Biodiversity

Biodiversity Name Course number Instructor’s name Date Why does Rolston think that species have intrinsic moral status?  Rolston thinks that species have an intrinsic moral status by virtue of entitlement to protection for sustainable development. In as much as the moral obligation to meet needs of human species exists there is a greater need to conserve nature. The moral or ethical debate about species emanate from the fact that ensuring that human beings are healthy and productive may sometimes be achieved at the expense of destroyed nature. Upon analysis of the people versus nature issue, it sometimes emerges that human beings may actually be losing by destroying nature. This is because nature supports human life including the poor and the hungry and the ultimate goal thus should be to conserve nature. The aim to eradicate hunger and poverty ought not to be used as the justification to destroy the environment. In as much as human life is important, sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice humans for the sake of the environment. This is because it is utterly impossible to eradicate poverty and, in fact, there are many other policies in everyday life that fail to protect the human life and assist the poor. Some of such policies include higher speed limits on highways that result in accidents, uninsured citizens who die as a result of inability to access health care from preventable diseases and preventable murder as a result of inadequate police to prevent crime. Rolston indicates that wealthier countries put military spending before feeding their citizens. Their domestic welfare policies dictate against letting people die from hunger. They can also afford to conserve nature, and they neglect the need to assist poorer countries to feed their hungry. This decision not to assist them causes people to die and yet do not attract public condemnation. It may not be necessary to destroy nature to feed the hungry. Rather distributing the wealth of a nation equitable may address the nature versus people issue. Instituting minimum wage laws, labor laws in developed countries and taxing people to feed the hungry may address the moral status issue of species. This is based on the premise that it is better to solve the problem of hungry people through equitable distribution of wealth than increasing pressure on nature. The flipside would be characterized by venturing more into the ecosystem and further stress natural resources creating a lose-lose situation. Institutions enact environmental policies that protect the intrinsic cultural, ecological, scientific, economic, historical and aesthetic values of flora and fauna. They place restrictions on how to interact with nature and uphold conservation. The restrictions do not overtly dictate that people starve in order to save nature though they require that they refrain from sacrificing nature set aside in reserves. Rolston thinks that both plant and animal species are equally important as the human race is. However, upholding human rights over the former leads to killing the species and extinction follows. Extinction destroys the species’ historical lineage forever. To preserve these species, he states that then one ought to not always feed people first rather one ought to sometimes save nature. How might Sober object to this argument?  Sober argues that environmentalists are concerned with aesthetic considerations and not people’s stability and diversity. He labels this unethical particularly when it is people’s life situations that matter. He would argue against sacrificing human needs for the sake of the environment by stating that sometimes the perceived value of nature may be unsubstantiated to the humans. Humans are forced to preserve nature even when they do not understand its value to their needs such as for recreational, nutritional, medicinal purposes. Environmentalists are concerned about preservation of species and ecosystems even when their value for human use may be unknown. They value preservation of species and ecosystems rather than the individual organisms contained therein. They only care about preservation of species such as mountains and remain unconcerned about the pain of individual organisms. This way it remains pointless to expect a nation of poor and hungry people to be concerned wit...