What will it take to preserve Nature? Michael McCarthy and Verlyn Klinkenborg on how to rein in humanity’s destruction of species.

What will it take to preserve Nature? Michael McCarthy and Verlyn Klinkenborg on how to rein in humanity’s destruction of species.
Verlyn Klinkenborg has written an excellent book review of Michael McCarthy’s “The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy. The book documents huge declines in butterflies and other species mostly due to humans but sometimes to other unknown causes such as the decline of “house sparrows” in London.  According to Klinkenborg, McCarthy critiques the major alternatives to preserving species and biodiversity: sustainable development and the ecosystem services models. McCarthy’ critique of the former is that it pretends that we “can go about our usual business while changing its emphasis to include the protection of ecosystems.” His view of the ecosystem services model is that “Worth is attributed only to services whose usefulness to us can be directly measured.” McCarthy’s solution, according to Klinkenborg is a “state of awareness…grasp the incomprehensible wonder of the world we live in.”  Klinkenborg finds his solution inadequate because McCarthy too values nature for “what it offers us” while a more advanced ethical system is to recognize nature’s (fora and fauna) right to exist “regardless of whether humans value them that is “in no way subordinate to our own.” From my perspective, I believe that Klinkenborg is certainly ethically correct but the problem is that humanity has the capability and, in fact, continues to alter the world to its needs and desires and will continue to do so unless there spreads across the world some human consciousness that we should give such rights to nature.  How can such a consciousness happen?  Certainly, there are environmental movements across the world that have had some significant impact but they remain modest compared to the inexorable forces remaking the world according to the desires of most humans.  The article is available as follows—note it has some excellent photos of butterflies, moths, and other wildlife: Verlyn Klinkenborg. What’s Happening to the Bees and Butterflies? New York Review of Books, December 22, 2016. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/12/22/whats-happening-to-the-bees-and-butterflies/
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