Death of The Natural Kritik

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Were impact turning their extinction impact. Human extinction is
good because it prevents inevitable human domination of the
universe.

Kochi and Ordan 2008, (Tarik is a lecturer in the School of Law, Queen's University, Belfast, Northern
Ireland. Noam is a linguist and translator, conducts research in Translation Studies at Bar Ilan University, Israel. 'An
argument for the global suicide of humanity', Borderlands, December)
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_6981/is_3_7/ai_n31524968/?tag=content;col1

In 2006 on an Internet forum called Yahoo! Answers a question was posted which read: "In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how
can the human race sustain another 100 years?" The question was asked by prominent physicist Stephen Hawking (Hawking, 2007a). While Hawking claimed not
to know 'the solution' he did suggest something of an answer (Hawking, 2007b). For Hawking the only way for the human race to
survive in the future is to develop the technologies that would allow humans to colonise other planets in space beyond our own solar
system. While Hawking's claim walks a path often trodden by science fiction, his suggestion is not untypical of the way humans have historically responded to
social, material and environmental pressures and crises. By coupling an imagination of a new world or a better place with the production and harnessing of new
technologies, humans have for a long time left old habitats and have created a home in others. The history of our species, homo sapiens, is marked by population
movement aided by technological innovation: when life becomes too precarious in one habitat, members of the species take a risk and move to a new one. Along
with his call for us to go forward and colonise other planets, Hawking does list a number of the human actions which have made this seem necessary. [1] What is at
issue, however, is his failure to reflect upon the relationship between environmental destruction, scientific faith in the powers of technology and the attitude of
speciesism. That is, it must be asked whether population movement really is the answer. After all, Hawking's suggestion to colonise other planets does little to
address the central problem of human action which has destroyed, and continues to destroy, our habitat on the earth.
While the notion of cosmic colonisation places faith in the saviour of humanity by technology as a solution, it lacks a crucial moment of reflection upon the manner
in which human action and human technology has been and continues to be profoundly destructive. Indeed, the colonisation of other
planets would in no way solve the problem of environmental destruction; rather, it would merely introduce this problem into a
new habitat. The destruction of one planetary habitat is enough--we should not naively endorse the future
destruction of others. Hawking's approach to environmental catastrophe is an example of a certain modern faith in technological and social progress. One version
of such an approach goes as follows: As our knowledge of the world and ourselves increases humans are able to create forms of technology and social organisation
that act upon the world and change it for our benefit. However, just as there are many theories of 'progress' [2] there are also many modes of reflection upon the
role of human action and its relationship to negative or destructive consequences. The version of progress enunciated in Hawking's story of cosmic colonisation
presents a view whereby the solution to the negative consequences of technological action is to create new forms of technology, new forms of action. New action
and innovation solve the dilemmas and consequences of previous action. Indeed, the very act of moving away, or rather evacuating, an ecologically devastated
Earth is an example at hand. Such an approach involves a moment of reflection--previous errors and consequences are examined and taken into account and
efforts are made to make things better. The idea of a better future informs reflection, technological innovation and action. However, is the form of reflection offered
by Hawking broad or critical enough? Does his mode of reflection pay enough attention to the irredeemable moments of destruction, harm, pain and suffering
inflicted historically by human action upon the non-human world? There are, after all, a variety of negative consequences of human action, moments of
destruction, moments of suffering, which may not be redeemable or ever made better. Conversely there are a number of conceptions of the good in which humans
do not take centre stage at the expense of others. What we try to do in this paper is to draw out some of the consequences of reflecting more broadly upon the
negative costs of human activity in the context of environmental catastrophe. This involves re-thinking a general idea of progress through the historical and
conceptual lenses of speciesism, colonialism, survival and complicity. Our proposed conclusion is that the only appropriate moral response to a
history of human destructive action is to give up our claims to biological supremacy and to sacrifice our form of life so as to give an
eternal gift to others. From the outset it is important to make clear that the argument for the global suicide of humanity is
presented as a thought experiment. The purpose of such a proposal in response to Hawking is to help show how a certain conception of
modernity, of which his approach is representative, is problematic. Taking seriously the idea of global suicide is one way of throwing into
question an ideology or dominant discourse of modernist-humanist action. [3] By imagining an alternative to the existing state of
affairs, absurd as it may seem to some readers by its nihilistic and radical 'solution', we wish to open up a ground
for a critical discussion of modernity and its negative impacts on both human and non-human
animals, as well as on the environment. [4] In this respect, by giving voice to the idea of a human-free world, we attempt to draw attention to some of the
asymmetries of environmental reality and to give cause to question why attempts to build bridges from the human to the non-human have, so far, been
unavailing. Subjects of ethical discourse One dominant presumption that underlies many modern scientific and political attitudes towards technology and creative
human action is that of 'speciesism', which can itself be called a 'human-centric' view or attitude. The term 'speciesism', coined by psychologist Richard D. Ryder
and later elaborated into a comprehensive ethics by Peter Singer (1975), refers to the attitude by which humans value their species above both non-human animals
and plant life. Quite typically humans conceive non-human animals and plant life as something which might simply be
used for their benefit. Indeed, this conception can be traced back to, among others, Augustine (1998, p.33). While many modern, 'enlightened' humans generally
abhor racism, believe in the equality of all humans, condemn slavery and find cannibalism and human sacrifice repugnant, many still think and act in ways that are
profoundly 'speciesist'. Most individuals may not even be conscious that they hold such an attitude, or many would simply assume that their attitude falls within
the 'natural order of things'. Such an attitude thus resides deeply within modern human ethical customs and rationales and plays a profound role in the way in
which humans interact with their environment. The possibility of the destruction of our habitable environment on earth through global warming and Hawking's
suggestion that we respond by colonising other planets forces us to ask a serious question about how we value human life in relation to our environment. The use of
the term 'colonisation' is significant here as it draws to mind the recent history of the colonisation of much of the globe by white, European peoples. Such actions
were often justified by valuing European civilisation higher than civilisations of non-white peoples, especially that of indigenous peoples. For scholars such as
Edward Said (1978), however, the practice of colonialism is intimately bound up with racism. That is, colonisation is often justified, legitimated and driven by a
view in which the right to possess territory and govern human life is grounded upon an assumption of racial superiority. If we were to colonise
other planets, what form of 'racism' would underlie our actions? What higher value would we place upon human life,
upon the human race, at the expense of other forms of life which would justify our taking over a new habitat and altering it to

