimate goal. Failure to treat a machine consciousness in a moral way could be viewed as a form of speciesism (Ryder 1975). The utilitarian philosopher J. J. C. Smart (1973: 67) has observed if it became possible to control our evolution in such a way as to develop a superior species, then the difference between species morality and a morality of all sentient beings would become much more of a live issue.Transhuman focus means we address existential risks those outweighNick Bostrom, Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University, The Transhumanist FAQ- A General Introduction, Version 2.1 (2003), google.Yes, and this implies an urgent need to analyze the risks before they materialize and to take steps to reduce them. Biotechnology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence pose especially serious risks of accidents and abuse. [See also If these technologies are so dangerous, should they be banned? What can be done to reduce the risks? ] One can distinguish between, on the one hand, endurable or limited hazards, such as car crashes, nuclear reactor meltdowns, carcinogenic pollutants in the atmosphere, floods, volcano eruptions, and so forth, and, on the other hand, existential risks events that would cause the extinction of intelligent life or permanently and drastically cripple [halt] its potential. While endurable or limited risks can be serious and may indeed be fatal to the people immediately exposed they are recoverable; they do not destroy the long-term prospects of humanity as a whole. Humanity has long experience with endurable risks and a variety of institutional and technological mechanisms have been employed to reduce their incidence. Existential risks are a different kind of beast. For most of human history, there were no significant existential risks, or at least none that our ancestors could do anything about. By definition, of course, no existential disaster has yet happened. As a species we may therefore be less well prepared to understand and manage this new kind of risk. Furthermore, the reduction of existential risk is a global public good (everybody by necessity benefits from such safety measures, whether or not they contribute to their development), creating a potential free-rider problem, i.e. a lack of sufficient selfish incentives for people to make sacrifices to reduce an existential risk. Transhumanists therefore recognize a moral duty to promote efforts to reduce existential risks.

Misc/A2 Their Stuff Inevitable Anthro inevitable and good Beth Mendenhall April 2009 undergraduate student studying Philosophy and Political Science at Kansas State University She is also a co-president of her universitys debate team. The Environmental Crises: Why We Need Anthropocentrism http://www.bsu.edu/libraries/virtualpress/stance/2009_spring/5Menderhall.pdfAs humans, it is probably impossible to escape a human-centered ethic to guide our decision making. Our subjectivity means we can only experience the world from one perspective, and this perspective colors everything we do. Our self preservation instincts lead us to value ourselves above the rest of the world. What person would reasonably kill themselves, or their children, friends, and neighbors, to save an ecosystem? Or two ecosystems? Though some radical environmentalists have chained themselves to trees and bulldozers, this is generally a statement to express the direness of the environmental situation, instead of an actual bodily sacrifice. Would the same environmentalist give their life to save two gorillas, or two earthworms? We are all responsible for the world, but we are first and foremost responsible for ourselves. More than that, our subjectivity means that one deep ecologist will observe value in the world differently than the next. Even those who subscribe to the idea that objective deliberations are possible, admit that we can rarely access them.7 Believing we can have knowledge of intrinsic value that we cannot access in any meaningful way would require the adoption of moral realism, the idea that we can have knowledge of objective moral facts. The problem with this view is the lack of a perceptual capacity that would enable us to know moral facts the way we can see colors and hear music. Moral realism has been debated for thousands of years, and endangered species, degrading environments, and the human species do not have time to wait for philosophers to settle this esoteric question. Even if it could be settled, broad appeal is another matter.

Anthropocentrism is inevitable humans still have to weigh it as a value. Intrinsic value is crafted to convince people to care about nature no way to necessarily make it trump human needs Not all human interests become subservient doesnt rule out the aff impacts Ruling out anthropocentric goal generates an absurd and impossible positionLight, George Mason University Center for Global Ethics director, 2002[Andrew, Metaphilosophy, July 2002, Vol 33, No4, Contemporary Environmental Ethics from Metaethics to Public Philosophy Wiley, p.438, accessed 7-10-12, TAP]First, the, perhaps, externalism of this approach (or motivational rationalism), entailed in the thought experiment that Katz and Oechsli propose whereby we first assume the existence of a justified moral theory in order to test its veracity in a policy setting, is both practically and theoretically unsound.10 How the mere justification of a nonanthropocentric theory would motivate dismissal of competing claims by humans for satisfaction of their needs is never made clear. Given that a nonanthropocentric theory would not eliminate the rational concern of moral agents about their own welfare, at the very least, some minimal model of moral psychology should be required of such a theory to make the thought experiment plausible. Human interests still exist even if a nonanthropocentric theory has been justified, and as with contemporary cases of moral dilemmas faced by agents even when they recognize competing moral claims of other humans on them, we can easily imagine that humans who had recognized the valid justification of nonanthropocentric natural value would still feel the reasonable tug of competing claims to protect human welfare and would conceivably decide contrary to the nonanthropocentric calculus. Additionally, in theoretical terms, no reason is offered here why the interests of nature recommending preservation of the rainforest would necessarily trump the interests of humans for development. This is simply assumed by Katz and Oechsli. After all, a nonanthropocentric theory does not necessarily reduce all human interests to a subservient position in relation to nature. Even if strong second-order principles were justified in this hypothesized nonanthropocentric theory that provided reasons for resolving conflicts of value, the application of those principles would not in this case ensure that natural welfare would trump considerations of human welfare. Every nonanthropocentrist who has taken seriously the question of conflicts of value in a nonanthropocentric approach acknowledges that in many cases human interests will still trump nonhuman interests where these interests directly come into conflict (see Eckersley 1998 for a helpful discussion). If this were not true, nonanthropocentrism would quickly degenerate into an absurd position (see Lynch and Wells 1998).

