"It seems fairly clear at this point that as a race we're facing some fairly substantial problems that need to be addressed if we want to avoid major catastrophe"
I understand why this line of thinking is attractive but isn't it based on a fiction? That being; if it weren't for interference from intelligent life, humans, the earth would go on being in perfect environmental equilibrium for all time. In reality the earth's environment has always been changing. Those changes have been taking place since the beginning and many of them were the result of the effects of various living organisms humans included.
So isn't the desire of humans to preserve 'our' environment, in it's present state, in some sense a selfish desire to curtail the inevitable march of environmental change which might threaten the species but would almost certainly happen with or without us?
Well, sure, but that's so reductive as to be meaningless. There's a strong element of self-interest in preserving an environment that we're well adapted to, and as some of the changes threatening that environment are anthropogenic, changing our behavior is a perfectly rational thing to do.
I understand why this line of thinking is attractive but isn't it based on a fiction? That being; if it weren't for interference from intelligent life, humans, the earth would go on being in perfect environmental equilibrium for all time. In reality the earth's environment has always been changing. Those changes have been taking place since the beginning and many of them were the result of the effects of various living organisms humans included.
So isn't the desire of humans to preserve 'our' environment, in it's present state, in some sense a selfish desire to curtail the inevitable march of environmental change which might threaten the species but would almost certainly happen with or without us?