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suit our prosperity and desired living conditions? Generally, the animal rights movement responds to the ongoing colonisation of animal habitats by humans by
asking whether the modern Western subject should indeed be the central focus of its ethical discourse. In saying 'x harms y', animal rights philosophers wish to
incorporate in 'y' non-human animals. That is, they enlarge the group of subjects to which ethical relations apply. In this sense such thinking does not greatly
depart from any school of modern ethics, but simply extends ethical duties and obligations to non-human animals. In eco-ethics, on the other hand, the role of the
subject and its relation to ethics is treated a little differently. The less radical environmentalists talk about future human generations so, according to this approach,
'y' includes a projection into the future to encompass the welfare of hitherto non-existent beings. Such an approach is prevalent in the Green Party in Germany,
whose slogan is "Now. For tomorrow". For others, such as the 'deep ecology' movement, the subject is expanded so that it may include the environment as a whole.
In this instance, according to Naess, 'life' is not to be understood in "a biologically narrow sense". Rather he argues that the term
'life' should be used in a comprehensive non-technical way such that it refers also to things biologists may classify as non-
living. This would include rivers, landscapes, cultures, and ecosystems, all understood as "the living earth" (Naess, 1989,
p.29). From this perspective the statement 'x harms y' renders 'y' somewhat vague. What occurs is not so much a conflict over the degree of ethical commitment,
between "shallow" and "deep ecology" or between "light" and "dark greens" per se, but rather a broader re-drawing of the content of the subject of Western
philosophical discourse and its re-definition as 'life'. Such a position involves differing metaphysical commitments to the notions of being, intelligence and moral
activity. This blurring and re-defining of the subject of moral discourse can be found in other ecocentric writings (e.g. Lovelock, 1979; Eckersley, 1992) and in other
philosophical approaches. [5] In part our approach bears some similarity with these 'holistic' approaches in that we share dissatisfaction with the modern, Western
view of the 'subject' as purely human-centric. Further, we share some of their criticism of bourgeois green lifestyles. However, our approach is to stay partly within
the position of the modern, Western human-centric view of the subject and to question what happens to it in the field of moral action when environmental
catastrophe demands the radical extension of ethical obligations to non-human beings. That is, if we stick with the modern humanist subject of moral action,
and follow seriously the extension of ethical obligations to non-human beings, then we would suggest that
what we find is that the utopian demand of modern humanism turns over into a utopian anti-
humanism, with suicide as its outcome. One way of attempting to re-think the modern subject is thus to throw the issue of suicide right in at the
beginning and acknowledge its position in modern ethical thought. This would be to recognise that the question of suicide resides at the center of moral thought,
already. What survives when humans no longer exist? There continues to be a debate over the extent to which humans have caused environmental problems such
as global warming (as opposed to natural, cyclical theories of the earth's temperature change) and over whether phenomena such as global warming can be halted
or reversed. Our position is that regardless of where one stands within these debates it is clear that humans have inflicted degrees of harm upon non-human
animals and the natural environment. And from this point we suggest that it is the operation of speciesism as colonialism which must be addressed. One approach
is of course to adopt the approach taken by Singer and many within the animal rights movement and remove our species, homo sapiens, from the centre of all
moral discourse. Such an approach would thereby take into account not only human life, but also the lives of other species, to the extent that the living
environment as a whole can come to be considered the proper subject of morality. We would suggest, however, that this philosophical approach can be taken a
number of steps
further. If the standpoint that we have a moral responsibility towards the environment in which all sentient creatures live is to be taken seriously, then we perhaps
have reason to question whether there remains any strong ethical grounds to justify the further existence of humanity. For example, if one considers the modern
scientific practice of experimenting on animals, both the notions of progress and speciesism are implicitly drawn upon within the moral reasoning of scientists in
their justification of committing violence against nonhuman animals. The typical line of thinking here is that because animals are valued less than humans they can
be sacrificed for the purpose of expanding scientific knowledge focussed upon improving human life. Certainly some within the scientific community, such as
physiologist Colin Blakemore, contest aspects of this claim and argue that experimentation on animals is beneficial to both human and nonhuman animals (e.g.
Grasson, 2000, p.30). Such claims are 'disingenuous', however, in that they hide the relative distinctions of value that underlie a moral justification for sacrifice
within the practice of experimentation (cf. LaFollette & Shanks, 1997, p.255). If there is a benefit to non-human animals this is only incidental, what remains
central is a practice of sacrificing the lives of other species for the benefit of humans. Rather than reject this common reasoning of modern science we argue that it
should be reconsidered upon the basis of species equality. That is, modern science needs to ask the question of: 'Who' is the best candidate for 'sacrifice' for the
good of the environment and all species concerned? The moral response to the violence, suffering and damage humans have
inflicted upon this earth and its inhabitants might then be to argue for the sacrifice of the human species. The moral act would be the global
suicide of humanity.

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The capacity of nature to be different from us precedes all other
sources of value. If humans survive, we will re-engineer everything
atoms, cells, ourselves, and even other planets. All natural Otherness
from the molecular to the extra-terrestrial will be systematically
eliminated. This the biggest impact.

Keekok Lee, Visiting Chair in Philosophy at Lancaster University, 1999 [The Natural and the
Artefactual p. 2-4]

To appreciate this dimension one needs to highlight the distinction between the artefactual and the natural. The former is the material embodiment of human
intentionality--an analysis in terms of Aristotle's causes shows that all four causes, since late modernity, may be assigned to human agency.'- The latter, ex
hypothesi, has nothing to do with human agency in any of its four causes. This shows that the artefactual and the natural belong
to two very different ontological categories--one has come into existence and continues to exist only because of human purpose
and design while the other has come into existence and continues to exist independently of human purpose and design. In the terminology of this book, the
artefactual embodies extrinsic/imposed teleology while the natural (at least in the form of individual living organisms) embodies intrinsic/immanent teleology.
However, the more radical and powerful technologies of the late twentieth and the twenty-first centuries are capable of producing artefacts with an ever increasing
degree of artefacticity. The threat then posed by modem homo faber is the systematic elimination of the natural, both
at the empirical and the ontological levels, thereby generating a narcissistic civilization. In this context, it is, therefore, appropriate to remind ourselves that
beyond Earth, nature, out there,

exists as yet unhumanized. But there is a strong collective urge, not
merely to study and understand that nature, but also ultimately to exploit it, and furthermore, even to transform parts of it into ersatz
Earth, eventually making it fit for human habitation. That nature, as far as we know, has (had) no life on it. These aspirations raise a crucial problem which
environmental philosophy ought to address itself, namely, whether abiotic nature on its own could be said to be morally considerable and the grounds
for its moral considerability If no grounds could be found, then nature beyond Earth is ripe for total human control and
manipulation subject to no moral but only technological and/or economic constraints. The shift to ontology in grounding moral considerability will, it is argued,
free environmental philosophy from being Earthbound in the millennium about to dawn. In slightly greater detail, the aims of this book may be summarized as
follows 1. To show how modem science and its technology, in controlling and manipulating (both biotic and abiotic) nature, transform it to become
the~ artefactual. It also establishes that there are degrees of 'artefacticity depending on the degree of control and precision with which science and technology
manipulate nature. An extant technology such as biotechnology already threatens to imperil the existence of biotic natural kinds.
Furthermore technologies of the rising future, such as molecular nanotechnology, i~ synergistic combination with biotechnology and microcomputer
technology,. could intensify this tendency to eliminate natural kinds, both biotic and abiotic~ as well as
their natural processes of evolution or change. 2. To consider the implications of the above for environmental philosophy, and in so doing, to point out
the inadequacy of the extant accounts about intrinsic value in nature. By and large (with some honorable exceptions), these concentrate on arguing that the biotic
has intrinsic value but assume that the~ undeniable contingent link between the abiotic and the biotic on Earth would~ take care of the abiotic itself. But the
proposed terraformation of Mars (and even of Earth's moon only very recently) shows the urgent need to develop