Link Turn Trick It is better to accept the inevitability of human-centric value; claims to transcend that system of value do more to reinforce unstated premises of human value, making the challenging of speciesist behavior more difficultHayward 97[PhD, Department of Politics at Edinburgh University, Anthropocentrism: a Misunderstood Problem, Environmental Values, p. asp//wyo-tjc]The aim of overcoming anthropocentrism is intelligible if it is understood in terms of improving knowledge about the place of humans in the world; and this includes improving our knowledge about what constitutes the good of nonhuman beings. This kind of knowledge is significantly added to by objectivating science. There may also be a role for other kinds of knowledge for instance, kinds characterised by empathetic imagining of how it might be like to be a member of another species (Cassano,1989); but here one must always becautious about unwittingly projecting human perceptions on to beings whose actual perceptions may be radically different, since this would be to reintroducejust the sort of error that characterises ontological anthropocentrism.The need for caution is all the clearer when it comes to attempting to gain anon-anthropocentric perspective in ethics. Indeed, it may be that anthropocentrism in ethics, when properly understood, is actually less harmful than harbouring the aim of overcoming it. At any rate, a number of the considerations advanced in this article would tend to suggest this view. I have noted: that the ethical impulsewhich is expressed as the aim of overcoming anthropocentrism is very imperfectlyexpressed in such terms; that there are some things about anthropocentrism which are unavoidable, and others even to be applauded; furthermore, the things which are to condemned are not appropriately called anthropocentrism at all; that the mistaken rejection of anthropocentrism misrepresents the fact that harms to nonhumans, as well as harm to some groups of humans, are caused not by humanity in general but by specific humans with their own vested interests. Forthese reasons, I suggest that discussions of environmental values would be better conducted without reference to the equivocal notion of anthropocentrism.

