There might be ways to harvest resources responsibly, but a cleaner option is a shift in cultural attitudes to reduce consumption among industrialised nations. Public outcry could leverage pressure on politicians to enlarge ranges for flora and fauna.
Profit
Considering the waste that has resulted over the past hundreds of years by industrial societies, modern humans should no longer be able to control the climate-enhancing resources of the great forests, whether tropical or northern.
There might be room for negotiation, but forest sovereignty should be a given. Gaia’s creatures voluntarily perform their labors for everyone’s benefit. In this transaction there’s no free-market economics since humans prosper and forests suffer loss of prosperity.
Humans violate the property rights of Gaia for personal gain. Free markets result in environmental degradation and loss of freedom for nature’s organisms.
In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith talks about the “invisible hand” guiding the capitalist into unforeseen intentions that presumably promote the interests of others.
That’s not the case for the state of Gaia where improvement for plants and animals is lacking; rather, humans profit financially and gain materially.
Inclusivity
Capitalist interests do not cultivate an increase in the commonweal of Gaia. The flow of common goods is evident in nature until disrupted by quite visible human hands.
Robbed of an ability to adapt, populations could face the threat Rachel Carson predicted in her 1962 book, Silent Spring: biotic murder.
Norms can be modified culturally, as has occurred in movements for civil rights and feminism. In this light, we need to rethink moral progress regarding forest wildlife.
Reality must be based on moral reason informed by data, not on vague personal beliefs, political ideology, or consumer marketing.
The moral mind is flexible and can, rather than spin into disregard of others, verge into inclusivity between humans and nonhuman life forms.
Dilemma
In spite of sympathetic feelings many people have toward animals, there’s still a psychological blackout that permits us to hurt, farm, and eat them.
This predatory attitude is moral regress, a distancing from any symbiotic relationship ancient humans and contemporary Indigenous people have with nature.
Throughout the human career, dominance prevails. We need to break any political authoritarian attitude over nature and replace it with an ecological ethic.
People, plants, and animals can be in conflict over land and resources. Culture by its nature is malleable and enables ethical progress, not regress.
A tragic dilemma often repeated is how animal populations and their capability needs conflict with humans in shared spaces, whether elephants and villagers in Africa or wolves and cattle ranchers in the Western US.
Sprawl
The solution is to step back. Grow ecological cities and not urban sprawl. In that way, vast tracts of land could become wild again.
Versions of forests near cities could provide clean air, prevent soil erosion, help capture carbon, and store water.
In a multispecies world the pressing need is to expand forests and protected animal preserves. The real issue is how we recognize that nature is self-sustaining and vital to a clean ecosphere.
We could do better tolerating nonhuman co-inhabitants of earth by leaving them to manage forests as ecosystem engineers.
We kill other living beings often, whether through hunting, mining, logging, cattle farming, suburban sprawl, marshland drainage, etc.
Struggle
Yet our globe’s flora, fauna, and fungi help cleanse air and purify water as well as capture harmful carbon dioxide as stewards of the terrain and waters.
Other than predatory feeding behaviors and natural boundaries, there are few limitations on forest animal freedoms.
This situation changes dramatically when habitats are reduced by deforestation or bio-networks are polluted by human actions.
In Gaia, generally, animals are free from enforced boundaries. With human incursion, land and airborne creatures are less free to roam, forage, and socialize with the result that many of their evolved behaviors for eco-engineering are restricted.
Certainly, as Charles Darwin says, there’s a struggle for existence in nature, but that’s essential to Gaia’s ecological system.
Territory
Mostly, forest animals have evolved adaptations to ensure their security, like tree dwelling primates who avoid big cats or organisms who change color, emit poison, or hide.
Great forests with wetlands and grasslands are climate equalizers and should be restored and permanently protected since the flora and fauna there have established life-enhancing structures.
That shift to letting great forests run their natural course is ethical. Anxious about rights and freedoms, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison relied on the writings of John Locke in drafting the US Constitution.
In A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), Locke makes a call for acceptance, not persecution. There should be punishment for those who violate another’s property rights.
Following this letter, it’s not just territory taken from animals but their ways of life. Their consciousness is jarred, their bodies injured, and their homes delimited.
Askew
Animals engage in self-care and the visceral understanding that a healthy forest is good for all, from microbes to massive trees.
In one’s own house, Locke might say, there are some liberties above the law if the actions are not harmful to the commonweal.
Since performances of nature do not damage society, harmless activity that John Stuart Mill would call self-regarding, then flora and fauna are innocent and should be above destruction.
It’s apparent that with our beliefs and values we’re the ones who ruin nature. Humans could exhibit greater tolerance for the state of nature pursuant to Locke’s insistence that all people, and by extension plants and animals, should have the same rights.
Once humans meddle with the synergies of biological networks, sustainable systems are thrown askew. Our role could include expanded protections of forests, whether boreal, temperate, or tropical since the self-regulating system of Gaia benefits all organisms.
Advocate
Where’s the security for forest flora, fauna, and fungi that battle climate change through their adapted behaviors? Governments are not protecting public health or forests by permitting devastation of vast areas for commercial gain.
Informed voters can make a difference. Ultimately, the freedoms of many people, whether in developing or industrialized nations, will suffer because of arrogance or ignorance about climate change.
Forest microbes, insects, and animals must be free from constraint so that they can perform their important work of maintaining the viability and longevity of soils, plants, and trees.
Whether citizen, philosopher, environmental scientist, animal rights advocate, or Indigenous person, let’s spread this message.
This Author
Gregory F Tague is professor emeritus of English and Interdisciplinary Studies and founder and senior developer of The Evolutionary Studies Collaborative at St. Francis College, N.Y. He is the author of Forest Sovereignty: Wildlife Sustainability and Ethics.