a much
more comprehensive environmental philosophy which is not merely

Earthbound but can include the abiotic in its own right. 3. The book also raises a central
inadequacy of today's approaches in environmental philosophy and movements. They concentrate predominantly on the undesirable polluting aspects of extant
technologies on human an~ nonhuman life, and advocate the introduction of more ecologically sensitive technology (including this author's own earlier writing).
If this were the most important remit of environmental philosophy, then one would have to admit that nature-replacing technologies (extant and in the rising
future) could be the ultimate 'green' technologies as their proponents are minded to maintain in spite of their more guarded remarks about the environmental
risks that ma' be incurred in running such technologies.' Such technologies would also~ achieve what is seemingly impossible, as they promise to make possible
~ world of superabundance, not only for the few, but for all, without straining and stressing the biosphere as a sink for industrial waste. But this book argue that
environmental philosophy should not merely concern itself with the virtuous goal of avoiding pollution risks to
life, be that human or nonhuman It should also be concerned with the threat that such radically powerful
technologies could render nature, both biotic and abiotic, redundant. A totally artefactual world customized to human tastes could, in principle, be
designed and manufactured. When one can create artefactual kinds (from what Aristotle calls 'first. matter,' or from today's analogue, what we call atoms and
molecules of familiar elements like carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, etc.) which in other relevant respects are indistinguishable from natural kinds (what Aristotle calls
'second matter'), natural kinds are in danger of being superseded. The ontological category of the artefactual would replace that of the natural.
The upholding of the latter as a category worth preserving constitutes, for this book, the most fundamental task in environmental philosophy. Under this
perspective, the worrying thing about modem technology in the long run may not be that it threatens life on Earth as we know it to be because of its polluting
effects, but that it could ultimately humanize all of nature. Nature, as 'the Other,' would be eliminated. 4. In other words, the
ontological category of the natural would have to be delineated and defended against that of the artefactual, and some account of 'intrinsic' value would have to be
mounted which can encompass the former. The book argues for the need to maintain distinctions such as that between human/nonhuman, culture/nature, the
artefactual/the natural. In other words, ontological dyadism is required, though not dualism, to combat the transformation of the natural to become the
artefactual. The book also argues that the primary attribute of naturally-occurring entities is an ontological one, namely, that of
independence as an ontological value. Such an attribute is to be distinguished from secondary
attributes like intricacy, complexity, interests-bearing, sentience, rationality, etc., which are said to provide the grounds for
assigning their bearers intrinsic value. In this sense, ontology precedes axiology.

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Destruction of non-living existence throughout the universe must be
rejected. Extra-terrestrial nature will still have value even if were all
dead because it has its own trajectory of existence.

Keekok Lee, Visiting Chair in Philosophy at Lancaster University, 1999
[The Natural and the Artefactual p. 226-228]

We should not delude ourselves that the humanization of nature will stop at biotic nature or indeed be
confined only to planet Earth. Other planets in our solar system, too, may eventually be humanized;
given the technological possibility of doing so, the temptation to do so appears difficult to resist on the part
of those always on the lookout for new challenges and new excitement. To resist the ontological
elimination of nature as 'the Other,' environmental philosophy must not merely be
earthbound but, also, astronomically bounded (at least to the extent of our own solar system). We should
bear in mind that while there may be little pristine nature left on Earth, this does not mean that nature is not
pristine elsewhere in other planets. We should also be mindful that while other planets may not have
life on them, this does not necessarily render them only of instrumental value to us. Above all, we
should, therefore, bear in mind that nature, whether pristine or less than fully pristine, biotic or
abiotic, is ontologically independent and autonomous of humankind--natural forms and
natural processes are capable of undertaking their own .trajectories of existence. We should
also remind ourselves that we are the controllers of our science and our technology, and not allow the
products of our intellectual labor to dictate to us what we do to nature itself without pause or reflection.
However, it is not the plea of this book that humankind should never transform the natural to become the
artefactual, or to deny that artefacticity is not a matter of differing degrees or levels, as such claims would be
silly and indefensible. Rather its remit is to argue that in systematically transforming the natural to
become the artefactual through our science and our technology, we are at the same time systematically
engaged in ontological simplification. Ontological impoverishment in this context is wrong
primarily because we have so far failed to recognize that nature embodies its own fundamental
ontological value. In other words, it is not true, as modernity alleges, that nature is devoid of all value
and that values are simply humanly conferred or are the projections of human emotions or attitudes upon
nature. Admittedly, it takes our unique type of human consciousness to recognize that nature possesses
ontological value; however, from this it would be fallacious to conclude that human consciousness
is at once the source of all values, or even the sole locus of axiologically-grounded intrinsic values. But
most important of all, human consciousness does not generate the primary ontological value of
independence in nature; nature's forms and processes embodying this value exist whether human-
kind is around or not.
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If they win consequentialism is good, well win an impact turn to the
aff.
Extend Weston:
You must give equal ethical consideration to living and non-living
entities on this planet and throughout the universe. Rocks, rivers, and
even the planet Mars have intrinsic worth independent of our
existence.

Extend Kochi and Odan: Human extinction is good because if we
survive we will inevitably dominate human and extra-terrestrial
ecologies. Living beings and non-living environments: the Earths
atmosphere, bacteria in our body, and even the ecosystems of other
planets

We win on magnitude.

1 Extend Lee. Terraforming outweighs destruction of earth because it
destroys quintillions of beings throughout the universe. Human
consciousness is not the source of value. Even if there is no life on
other planets, terafforming will destroy non-living ecologies that have
intrinsic worth.

2 Extend Rowe: Atmostphers are more valuable than the life inside
themthey are orders of magnitude older and more complex than
biodiversity. This means even if there is no space travel then
geoenigeerning outweighs destruction of all life on earth.

3 Extend Lee 99: Humans will inevitably develop nanotechnology,
biotechnology, geo-enginnering, and terraforming. The destruction of
everything that isnt human everywhere outweighs death of all life on
Earth. Nature lives and dies, evolves, exists, and transforms all of
this independently of us. This freedom from human engineering
precedes all other sources of value including sentience.

