You wrote, “Many EA‘s, myself included, don’t view nature as having intrinsic moral value.“
I am new to EA and not a native speaker, so do I understand you correctly? You say that viewed from your and many EA’s moral framework, nature has no value?
As such? Let me answer this with a quote from Calvin and Hobbes: “We seem to understand the value of oil, timber, minerals and housing, but not the value of unspoiled beauty, wildlife, solitude and spiritual renewal.“[1] So how about the value of breathtaking beauty? How about awe and wonder, even in tiny things? How about adventure? How about freedom? How about oneness and spiritual encounters? How about bouts of immeasurable happiness? How about harmony and balance? How about recreation? How about comfort in grief? How about mental and physical health? How about fierce love of nature? How about companionship with animals in nature? Are these not values, very dear to many humans? And if these emotional values are too fuzzy, how about the life-support system of this big spaceship we are all travelling on? Is there value in its circuits and cycles and feedback loops?
The climate system of nature is nothing more than a very complex climate system of a spaceship and we have revved up the infrared recapture by 50% so far, silly us.[2], [3]
How about the oxygen that keeps you and me and us all alive 12 times a minute? It was created by lifeforms. You and I need 21%.[4] Let it fall to 10% and we will all be in deep trouble. But do you or any Star Treck Scotties out there know how it is kept at this precise level? Probably something complex again that nobody knows much about.
How about the finite arable land on this earthship? Almost every available square meter is already being used for human purposes (and even many which are far from optimal or can only be used very few times). Did you know that 95% of this spaceship’s global biomass of mammals and birds is nowadays humans and their livestock? And that all the rest of the still so-called biodiversity of wild mammals and wild birds share the remaining 5% of biomass? [5],[6] The world is no longer like it was, but ever better documentaries make us think that there are still vast (unused) spaces of nature out there. There are not. We have grown. And vast unused spaces are called deserts, icecaps or the high mountains. This is a fight about the scraps that are left.
And how about the interconnectedness of systems? Olive oil has become much more expensive lately, for example [7]. We are losing large numbers of olive trees to the increasing heat. How long do they take to regrow before you can harvest your first olives? Will the little trees stand a chance in the new blazing heatwaves? Probably not. So, what is gone, is gone. How about coffee? How about cocoa and chocolate? How about bananas? Everything is connected to everything else. That is my take on our situation on this spaceship. And I value my chocolate very much!
To improve the situation we need complex solutions, which are usually very expensive and therefore usually not implemented.
So question one, that is usually skipped, is: What do the people at every locality want and need? What are their priorities and values? How can they reach a balanced and sustainable exchange with their surroundings and support systems?
So task one (quite expensive) would be: citizens’ assemblies led by moderators and informed by experts of the people’s choice. (See a best practice example at the Irish Citizens’ Assembly [8].)
Next: What are the impaired systems at that locality and how to restore them? Again very expensive to find out (research) and usually even more expensive to rectify.
Another example: Circular economy: very expensive to implement but extremely helpful as it is an emerging concept that might be copied everywhere else if it works.
Another example: We are able to run very very complex climate models. How about building an equally complex or even far more complex global economy model that allows us to “relive” the past and test different economic models for the future? This would probably sort the bullshit from viable pathways very fast. With the help of AI we could probably remodel every birth and death on the planet over the past 100 years and every economic choice these “agents” made, not in person, but in principle.
Now that we have taken over the helm of this spaceship, we find that we understand very little of all that is going on behind the panels on the bridge and in the engine room and we find ourselves in an unfortunately complex environment. We should spend great amounts of money very fast to learn to deal with the situation. And we will probably need AI to help us understand the mind-boggling complexity. How can someone or many EAs want to do good in a complex world with no regard for nature? The physical, chemical, biological and emotional basis of our existence? I find this hard to understand.
[1] Bill Watterson: Calvin and Hobbes November 27, 1995.
[2] US Global Monitoring Laboratory NOAA GML data:
[4] Edward Naranjo in Industrial Hygiene: Oxygen Deficiency: The Silent Killer;Injury or death due to oxygen deficiency is a common hazard in the petrochemical, refining and other industries, and confined spaces, if not properly monitored, can create hazards for workers and rescuers.Dec. 1, 2007
If you compare humans (0.06 Gigatonnes C) and their livestock (0,1 Gt C) to all other wild mammals (0.007 Gt C) and all wild birds (0.002 Gt C) you get a percentage of 35.50% humans and 59.17% livestock in comparison to 4.14% all wild mammals together and 1.18% of all wild birds.
[6] A graph published in Yuval Noah Harari’s book Homo Deus (Penguin Random House UK 2015, page 72) states that today’s biomass of large animals worldwide can be divided as follows:
On the one hand, there are 300 million tons of humans and 700 million tons of farm animals (equals 91%)
On the other hand, only 100 million tons of wild large animals are left, all species combined.(equals 9%)
[7] BBC: Why olive oil prices are soaring and what to do about it.
