(Un)fortunately, we already are God. We already mess with Mother Nature. Our continued existence has impacts so complex that those impacts cannot be modulated solely in degree, because changing degree causes a cascade of effects that makes it a change in type.
It is unpredictable, not because it is natural, not because it is sacred or some other special case, but because of the number of parts. And in spite of that lack of clarity, we are inescapably responsible for making choices that will steer the ecosystem. As Sartre wrote,
> In one sense choice is possible, but what is not possible is not to choose. I can always choose, but I must know that if I do not choose, that is still a choice.
There is no surety that non-intervention will lead to outcomes that are better by any measure, whether that measure is long-term stability, convenience for humans, or nearly any other you might choose. Left alone, nature can only select the traits that made the last generation breed the most. None of that is proof against the future. For every species alive today, many others are dead, exactly because nature was not messed with. Nature does not share humanity's moral attachment to conservationism.
(Un)fortunately, we already are God. We already mess with Mother Nature. Our continued existence has impacts so complex that those impacts cannot be modulated solely in degree, because changing degree causes a cascade of effects that makes it a change in type.
It is unpredictable, not because it is natural, not because it is sacred or some other special case, but because of the number of parts. And in spite of that lack of clarity, we are inescapably responsible for making choices that will steer the ecosystem. As Sartre wrote,
> In one sense choice is possible, but what is not possible is not to choose. I can always choose, but I must know that if I do not choose, that is still a choice.
There is no surety that non-intervention will lead to outcomes that are better by any measure, whether that measure is long-term stability, convenience for humans, or nearly any other you might choose. Left alone, nature can only select the traits that made the last generation breed the most. None of that is proof against the future. For every species alive today, many others are dead, exactly because nature was not messed with. Nature does not share humanity's moral attachment to conservationism.