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Nature-replacing technologies will inevitably triumph, leading to the
destruction of natures intrinsic value

[E]nvironment- or nature-saving technology counters damage to a natural environmental system by means of prevention at the source or by neutralization of
potentially harmful spillovers. An environment-saving solution allows the natural system to mai.ntain, or return to, its original state or mode of interaction.
Nature-replacing or substitution technology, on the other hand, supplements or replaces a damaged function of the natural
system with a man-made system. Nature-replacement technology competes with nature-saving technology. Both forms of technology
are prompted in response to environment-consuming pressures resulting from the growth momentum at the macro level.

As an illustration of this tendency he cites the possibility of creating an artificial, engineered environment as a solution to the air pollution problem based on the
principle of air conditioning. Air conditioning has originally been designed for climate control within a relatively small confined space. But with no further
technological ingenuity, it can also be used for air purification. From an air-conditioned/-purified house, one steps into an air-conditioned/-purified car to work in
an air-conditioned/-purified office. To overcome the residual limitations of decentralized air-conditioning units, one could take the next logical step of enclosing
whole cities within a centralized system of air quality control. This would, no doubt, have the added advantage of not only being able to deal with local air pollution
problems but also with global ones as well--the destruction of stratospheric ozone might no longer appear quite so alarming for us humans, as the excessive ultra-
violet rays could be filtered out so that human health would not be undermined. And as for the possible harm to phytoplankton and plants, perhaps specially
genetically engineered varieties to withstand the extra dosage of radiation could be devised as substitutes. Indeed, in the long run, even human beings could be
genetically engineered to withstand a far higher dose of radiation, in particular, and various toxins, in genera. This has the advantage of incurring cheaper costs,
while at the same time retaining a greater freedom of movement than the centralized air-conditioning/purification principle. As we have seen in the earlier
chapters, humans, like other forms of living nature, are in danger of being turned into near total biotic artefacts in the presence of biotechnology as well as the
potential combined presence of biotechnology, microcomputer technology and molecular nanotechnology?
Doeleman believes that in terms of political and economic realities, the environment- or nature-saving technology could lose out to the
environment- or nature-replacement technology for the following reasons (this account, however, is more a reconstruction than a direct summary
of his position):
Nature-saving technology would not really be effective unless there was a dramatic and universal shift away from
consumerism and exponential economic growth. But the economies in the world today, both developed and developing, on the whole, show little or no signs of
repudiating the ideology of material progress and affluence.
Nature-saving, compared with nature-replacement technology, may be uneconomic in terms of
implementation and/or opportunity costs. Take air pollution. Its sources are numerous--from the noxious substances pumped out by motor cars, to those emitted
by other industrial processes of production, to a greenhouse gas, like methane, contributed by the seemingly innocuous and necessary activity of growing paddy
rice particularly in the developing economies, as well as the rearing of cattle, a heavily subsidized activity in a developed economy like the European Union. To
prevent air pollution demands a concerted effort on all such fronts, the costing of which becomes

a well-nigh impossibility. By contrast, the costing of implementing the nature-replacement technology for any one location or region of the world would be much
more manageable, and the actual cost would also, probably, be less. Moreover, it could even be argued that the quality of the artificially
maintained air would be higher than that achieved by nature-saving techniques, as the marginal cost of eliminating any residual level of
pollution could be very high indeed. Furthermore, as pollution
occurs in the context of legitimate activities like mining businesses or pursuing leisure, measures to curb or restrain such activities would incur a high opportunity
cost. And even more daunting from the political, economic and moral points of view, is the prospect of curbing such a basic subsistence activity as growing paddy
rice in order to reduce, if not eliminate, the build-up of methane in the atmosphere. One could argue that the above favorable comparison of nature-replacing over
nature-saving technology has missed out a dimension possessed by the latter which, if taken into account, could tilt the balance in its favor, against its rival. Is it
not obvious that nature-saving technology not merely preserves the bounty of nature for us humans but also nature itself? If nature's value for itself can be made to
enter the benefit/cost analysis, then nature-saving technology could score over nature-replacing technology. But even if a convincing philosophical foundation can
be mounted for the notion of intrinsic value in nature, in the domain of economic calculations and its presuppositions, such a value is not readily accommodated.
Shadow pricing is the nearest unsatisfactory device to recognizing-its validity. Economic thought has difficulty in attempting to cope with the value of nature even
in anthropocentric terms, never mind with the value of nature understood non-anthropocentrically--for instance, it fails to do justice to the interests of future
peoples through discounting time.
Nature replacement may also be self-reinforcing. When the damage to the environment is relatively limited and its recovery
perceived to be technically and economically viable, nature-saving measures may have the edge in the absence of its rival. But if resources were pumped into
nature-replacement technology given its attractive potentials in the light of points 1 and 2 above, more damage to the environment would occur which might make
recovery in turn more expensive even if feasible, and substitution more attractive in economic/political terms.

In other words, the ultimate outcome of following this line of technological development would lead eventually to
substituting the technosphere for the biosphere/nature. To the technological optimists and the technological pragmatists
alike, there is nothing inherently alarming about this prospect in store for human civilization or for nature. The former, presumably, would positively welcome it in
the spirit of technological triumphalism; the latter, faute de mieux, would buy it as the price one must pay for material progress. But the technological pessimists
could only continue to criticize provided they articulate new grounds for their protest, going beyond the mere cry that technological fixes are in principle
unsatisfactory. They would have to clarify for themselves what 'unsatisfactory' means. Is it to be understood in the sense of (a) being iatrogenic, that is, running the
risk of causing further damage elsewhere, (b) causing further damage when that damage is assessed from the anthropocentric point of view, namely, as loss of
resources and amenities to humans, or (c) causing damage when that damage is assessed from the nonanthropocentric point of view, as damage to nature itself?.
Nature-replacement technology might not prove to be unsatisfactory in principle in the first two senses. Some technological fixes, it is true, are capable of
producing iatrogenic damage, but surely not all. Each must be assessed on its own merit. Maybe some nature-replacement measures escape such a stricture. Maybe
too, some of them could even be said to be more advantageous from the human point of view--the quality of air in an artificially controlled situation, we have seen,
could turn out to be superior to that achieved by nature-saving techniques in the case of air pollution. However, it is true that no matter how well some nature-
replacement devices could be said to pass the test of being satisfactory in senses a and b, they will have difficulty in passing the test in sense c. Ex hypothesi,
nature-replacement technology ignores the intrinsic value of nature conceptually, and downgrades nature
for its own sake in practice. In practice, at best it would lead to an unsatisfactory compromise of setting aside some areas to be designated as nature reserves while
the rest would be made over to the technosphere. This, as Doeleman points out, is the "zoo principle," an acknowledgment by society that only residual bits of
nature are worth salvaging and/or can be salvaged, to be artificially maintained and protected. If this undesirable scenario is to be avoided, then stronger efforts
must be made, in the first instance, to articulate the philosophical grounds for opposing it--the fundamental task as conceived by this book.

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The death of nature caused by nature-replacing technologies is the
biggest consequentialist impact. At least the Earth can come back
from mass extinctions.


