🚀 go-pugleaf

> by alanm@igc.apc.org (Alan McGowen):
>
>: For that matter, all property everywhere is stolen from its previous fauna 
>: and flora and commonly used to drive the majority of its species inventory
>: extinct -- perhaps a worse violation of "natural rights" than even genocide.
>
>Are you really going to say that all human life should cease and return 
>"ownership" of the earth to the flora and fauna?

No, only that "ownership" should be shared more equitably -- humans 
appropriate some 40% of the total photosynthetic energy supply for all life 
on land, for example, which seems just a bit excessive for one species out 
of tens of millions, and which is a large part of the reason for the planet's
current extinction crisis. Humanity could certainly flourish as a species with
a far smaller chunk of the Earth's most fundamental "property". Every other 
species that has ever existed has done so, so it's not very plausible to argue
that it would have to mean that "all human life should cease."

				* * * 

What kind of person is it, anyway, who thinks that he must possess everything
or die? Not the sort of person one wants to live near, if given any choice.
If not given any choice, this is just the sort of person we form civil 
societies to protect ourselves against. It is time to see that this protection
is just as necessary when such criminal tendencies are directed at the 
biosphere as when they are directed against human life and limb. Human life,
like all life on Earth, is a result of the functioning of the planet's
ecosystems, and those functions are carried out by other species. To jeopardize
other species' survival through unbridaled greed is to threaten humanity's
ultimate well-being -- something civil society has as much right to protect 
against as any other threat such as a crime of violence or a hostile foreign
power. 

Property rights have to be compatible with the long-term security of humanity,
and this means that they do not entitle the owner to do anything which 
diminishes the capacity of the Earth to support its full diversity of life;
such actions are in fact crimes against property, even if perpetrated by the
legal owner. We have every right to bring laws about property into much closer
accord with biological reality. 

------------
Alan McGowen