How do you talk to friends who think that humans should come first?

I've got a couple close friends (both good liberals) who think that time and energy should be spent making the planet better for humans instead of for conservation. For example, one of them is an industrial ecology student who dumps scorn on her classmates who just want to go to school and study whales, because she thinks people should come first. My other friend isn't much of an environmentalist but he thinks money would be better spent on, say, feeding the poor than conserving condors.

I vehemently disagree with both of them, but I'm not sure how to articulate my disagreement without outing myself as a misanthrope.

Anyone else have this problem when discussing environmentalism with fellow liberals? :shrug:

Suggest that they go see the LION KING, because apparently they aren't too swift!! Suggest they pay close attention to that "Circle of Life" bit!!!

...but that as the most self aware species, we should embrace a ZPG position as a minimum. Starving humans sucks to me even more than losing condors though both are tragic.I would bet both your friends find environmental concerns a close second. As a parent and a foster parent I must opt to nurture ALL humans while espousing a negative human population growth as the best thing for both animals and man.Like it or not in the full range of earthly experience, I have to believe that man Is the measure of all things.

As a self-styled Deep Ecologist, I'm always aware of the web of interconnections that is required to sustain life. My position is that humanity is a part of that web, with no greater or lesser role to play than any other participant. Our cleverness has allowed us to take over much of the web for our own purposes, while our lack of wisdom has prevented us from understanding the consequences. I don't think that usurpation was illegitimate, I regard it more as unfortunate but unavoidable given our biological nature.

I don't believe in the perfectibility of man, so I don't take great offense at those who cannot comprehend the world the way I do. They may wake up, they may not. A Muslim would say "Insha'allah".

What I do is try to guide them towards making decisions that are good for the planet regardless of whether humanity is "top dog" or not. Most of the things we do for the other critters in the environment are good for us too. Regarding the extinction of apparently "useless" species, I point them towards the honeybees. We really don't know which of the species we depend on might turn out to be essential to our continued survival, so preserving them by reducing our impact is just good management practice.

Then I might mention the line from Joni Mitchell's song "Big Yellow Taxi": "They took all the trees and put 'em in a tree museum, and charged the people a dollar and a half just to see 'em". And I'd ask them what other species they'd like to see in that situation.

As I've said before, I think humans evolved without a crucial internal self-restraint mechanism, simply because it wasn't needed and would have worked against our survival as a species. If that's the case, then it's not surprising we'd fail to see its absence as a shortcoming. You can't get mad at people for following their biological nature, and that is really where the view of humans as "king of the sandpile" comes from.

but for example, the less environmentally minded of them thinks that houses for people should come before vernal pools, and I'm not sure how to convince him that saving vernal pools is the right thing to do.

It seems like this should be an elementary argument, but I'm not sure how to approach it. :shrug:

He was a large, handsome animal, with long glossy fur and a sleek, powerful body. One day a couple of flees climbed up on the dog. They began to feed off the dog and reproduce their kind, as fleas do. Gradually they increased in numbers. At first everything was fine, the dog remained fat and healthy and the fleas waxed accordingly. But after a time the dog began to weaken. He became allergic to the flea bites, and his skin was covered with sores, and patches of his hair fell out. He had a hard time dragging himself around, and became too weak to hunt. Some of the wiser fleas noticed the dog's condition, and began to worry. Maybe we should moderate our numbers a bit, they suggested. Maybe the dog needs time to recover. But the rest only scoffed. Of course we want the best for the dog, they said, but not at the expense of us fleas. You can't expect us to go hungry or stop reproducing just to help the dog. This dog exists for our well being. There's no need for us to change. The dog will be fine.

Then one day the dog died. The fleas got off, and waited around, hoping another dog would come along, but there had been only one dog, and the fleas were shit out of luck. Eventually they all died, clueless to the end.

The religious among us could modify it a bit: "Eventually the dog's owner noticed what was going on and gave the dog a flea bath..."

:rofl:

the parable would probably feature a wrathful God, trailing clouds of glory and demanding to know how we managed to fuck the place up beyond all recognition. If He made us stewards of the earth and all it contains, we haven't taken very good care of his stuff.