[J]ust as the clouds of carbon dioxide threaten to heat the atmosphere and perhaps starve us--we are figuring out a new method of dominating the earth, a method
more thorough, and therefore more promising, than burning coal and oil and natural gas. It's not certain that genetic engineering and
macromanagement of the world's resources will provide a new cornucopia, but it certainly seems probable. ... why, then, does it sound so awful?
Because, of course, it represents the second end of nature. We have pretty much, by accident, altered the atmosphere so badly that
nature as we know it is over. But this won't be by accident--this will be on purpose. I don't mean that we shall end nature if something goes wrong--if, say, a strain
of bacteria programmed to eat cellulose gets loose and eats every tree and weed in sight .... It is the simple act of creating new forms of life that changes the world,
that puts us forever in the deity business. We will never again be a created being; instead we will be creators.-"

McKibben's lament about the first and second ends of nature obscures numerous points. While McKibben clearly recognizes that any action on the part of humans
has impact upon nature~, he is not so clear about where the line should be drawn between those impacts which could be said to constitute the end of nature and
those which constitute the end of nature.
He characterizes the first end of nature, represented by global warming or stratospheric ozone depletion, in two conflicting ways. On p. 58----cited earlier--he says:
"By changing the weather, we make every spot on earth man-made and artificial." But on p. 166, he writes: "We have pretty much, by accident, altered the
atmosphere so badly that nature as we know it is over." His first characterization is definitely wrong. Precisely, because the alteration has not been designed, it
would be incorrect to imply that it involves the demise of nature% when it involves the demise of nature
o
(as the impact is global and causally pervasive).
Although he is more correct in his second characterization, all the same, he is not clear as to what could be meant by 'accidental.' And when that clarification has
been made, it is not obvious that such a demise is really 'accidental.'
Something, A, is said accidentally to have happened when the following conditions jointly obtain: (i) the agent did not deliberately intend A to happen and (ii)
either A was caused by another event which was not initiated by the agent but by some other agent--the precious vase the agent was carrying was knocked out of
her hands by a charging Alsatian, or A was caused by something which was entirely beyond the agent's control so that s/he could not be said to have acted, rather it
was something which simply happened--all of a sudden, she suffered momentarily from a black-out or an epileptic fit, and as a result the vase fell from her grasp,
shattering to pieces.
But the first end of nature as identified by McKibben cannot be said to be accidental in the senses worked out above. It may be true that the agents involved do not
deliberately intend to produce the greenhouse effect or the ozone hole. The effects satisfy condition (i) above but not (ii) in either form. They are anthropogenically,
though not deliberately, produced. They are the accumulation of the unintended consequences of innumerable but separable individual acts of fossil burning,
growing paddy rearing cattle, etc. No one, in designing or using a car or keeping cows, deliberately and directly intends to cause global warming. Nor is each act of
consuming fossil fuel, using a car or growing a few hectares of paddy on its own, sufficient in causal terms to produce the end of nature. However, that end may be
said to be obliquely or indirectly intended, but it would be misleading to say that the outcome is a purely accidental one, given the knowledge we now have about its
provenance and its cause. This obliquely intended outcome is then no different from that posed by DDT pollution. There, too, no one deliberately intended to cause
failure in the
reproduction of certain birds, to poison the water table, etc. But these effects, nevertheless, also occurred cumulatively.
Given knowledge of such outcomes today, humans may collectively be held responsible for them, even though it is true that the model of individual responsibility is
not applicable in these contexts.
If McKibben's first end of nature as nature~ cannot be identified in terms of what counts as accidental, could he, instead, rely on the criterion of pervasiveness as
clarified earlier on? But pervasiveness may turn out to be only
necessary, not necessary and sufficient, to cause the end of nature. He is correct in saying that anthropogenic changes to the weather and the
atmosphere can bring in their wake profound disturbances to nature. But nature~, in its history, has endured
many profound changes in its weather which has nothing to do with human agency: ice ages have come and gone,
bringing with them severe changes to flora and fauna in geological history. This leads to the view that as far as organisms and their ecosystems
are concerned, the severe changes they have to endure are no different in quality whether the
disruption is anthropogenically caused or not--both forms may be sudden and abrupt like volcanic eruptions, asteroids crashing into
Earth's surface, clear-cutting an ancient forest on the one hand, or gradual and cumulative, like evolutionary changes or the emergence of global warming today on
the other. Eventually, after a period of time--sometimes quite short, but often long or very
long--organisms, some old and others new, would establish new niches and new ecosystems. Anthropogenic
disturbances then amount to the loss of pristine nature. The lament then is not so much about the end of nature tout court but the end of nature.

This is a genuine
lament but it is not quite what McKibben has portrayed.
Nature, in the context of global warming or ozone depletion, though no longer absolutely pristine, survives and, moreover, survives
independently of us humans as long as the processes of natural evolution remain intact in spite of the anthropogenically
induced changes to the weather and the atmosphere. Nature, as we have seen, copes, no differently, when the changes to the weather and the atmosphere are not
anthropogenically induced. The claim that nature can survive independently of us even in such a context may be supported by empirical evidence--for instance, the
eruption of Mount Saint Helens in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, Oregon, in 1980, devastated the ecosystems which lay in its path but since then, slowly but
surely, new ones have begun to establish themselves. Furthermore, life on Earth in its long history well before the appearance of Homo sapiens had
suffered five major extinctions; each time nature,~ had recovered, although recovery times varied from 100 to 20
million years.
"-3
It can also be supported by the following thought experiment--imagine the removal of the human species
immediately after it had induced the meteorological changes. It is likely that nature will continue to evolve in the absence of
human.
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Death of The Natural Impact Extension

