thinkabit: "but what does it matter to our overall health and prosperity if a species that we have hardly any interaction with goes extinct"

Say no more! You can tell a lot about a person by the things they value.

I won't cover all the items you raise as it's pointless really.

"actually the recent dust storms originated in the Lake Eyre Basin"

The dust storm is an illustration of what we don't see, but is happening so much of the time. Every time they plough the fields around here I can see soil blowing away. Just because you don't see it blowing away doesn't mean it isn't blowing away.

Yes, they use fertile soil in preference to infertile, but we ain't got much of the former and I doubt there'd be a place in Australia where they'd plant a crop and expect profitable yields without fertilising it.

"we don't prey of second and third world countries, they voluntarily trade with us (ie, slavery was abolished a long time ago)"

It's comfortable for us to maintain this illusion, but that doesn't make it reality. Look up some of the IMF/World Bank conditions on development loans, read about the movement of capital and labour across borders to countries where labour laws are lax and minimum wages substandard. Fulfill your desire to read adult literature.

"hmm, well personally I would prefer to read textbooks and articles in scientific journals. If you prefer to form your world view from children's books then perhaps that reflects the level that you're at?"

When dealing with people who hold the attitude that if a species doesn't give us something then it's not worth having around, children's books offering a deeper insight than all the textbooks and scientific journals you're obviously reading are the best place to start.

* Yes, it was understood that it was a typo, but it was also important, given the context, that the accurate figure was presented for other readers.

Yours in despair for our future.

My point was that, although we are having a collective impact, the relevant decision-making is not happening at the collective level. It is happening at the individual level. Even the decisions of collectives, such as governments or corporations, ultimately take place only through individuals; almost always because they think they will benefit themselves.

There is no saying that the decisions of collectives will necessarily be any better than those of individuals. For example, I read a letter in The Land yesterday that said “[I]n the last 10 years the NSW Government has locked away about one million hectares of national parks. About half this area has completely burnt to the ground, destroying anything in its path, including endangered species of flora and fauna.”

And often collective decisions will be worse, because they will increase moral hazard - the ability of some people to take the benefits for themselves while imposing the costs or risks on others.

Examples abound. The government had the idea to stop us all boiling to death from global warming, by installing pink batts. But you try getting something done through a bureaucracy – it’s like picking up matchsticks with boxing gloves. In the result, the scheme killed people, burnt down houses, increased emissions, and wasted billions of dollars in corruption.

At base, the original problem is that natural resources are scarce. We can’t use a particular piece of land for wilderness *and* for growing crops *and* for building houses *and* for mining coal. Ultimately, these conflicts – and all objective measures relating to them - boil down to differences of subjective values in human beings, and often, they won’t even be different groups of humans, they will be conflicts of values within the same individual humans, just as you and I want to enjoy the beauty of nature, and to use the internet, and to eat sandwiches.

Peter, I totally agree. The question, as pointless as it is, is how do we escape from that self-destructive cycle? I doubt it is through larger doses of individualism and more unfettered self-interest. I personally believe we will only escape when we can establish objective measures free from personal interest for our decision making processes.

Everything you have said points to the very reasons this will never happen. The rule of self-interest precludes such determinations.

> I personally believe we will only escape when we can establish objective measures free from personal interest for our decision making processes.

I think that objective measures are not possible either in theory or in practice. Since we would be looking at all possible resource-use relations not just between all humans, but between all humans and all other individuals of all other species, and remembering that most species are microscopic, even if we devoted the entire GDP of the human race, it would be impossible in practice.

But it wouldn't even be possible in theory, because the subjective values, and vested interests, of the humans in a particular resource use would continue to affect the knowledge produced, both in framing, and in answering the question.

>The question, as pointless as it is, is how do we escape from that self-destructive cycle?

It's only self-destructive when viewed at the species level. At the individual level, people live, reproduce, satisfy wants, and then go on trying to satisfy more. We don't expect any other species to apply a 'whole-of-species' criterion to their actions, and humans are part of nature, so I don't see any reason why we should do so for humans. Besides, most of the things we worry about never happen.

"But" it might be said, "they need to, else sooner or later we'll run out of resources."

But that is to say no more than that resources are scarce. It's still not a reason either to view, or to decide, the problem at the collective level.

"I doubt it is through larger doses of individualism and more unfettered self-interest."

It is probably larger doses of individualism and unfettered self-interest that has given rise to that long-term perspective in the first place. Hunter-gatherers typically had a much shorter time-frame: just a few days. We are able to look at things by a much longer time-frame because we have accumulated the capital that enables us to extend the time-frame for our production decisions decades into the future. In pre-capitalist societies it is way down on their list of priorities.

"But that is to say no more than that resources are scarce. It's still not a reason either to view, or to decide, the problem at the collective level."

If it's not decided at the collective level then it must be decided at the individual level. In order to facilitate such a system wouldn't we need to do away with prior collective decisions that tip the balance of value toward one group of individuals over another?

Hunter-gatherers, as far as I've read, had horizons at least as long as a year, to accommodate seasonal patterns of food and the movements of migratory animals at least.

"If it's not decided at the collective level then it must be decided at the individual level. In order to facilitate such a system wouldn't we need to do away with prior collective decisions that tip the balance of value toward one group of individuals over another?"

Well these are weighty matters because we're talking about entire nation-states and so on. But yes, certainly there are entire collective power blocs built on prior unjust decisions that we should do away with. However the problem is not whether a decision is collective; it's whether it's unjust, whether it's morally wrong. There are all sorts of criteria we could use to decide whether a use of resources is morally wrong, but the minimum is that it should not be based on violence or threats of violence by one human or group of humans against another. The primary distinction is between resource-use decisions, whether collective or not, that are based on coercion, versus those based on consent. As the nation-state itself involves a claim of a legal monopoly of the use of violence and threats, we have good moral grounds for calling for the abolition of large slabs of it. The result would be better for the natural environment as well as people.

"Hunter-gatherers, as far as I've read, had horizons at least as long as a year, to accommodate seasonal patterns of food and the movements of migratory animals at least."

Yes fair enough but nothing compared to 25-year mortgages common in our society.