Human Beings Are More Important Than Animals or the Earth

The impossibly wealthy and privileged wannabe super-villains at the World Economic Forum (WEF) are most famous for the idea of a “Great Reset,” the “You’ll own nothing and be happy” schtick that they unleashed on the world a few years ago, and their creepy leader, Klaus Schwab. However, they have now also taken a detour into environmental and animal rights extremism.

Here’s Jojo Mehta, the Founder of “Ecocide Now” at the WEF, basically trying to make the case that humans, fish, animals, and trees should all be considered essentially the same for moral and legal purposes:

"We have this cultural, very ingrained habit of not taking damage to nature as seriously as we take damage to people or property."

Her goal is to have "mass damage and destruction of nature" legally recognized as "a serious crime."

"With human rights, mass murder and genocide are serious crimes, but there is no equivalent in the environmental space."

"Unlike an international crime like genocide that involves a specific intent, with ecocide, what we see is that people are trying to do is make money, is farm, is fish... and what's missing is an awareness of the side effects and collateral damage that happens..."

There are a number of points here worth addressing.

Foremost, Jojo Mehta is not alone in her wacky beliefs. In fact, Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer has been doted over by liberal “intellectuals” for decades because of his similar ideas. If you want to sum up Singer’s beliefs in a nutshell, this sentence should do it:

“There’s no reason to say humans have more worth or moral status than animals.” – Peter Singer

Of course, this take is lunacy. Even if you love animals and respect nature, you should be able to acknowledge that plants and animals are not the equivalent of humans.

Certainly, animals understand this on a very fundamental level.

Do you think lions stay awake at night feeling bad about eating zebras or wondering if the hyenas have enough to eat? Of course, not. Lions put lions first, just as zebras put zebras first and humans put humans first.

Even the one potential exception to that rule, dogs, which have adopted humans, still treat dogs and humans very differently from other species. My sweet, friendly little dog Boudica LOVES to chase cats, squirrels, and birds. Why? Best guess? Because they’re not dogs or humans, she feels no obligation to them, but she does enjoy their terror when she chases them.

All of this is very natural. If a species doesn’t look out for its own interests above other species, it can’t survive. A rabbit has to care more about rabbits than wolves or there won’t be any more rabbits. If human beings had never eaten meat, chances are we wouldn’t have survived as a species for thousands of years before we started to understand farming.

That doesn’t mean we have to be cruel about it.

Personally, I love my dog. If I find a spider in my house, I will take it outside rather than kill it. I’ve even felt a small twinge of remorse over throwing away a houseplant that’s doing poorly, which may seem ludicrous to some people, but some small part of me hates to take any living organism that God created and abandon it to die.

Additionally, as someone who watched my grandfather kill and butcher a hog in front of me when I was young, I COULD do the same thing if I needed to, but I’m glad I don’t have to do it. I’m grateful that there are hunters and farmers out there doing it, so I don’t have to kill my own meat.

All that being said, humans are not the equivalent of animals. That’s a normal, natural, healthy position for a human being to take, just as I would expect a boar, monkey, or polar bear to care more about his own kin and kind than me.  

Human farmers are more important than owls or snail darters. If coyotes become a threat to your family or your livestock, I see no moral problems with just shooting them. Yes, as I said, I will take a spider outside, but I also have no qualms about poisoning ants or cockroaches because I don’t want them in my house.

So, that’s a critical starting position. We don’t take damage to animals or the environment as seriously as we take damage to humans because it’s not as serious. The welfare of human beings should be more important to human beings than the welfare of animals or the planet.

Additionally, you also have to understand that environmental and animal rights extremists often have an agenda that goes far beyond protecting the environment or animals – and we’re not just talking about virtue signaling or having a profit motive like Al Gore or Bill Gates either. Many of these people are misanthropes who don’t like human beings in general and Western civilization in particular. They tend to have an unrealistic view of the world that goes something like this:

“The more primitive and less developed a society is, the better. In fact, the fewer people there are, the better.”

You don’t think that’s fair? Well, if you go to the website of “Ecocide Now” and start looking at all the things they want to criminalize, you will see how well that sentence above matches with what they want to do.

Among other things, they think factory fishing, cattle ranching, deep sea mining, growing soy for animal feed, copper, iron, and gold mining, oil drilling, fracking, agriculture, and the cement industry should be illegal.

Do you know what humanity looks like without those things? First off, several billion human beings wouldn’t be able to survive. The ones that did would be living like the Flintstones, in log cabins, or maybe even in small bands shooting bows and arrows at each other. When people take direct aim at many of the things that make widespread civilization sustainable, it’s not an accident, it’s the real purpose of what they’re doing.

Of course, another factor in this sort of craziness is that the animal rights advocates and environmentalists have, in a very real sense, already won the war. The average person cares much more about animals and the environment than they did many decades ago.

My father grew up in an era where people in the country would commonly take unwanted puppies, put them in a bag with a rock, and toss them in a pond to get rid of them. Pollution was often just dumped into rivers and decades ago people worked with dangerous chemicals with minimal protection, and no one seemed to care. 

Today?

Sure, there is still more to do, but almost everybody cares about clean air and clean water. We have raucous debates about vaccines and what foods are safest for people to eat. Organic food and grass-fed beef have become increasingly popular. We’ve gone from a society that had feral dogs running around everywhere to one where many people call their canines “fur babies.”  We have countless laws, regulations, and an incredibly pushy and overzealous Environment Protection Agency that applies burdensome regulations and makes many new projects tortuously difficult.

So, how do environmentalists and animal rights advocates distinguish themselves in a country where caring about the environment and animals are such mainstream positions that they’re actually a little boring?

By taking extremist positions.

They supposedly REALLY CARE about the animals because they don’t think people should be allowed to own pets or REALLY CARE about the environment because they want to shut down the world economy by ending drilling for oil.

Do you want to see people who care about animals or the environment in America? They’re all around you. They’re farming. They’re hunting. They’re going to national parks. On the other hand, if you want cranks with hidden agendas who’re willing to go to irrational extremes, look to the animal rights nutjobs, the environmental wackos, and the “ecocide” touting loons at the WEF.

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