You must reject nanotechnologys total destruction of all natural
otherness

Nanotechnology cannot, and does not, dispense with elementary matter as atoms of the various elements which exist in nature, the analogue of what
Aristotle called first or prime matter. Instead, its implied claim amounts to being able only to dispense with second matter,
that is to say, natural kinds, be these biotic like species of plants and animals, or abiotic like diamond or granite. These are forms
of low entropic structures which are scarce because humans may render extinct or use biotic kinds far faster than they can replace themselves. In the case of certain
abiotic kinds, they are simply nonrenewable, at least in the time-span which could be relevant to the sustainability of our industrial civilization. But in a nano-
technological world, such scarcity would not be wowing. Nanotechnology appears to be able to bypass most, if not all, abiotic natural kinds, by rendering them
irrelevant to the process of production. In their place, it will be able to construct new forms of second matter, new synthetic
kinds. By this maneuver, not only is the scarcity of natural kinds rendered irrelevant to the industrial processes of production but the artefactual kinds may be
said to supersede them. Such supersession, in turn, as we shall see, would lead to both the ontological and the physical elimination of
natural kinds.
Natural kinds are entities which come into existence and continue to exist independent of human volition and agency;
artefactual kinds, in contrast, are entities whose existence and maintenance are the intended outcome of human volition and agency. They come into, or go out of,
existence entirely at human bidding. Technological products are artefacts, and artefacts are the material embodiment of human intentional structures.
Nanotechnology, by allowing humans to assemble objects (or to disassemble them), atom by atom, with absolute precision, embodies the perfect technique for the
manipulation of nature. Such manipulation amounts to near perfect, if not perfect, control and, therefore, near perfect or perfect mastery of nature. Whether such
control and mastery are considered as domination is immaterial. If the notion of domination conjures up physical conquest, such as disemboweling the earth as in
current mining, tearing out part of the earth as in quarrying, disfiguring the earth's landscape as in surface waste disposal, cutting down trees and destroying
habitats and whole ecosystems as in massive deforestation, then such images of laying waste the land through the equivalent of scorch-earth policies are clearly
irrelevant in the context of nanotechnology. But if domination is to be understood in terms of a relationship between two parties where one party (the dominator)
totally and successfully imposes its will on the second party (the dominated), then the notion could be said to be appropriate. Humans in possession of
nanotechnology are in a position systematically to replace natural abiotic by artefactual kinds if and when it suits their purposes to do so--humans are in total
charge, the master of their own destinies, whereas natural kinds are, powerless, at their mercies. Such a situation justifies the political image of domination with
which modem science has been associated.
This image is reinforced by another matter, that of the ultimate humanization of nature.

Under extant technologies, the process of humanization is, relatively
speaking, not as profound as it could be when compared with nanotechnology. Up to now, natural kinds may have been transformed by extant technologies, to
some extent, into artefacts but their degree of artefacticity is, relatively speaking, still not very deep, although biotechnology, in respect of biotic nature, is capable
of increasing such depth by crossing the species boundaries. Nanotechnology claims to be able to construct de novo synthetic, abiotic kinds, from the design board,
using the right arrangement of atoms. In conjunction with biotechnology, it could also redesign existing biotic kinds, turning them into near total artefacts.
The serpent which haunts the new Garden of Eden is not so much the serpent of pollution. On the contrary, the more perfect the control and mastery over nature,
the less likely is the technology to produce polluting effects. After all, pollution has been referred to as the "naturally mediated unintended and unforeseen
consequences of specific practices.
of activity upon nature.
TM
On this criterion of perfect mastery, the more perfect the technology, the less polluting it is--perfect precision and control mean that
only whatever is intended comes to be and all that is unintended, as far as possible, is eliminated.
-'~
If the most fundamental environmental value is not to undermine the functioning and integrity of the biosphere via polluting processes and pace of production,
then nanotechnology must be considered to be environmentally benign and, therefore, the ultimate green technology. It is possible, as we have just seen, for such a
technology in combination with another like biotechnology, to ensure that the biosphere carries out its public service functions, namely, to act as a sink to absorb
waste, to continue the great carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen cycles. But if the most fundamental environmental value is not
merely that, but the preservation of natural kinds together with the processes at work in nature which ensure that natural kinds
continue to exist, to change and to evolve, to maintain themselves autonomously, then nanotechnology (in conjunction with biotechnology) seems to pose a severe
threat to the preservation of the natural, as it possesses the potential to humanize the whole of nature. It is to be resisted then on grounds that the natural
(meaning natural kinds and the processes which generate and sustain them) could be made redundant and replaced entirely by the artefactual (synthetic kinds,
whether biotic or abiotic and the processes manufacturing them).
As we have seen, the natural and the artefactual belong to two very different ontological categories. The natural constitutes 'the
Otherness' for what is human. By rendering the natural redundant in principle, nanotechnology is in danger of destroying 'the
Other.' To put it minimally, it is compatible with ontological impoverishment even if it does not entail either a permission or a duty to eliminate the natural,
both empirically and as an ontological category.
Ontological impoverishment is to be deplored not merely because in the end it amounts to human impoverishment. It is that of course, but more importantly, it is
to be deplored as yet another expression of strong anthropocentrism and of a purely instrumental attitude to nature on the part of humans. It amounts to the
denial, in yet another context, of the claim that nature can be a locus, if not also a source, of intrinsic value.

It is morally wrong of us humans to eliminate nature (by rendering it redundant, making it over to our image to serve our purposes), not
simply because it diminishes ourselves as moral beings, but because the diminishment lies precisely in our moral blindness to something other
than ourselves which deserve moral consideration, or could be said to be the bearer of intrinsic value. In other words, although
moral blindness is clearly a human failing, it is not merely to be deplored because it constitutes a human failing, but because ontological elimination, loss or
supersession is constitutive of that failing.
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A2: Extinction Outweighs

Extend Seed and Lee: Nature will still have value without us. They
fetishizes human existence, ignoring that 99% of species have gone
extinction. We must embrace this possibility to recognize that we are
part of a larger cosmos.

Their impact calculus is anthropocentric.
Extend Kochi and Ordan: Even if you personally find human
extinction repulsive, forcing yourself to go through the thought-
experiment of willing the suicide of the human race allows you to
confront the limits of your speciest bias. Overcoming your natural
resistance to embracing your own destruction strikes at the heart of
assumptions about the biological supremacy of human life.

Kochi and Ordan 2008, (Tarik is a lecturer in the School of Law, Queen's University, Belfast, Northern
Ireland. Noam is a linguist and translator, conducts research in Translation Studies at Bar Ilan University, Israel. 'An
argument for the global suicide of humanity', Borderlands, December)
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_6981/is_3_7/ai_n31524968/?tag=content;col1