Their ethical strategy destroys ambiguity while polarizing values towards the ecosystemthis dogmatic ethic not only incorrect, but impedes the creation of coalitions which are capable of creating a new ethicturns their arg by reinforcing speciesismHayward 97[PhD, Department of Politics at Edinburgh University, Anthropocentrism: a Misunderstood Problem, Environmental Values, p. asp//wyo-tjc]The argument so far would suggest that the aim of completely overcoming anthropocentrism in ethics is at best of rhetorical value, since all it does is draw attention to problems which are in fact better conceptualised in narrower and more precise terms. I shall now argue, though, thateven as rhetoric the criticalemployment of the term can be unhelpful, and evenpositively counterproductive. Proposals for the rejection of anthropocentrism are unhelpful because they cloud the real problem they think to address. The problem has to do with a lackof concern with nonhumans but the term anthropocentrism can all too plausiblybe understood as meaning an excessive concern with humans.4 The latter,however, is not the problem at all.On the contrary, a cursory glance around the world would confirm that humans show a lamentable lack of interest in the wellbeing of other humans. Moreover, even when it is not other humans whoseinterests are being harmed, but other species or the environment, it would generally be implausible to suggest that those doing the harm are being humancentred.To see this, one only has to consider some typical practices which areappropriately criticised. Some examples would be: hunting a species to extinction; destroying a forest to build a road and factories; animal experimentation. In the case of hunting a species to extinction, this is not helpfully or appropriately seen as anthropocentrism since it typically involves one group of humans who are actually condemned by (probably a majority of) other humans who see the practice not as serving human interests in general, but the interests of one quite narrowly-defined group, such as poachers or whalers. A similar point can be made regarding the destruction of the forest for those who derive economic benefit from the destruction oppose not only the human interests of indigenous peoples whose environment is thereby destroyed, but also the interests of all humans who depend on the oxygen such forests produce. The case of animalexperimentation, however, brings to the fore a feature which looks as if it couldmore plausibly be said to be anthropocentric: for if we suppose that the benefitsof the experimentation are intended to accrue to any and all humans who mightneed the medicine or techniqueexperimented, then there would seem to be a clear case of humans benefiting as a species from the use and abuse of other species. But the if is importanthere. A reason why I am inclined to resist calling this anthropocentrism isthat the benefits may in fact not be intended or destinedfor humans generally, but only for those who can afford to pay to keep the drugcompany in profit. As in the other two cases, it is unhelpfulto cover over thisfundamental point and criticise humanity in general for practices carried out bya limited number of humans when many others may in fact oppose them. Thereis in any case no need to describe the practice as anthropocentric when it is quiteclearly speciesist it is not the concern with human welfare per se that is the problem here, but the arbitrary privileging of that welfare over the welfare of members of other species. So a reason why critiques of anthropocentrism areunhelpful is that the problems the term is used to highlight do not arise out of aconcern of humans with humans, but from a lack of concern for non-humans. I earlier explained why this lack of concern is not appropriately termed anthropocentrism; I now add the further consideration thatpractices manifesting a lack of concern for nonhumans very often go hand in hand with a lack of concern for other humans too. Taking this line of argument a step further it becomes evident that anti-anthropocentric rhetoric is not only unhelpful, but positively counterproductive.It is not only conceptually mistaken, but also a practical and strategic mistake, to criticise humanity in general for practices of specific groups of humans.If thepoint of anti-anthropocentric rhetoric is to highlight problems, to make them vivid in order to get action, then misrepresenting the problem is liable to makesolutions all the harder. Something particularly to emphasise is that when radicalcritics of anthropocentrism see themselves as opposed to defenders of humaninterests they are seriously in error. From what has just been said about the specificity of environmental, ecological or animal harms merely being disguised by putting the blame on humans in general, it should be evident that those who are concerned about such harms in fact make common cause with those concerned with issues of social justice. The real opponents of both sorts ofconcern are the ideologists who, in defending harmful practices in the name of humans in general, obscure the real causes of the harms as much as the realincidence of benefits: the harms seldom affect all and only nonhumans; the benefits seldom accrue to all humans.5Yet by appearing to accept the ideologistsown premises, anti-anthropocentric rhetoric plays right into their hands: by appearing to endorse the ideological view that humans in general benefit fromthe exploitative activities of some, the anti-anthropocentrists are left vulnerable to ideological rejoinders to the effect that challenging those activities is merely misanthropic. The opposite is in fact nearer the truth, I believe, because it willmore often be the case that challenging such practices is in the interests ofhumans more generally.Anti-anthropocentric rhetoric reinforces a more dominant frame of human value because they reify ideological opposition to respect for non-human lifeHayward 97[PhD, Department of Politics at Edinburgh University, Anthropocentrism: a Misunderstood Problem, Environmental Values, p. asp//wyo-tjc]Anthropocentrism, widely used as a term of criticism in environmental ethicsand politics, is something of a misnomer: for while anthropocentrism canintelligibly be criticised as an ontological error, attempts to conceive of it as anethical error often involve conceptual confusion. I point out that there is no needfor this confusion because a more appropriate vocabulary to refer to the defectsthe ethical anti-anthropocentrists have in mind already exists. My argument isnot just about semantics, though, but engages directly with the politics ofenvironmental concern: blanket condemnations of anthropocentrism not only condemn some legitimate human concerns, they also allow ideological retorts to the effect that criticisms of anthropocentrism amount to misanthropy. My argument, therefore, is that a more nuanced understanding of the problem of anthropocentrism allows not only a more coherent conceptualisation of environmental ethics but also a more effective politics. The article has five main sections. The first notes the paradox that the clearest instances of overcoming anthropocentrism involve precisely the sort of objectivating knowledge which many ecological critics see as itself archetypically anthropocentric. The second section then notes some ways in which anthropocentrism is not objectionable. In the third section, the defects associated with anthropocentrism in ethics are then examined: I argue, though, that these are better understood as instances of speciesism and human chauvinism. In order to explain why it is unhelpful to call these defects anthropocentrism, I note in section four that there is an ineliminable element of anthropocentrism in anyethic at all, and in the fifth section that the defects do not typically involve aconcern with human interests as such anyway. Because of this last point, I also argue, the rhetoric of anti-anthropocentrism is not only conceptually unsatisfactory, it is counterproductive in practice.

Rejecting anthropocentric only reinforces a new hierarchy that turns the k.Lewis, George Washington University geography and regional science professor, 1992[Martin, Green Delusions: An Environmentalist Critique of Radical Environmentalism http://books.google.com/books?id=cMThEEHW2JYC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false, p.18, accessed 7-10-12, TAP]In marked contrast, the decoupling perspective endorsed here seeks to separate human activities from nature both in order to protect nature from humanity (for natures sake) and to allow continued technological progress (for humanitys sake). This entails acknowledging a profound division between humankind and the rest of nature, a distinction that many greens