Hi Gemma,
You wrote, “Many EA‘s, myself included, don’t view nature as having intrinsic moral value.“
I am new to EA and not a native speaker, so do I understand you correctly? You say that viewed from your and many EA’s moral framework, nature has no value?
As such?
Let me answer this with a quote from Calvin and Hobbes: “We seem to understand the value of oil, timber, minerals and housing, but not the value of unspoiled beauty, wildlife, solitude and spiritual renewal.“[1]
So how about the value of breathtaking beauty?
How about awe and wonder, even in tiny things?
How about adventure?
How about freedom?
How about oneness and spiritual encounters?
How about bouts of immeasurable happiness?
How about harmony and balance?
How about recreation?
How about comfort in grief?
How about mental and physical health?
How about fierce love of nature?
How about companionship with animals in nature?
Are these not values, very dear to many humans?
And if these emotional values are too fuzzy, how about the life-support system of this big spaceship we are all travelling on? Is there value in its circuits and cycles and feedback loops?
The climate system of nature is nothing more than a very complex climate system of a spaceship and we have revved up the infrared recapture by 50% so far, silly us.[2], [3]
How about the oxygen that keeps you and me and us all alive 12 times a minute? It was created by lifeforms. You and I need 21%.[4] Let it fall to 10% and we will all be in deep trouble. But do you or any Star Treck Scotties out there know how it is kept at this precise level? Probably something complex again that nobody knows much about.
How about the finite arable land on this earthship? Almost every available square meter is already being used for human purposes (and even many which are far from optimal or can only be used very few times). Did you know that 95% of this spaceship’s global biomass of mammals and birds is nowadays humans and their livestock? And that all the rest of the still so-called biodiversity of wild mammals and wild birds share the remaining 5% of biomass? [5],[6] The world is no longer like it was, but ever better documentaries make us think that there are still vast (unused) spaces of nature out there. There are not. We have grown. And vast unused spaces are called deserts, icecaps or the high mountains. This is a fight about the scraps that are left.
And how about the interconnectedness of systems? Olive oil has become much more expensive lately, for example [7]. We are losing large numbers of olive trees to the increasing heat. How long do they take to regrow before you can harvest your first olives? Will the little trees stand a chance in the new blazing heatwaves? Probably not. So, what is gone, is gone. How about coffee? How about cocoa and chocolate? How about bananas?
Everything is connected to everything else.
That is my take on our situation on this spaceship. And I value my chocolate very much!
To improve the situation we need complex solutions, which are usually very expensive and therefore usually not implemented.
Now that we have taken over the helm of this spaceship, we find that we understand very little of all that is going on behind the panels on the bridge and in the engine room and we find ourselves in an unfortunately complex environment. We should spend great amounts of money very fast to learn to deal with the situation. And we will probably need AI to help us understand the mind-boggling complexity.
How can someone or many EAs want to do good in a complex world with no regard for nature? The physical, chemical, biological and emotional basis of our existence?
I find this hard to understand.
[1] Bill Watterson: Calvin and Hobbes November 27, 1995.
[2] US Global Monitoring Laboratory NOAA GML data:
https://gml.noaa.gov/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2/co2_annmean_gl.txt
[3] Umweltbundesamt: Atmosphärische Treibhausgas-Konzentrationen. 280 µmol/mol (ppm) in pre-industrial time (= 100%) in comparison to 419.55 µmol/mol (ppm) in 2023 (=149,84%). https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/daten/klima/atmosphaerische-treibhausgas-konzentrationen#kohlendioxid-
[4] Edward Naranjo in Industrial Hygiene: Oxygen Deficiency: The Silent Killer; Injury or death due to oxygen deficiency is a common hazard in the petrochemical, refining and other industries, and confined spaces, if not properly monitored, can create hazards for workers and rescuers. Dec. 1, 2007
https://www.ehstoday.com/industrial-hygiene/article/21907248/oxygen-deficiency-the-silent-killer
[5] Yinon M. Bar-On, Rob Phillips, Ron Milo: The biomass distribution on Earth. PNAS May 21, 2018, Vol 115 (25) 6506-6511
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1711842115
If you compare humans (0.06 Gigatonnes C) and their livestock (0,1 Gt C) to all other wild mammals (0.007 Gt C) and all wild birds (0.002 Gt C) you get a percentage of 35.50% humans and 59.17% livestock in comparison to 4.14% all wild mammals together and 1.18% of all wild birds.
[6] A graph published in Yuval Noah Harari’s book Homo Deus (Penguin Random House UK 2015, page 72) states that today’s biomass of large animals worldwide can be divided as follows:
[7] BBC: Why olive oil prices are soaring and what to do about it.
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20231218-why-olive-oil-prices-are-soaring-and-what-to-do-about-it
[8] The Irish Citizens’ Assembly: https://citizensassembly.ie/about/