In this case, the action of cosmic colonisation envisaged by Hawking would not be enough. It would merely perpetuate a cycle
of destructive speciesist violence. Further, general humanist action, guided by some obligation of 'care' for the environment, would also
not be enough as it could not overcome an individual's complicity in systematic and institutional speciesist violence. The question here is open. Could a modern
discourse of reflection, responsibility and action be strong enough to fundamentally reorientate the relationship between humans and other species and the natural
environment? If so, then maybe a truly revolutionary change in how humans, and specifically humans in the West, conceive of and interact with the natural world
might be enough to counter environmental disaster and redeem humanity. Nonetheless, anything short of fundamental change--for instance, the transformation of
modern, industrial society into something completely different--would merely perpetuate in a less exaggerated fashion the long process of human violence against
the non-human world. What helps to render a certain type of action problematic is each individual's 'complicity' in the practice of speciesist violence. That is,
even if one is aware of the ways in which modern life destroys or adversely affects the environment and inflicts suffering upon nonhuman animals, one cannot
completely subtract one's self from a certain responsibility for and complicity in this. Even if you are conscious of the problem you cannot but take part in doing
'evil' by the mere fact of participating within modern life. Take for example the problematic position of environmental activists who courageously sacrifice personal
wealth and leisure time in their fight against environmental destruction. While activists assume a sense of historical responsibly for the violence of the human
species and act so as to stop the continuation of this violence, these actors are still somewhat complicit in a modern system of violence due to fact that they live in
modern, industrial societies. The activist consumes, acquires and spends capital, uses electricity, pays taxes, and accepts the legitimacy of particular governments
within the state even if they campaign against government policies. The bottom line is that all of these actions contribute in some way to the perpetuation of a
larger process that moves humanity in a particular direction even if the individual personally, or collectively with others, tries to act to counter this direction.
Despite people's good intentions, damage is encapsulated in nearly every human action in industrial societies, whether we are aware of it or not. In one sense, the
human individual's modern complicity in environmental violence represents something of a bizarre symmetry to Hannah Arendt's notion of the 'banality of evil'
(Arendt, 1994). For Arendt, the Nazi regime was an emblem of modernity, being a collection of official institutions (scientific, educational, military etc.) in which
citizens and soldiers alike served as clerks in a bureaucratic mechanism run by the state. These individuals committed evil, but they did so in a very banal manner:
fitting into the state mechanism, following orders, filling in paperwork, working in factories, driving trucks and generally respecting the rule of law. In this way
perhaps all individuals within the modern industrial world carry out a banal evil against the environment simply by going to work, sitting in their offices and living
in homes attached to a power grid. Conversely, those individuals who are driven by a moral intention to not do evil and act so as to save the environment, are
drawn back into a banality of the good. By their ability to effect change in only very small aspects of their daily life, or in political-social life more generally, modern
individuals are forced to participate in the active destruction of the environment even if they are the voices of contrary intention. What is 'banal' in this sense is not
the lack of a definite moral intention but, rather, the way in which the individual's or institution's participation in everyday modern life, and the unintentional
contribution to environmental destruction therein, contradicts and counteracts the smaller acts of good intention. The banality of action hits against a central
problem of social-political action within late modernity. In one sense, the ethical demand to respond to historical and present environmental destruction opens
onto a difficulty within the relationship between moral intention and autonomy. While an individual might be autonomous in respect of moral conscience, their
fundamental interconnection with and interdependence upon social, political and economic orders strips them of the power to make and act upon truly
autonomous decisions. From this perspective it is not only the modern humanist figures such as Hawking who perpetuate present violence and present dreams of
colonial speciesist violence in the future. It is also those who might reject this violence but whose lives and actions are caught up in a certain complicity for this
violence. From a variety of political standpoints, it would seem that the issue of modern, autonomous action runs into difficulties of systematic and institutional
complicity. Certainly both individuals and groups are expected to give up a degree of autonomy in a modern liberal-democratic context. In this instance, giving up
autonomy (in the sense of autonomy as sovereignty) is typically done in exchange for the hope or promise of at some point having some degree of control or
influence (i.e. via the electoral system) over government policy. The price of this hope or promise, however, is continued complicity in government-sanctioned
social, political and economic actions that temporarily (or in the worst case, eternally) lie beyond the individual's choice and control. The answer to the questions of
whether such complicity might ever be institutionally overcome, and the problems of human violence against non-human species and ongoing environmental
destruction effectively dealt with, often depends upon whether one believes that the liberal hope or promise is, either valid and worthwhile, or false and a sham.
[8] In another sense the ethical demand to respond to historical and present environmental destruction runs onto and in many ways intensifies the question of
radical or revolutionary change which confronted the socialist tradition within the 19th and 20th centuries. As environmental concerns have increasingly since the
1970s come into greater prominence, the pressing issue for many within the 21st century is that of social-environmental revolution. [9] Social-environmental
revolution involves the creation of new social, political and economic forms of human and environmental organisation which can overcome the deficiencies and
latent oppression of global capitalism and safeguard both human and non-human dignity. Putting aside the old, false assumptions of a teleological account of
history, social-environmental revolution is dependent upon widespread political action which short-circuits and tears apart current legal, political and economic
regimes. This action is itself dependent upon a widespread change in awareness, a revolutionary change in consciousness, across enough of the populace to spark
radical social and political transformation. Thought of in this sense, however, such a response to environmental destruction is caught by many of the old problems
UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K

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which have troubled the tradition of revolutionary socialism. Namely, how might a significant number of human individuals come to obtain
such a radically enlightened perspective or awareness of human social reality (i.e. a dialectical, utopian anti-humanist 'revolutionary consciousnesse') so that they
might bring about with minimal violence the overthrow of the practices and institutions of late capitalism and colonial-
speciesism? Further, how might an individual attain such a radical perspective when their life, behaviours and attitudes (or their subjectivity itself) are so moulded and shaped by the
individual's immersion within and active self-realisation through, the networks, systems and habits constitutive of global capitalism? (Hardt & Negri, 2001). While the demand for social-
environmental revolution grows stronger, both theoretical and practical answers to these pressing questions remain unanswered. Both liberal and social revolutionary models thus seem to run
into the same problems that surround the notion of progress; each play out a modern discourse of sacrifice in which some forms of life and modes of living are set aside in favour of the promise of a
future good. Caught between social hopes and political myths, the challenge of
responding to environmental destruction confronts, starkly, the core of a discourse of modernity characterised by reflection, responsibility and action. Given the increasing pressures upon the
human habitat, this modern discourse will either deliver or it will fail. There is little room for an existence in between: either the Enlightenment fulfils its potentiality or it shows its hand as the
bearer of impossibility. If the possibilities of the Enlightenment are to be fulfilled then this can only happen if the old idea of the
progress of the human species, exemplified by Hawking's cosmic colonisation, is fundamentally rethought and
replaced by a new form of self-comprehension. This self-comprehension would need to negate and limit the old modern humanism by a radical anti-humanism.
The aim, however, would be to not just accept one side or the other, but to re-think the basis of moral action along the lines of a
dialectical, utopian anti-humanism. Importantly, though, getting past inadequate conceptions of action, historical time and the futural promise
of progress may be dependent upon radically re-comprehending the relationship between humanity and nature in such a way that the human is no longer viewed
as the sole core of the subject, or the being of highest value. The human would thus need to no longer be thought of as a
master that stands over the non-human. Rather, the human and the non-human need to be grasped together, with the former
bearing dignity only so long as it understands itself as a part of the latter. The global suicide of humanity How might such a standpoint of dialectical, utopian anti-
humanism reconfigure a notion of action which does not simply repeat in another way the modern humanist infliction of violence, as exemplified by the plan of
Hawking, or fall prey to institutional and systemic complicity in speciesist violence? While this question goes beyond what it is possible to outline in this paper, we
contend that the thought experiment of global suicide helps to locate this question--the question of modern action itself--as
residing at the heart of the modern environmental problem. In a sense perhaps the only way to understand what is at stake in
ethical action which responds to the natural environment is to come to terms with the logical consequences of ethical action itself. The point operates then not as the end, but as
the starting point of a standpoint which attempts to reconfigure our notions of action, life-value, and harm. For some, guided by the pressure of moral conscience or by a practice of harm
minimisation, the appropriate response to historical and contemporary environmental destruction is that of action guided by abstention. For example, one way of reacting to mundane, everyday
complicity is the attempt to abstain or opt-out of certain aspects of modern, industrial society: to not eat non-human animals, to invest ethically, to buy organic produce, to not use cars and buses,
to live in an environmentally conscious commune. Ranging from small personal decisions to the establishment of parallel economies (think of organic and fair trade products as an attempt to set
up a quasi-parallel economy), a typical modern form of action is that of a refusal to be complicit in human practices that are violent and destructive. Again, however, at a practical level, to what
extent are such acts of nonparticipation rendered banal by their complicity in other actions? In a grand register of violence and harm the individual who abstains from eating non-human animals
but still uses the bus or an airplane or electricity has only opted out of some harm causing practices and remains fully complicit with others. One response, however, which bypasses the problem of
complicity and the banality of action is to take the non-participation solution to its most extreme level. In this instance, the only way to truly be non-complicit in the violence of the human heritage
would be to opt-out altogether. Here, then, the modern discourse of reflection, responsibility and action runs to its logical conclusion--the global suicide of humanity--as a free-willed and 'final
solution'. While we are not interested in the discussion of the 'method' of the global suicide of humanity per se, one method that would be the least violent is that of humans choosing to no longer
reproduce. [10] The case at point here is that the global suicide of humanity would be a moral act; it would take humanity out of the equation of life on this earth and remake the calculation for the
benefit of everything nonhuman. While suicide in certain forms of religious thinking is normally condemned as something which is selfish and inflicts harm upon loved ones, the global
suicide of humanity would be the highest act of altruism. That is, global suicide would involve the taking of
responsibility for the destructive actions of the human species. By eradicating ourselves we
end the long process of inflicting harm upon other species and offer a human-free world. If there is a form of divine intelligence
then surely the human act of global suicide will be seen for what it is: a profound moral gesture aimed at redeeming
humanity. Such an act is an offer of sacrifice to pay for past wrongs that would usher in a new future. Through the death of our species we will give the gift
of life to others. It should be noted nonetheless that our proposal for the global suicide of humanity is based upon the notion that such a radical action needs to be
voluntary and not forced. In this sense, and given the likelihood of such an action not being agreed upon, it operates as a thought
experiment which may help humans to radically rethink what it means to participate in modern, moral life
within the natural world. In other words, whether or not the act of global suicide takes place might well be irrelevant. What is more
important is the form of critical reflection that an individual needs to go through before
coming to the conclusion that the global suicide of humanity is an action that would be worthwhile. The point then of a thought
experiment that considers the argument for the global suicide of humanity is the attempt to outline an anti-humanist, or non-
human-centric ethics. Such an ethics attempts to take into account both sides of the human heritage: the capacity to carry out violence and inflict
harm and the capacity to use moral reflection and creative social organisation to minimise violence and harm. Through the idea of global suicide such an ethics
reintroduces a central question to the heart of moral reflection: To what extent is the value of the continuation of human life worth the total harm inflicted upon the
life of all others? Regardless of whether an individual finds the idea of global suicide abhorrent or
ridiculous, this question remains valid and relevant and will not go away, no matter how hard we try to forget,
suppress or repress it. Finally, it is important to note that such a standpoint need not fall into a version of green or eco-fascism that considers other forms
of life more important than the lives of humans. Such a position merely replicates in reverse the speciesism of modern humanist thought. Any choice between the
eco-fascist and the humanist, colonial-speciesist is thus a forced choice and is, in reality, a non-choice that should be rejected. The point of proposing the idea of
the global suicide of humanity is rather to help identify the way in which we differentially value different forms of life and guide our moral actions by rigidly
adhered to standards of life-value. Hence the idea of global suicide, through its radicalism, challenges an
ideological or culturally dominant idea of life-value. Further, through confronting humanist ethics with its
own violence against the non-human, the idea of global suicide opens up a space for dialectical reflection in which the utopian
ideals of both modern humanist and anti-humanist ethics may be comprehended in relation to each other.

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If removing the human species does more good than harm, it is
anthropocentric bias to not kill us all off

Peter Singer 2007
http://animalrightskorea.org/essays/peter-singer-ethics-and-animals.html

When it comes to the crunch, Williams last resort in defense of the human prejudice is
surprisingly crude. He asks us to imagine that our planet has been colonized by
benevolent, fair-minded and far-sighted aliens who, no doubt fair-mindedly and on the
basis of full information, judge it necessary to remove us that is, kill us. In this
situation, Williams says, we should not discuss the rights and wrongs of the aliens
policies. Even if they are acting fairly and for the greater good of all, the only question,
Williams thinks, is: Which side are you on?

Its odd that Williams should first deny the analogy between racism and speciesism, and
then resort to which side are you on? as the ultimate bulwark of his argument. For it is
a question we have heard before. In times of war, or racial, ethnic, religious or ideological
conflict, it is used to evoke group solidarity and suggest that any questioning of the
struggle is treason. McCarthyists asked it of those who opposed their methods of fighting
communism, and now the Bush administration has used it against its critics to imply
that by criticizing the policies of the administration, they are giving support to terrorists.
Which side are you on? divides the world into us and them and demands that the
mere fact of this division transcend ethical issues about what is the right thing to do.

In these circumstances, the right thing to do, and the courageous thing to do, is not to
listen to the tribal instincts that prompt us to say My tribe (country, race, ethnic group,
religion, species, etc) right or wrong but to say: Im on the side that does what is right.
Although it is fantastic to imagine that a fair-minded, well-informed, far-sighted judge
could ever decide that there was no alternative to the removal of our species in order to
avoid much greater injustice and misery, if this really were the case, we should reject the
tribal or species instinct, and answer Williamss question in the same way, by being
on the side that does what is right.
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The rights of nature as a whole must take priority over humansour
extinction would be a moral good

Roderick Nash, Professor of History and Environmental Studies at UC-SB, 1989
[The Rights of Nature p. 154-155]

Although few pushed environmental ethics this far, support for Callicott's position
appeared frequently in contemporary philosophy. Holmes Rolston, whose respect for
wilderness led him to deep ecological viewpoints, was not only prepared to recognize
"the intrinsic value of every ecobiotic component" but proposed that nature be looked
upon as a "commonwealth" whose rights trumped those of its living components. This
view led Rolston to formulate "duties to species" and "duties to ecosystems" with higher
ethical priority than to individual organisms. Well aware of the opposition to this
concept among his colleagues, Rolston granted that neither a species nor an ecosystem
had a "self" or was a "subject of life" with definable "interests." For some philosophers
this meant such collections could have no legitimate place in individually conceived
ethics. But Rolston believed that a "biologically sounder ethic" would value the species
and the ecosystem more than the individual. Survival was the key. Individuals survived
as species in ecosystems; for Rolston, "the appropriate survival unit is the appropriate
level of moral concern." By the same standards, the life process--evolution--always took
moral precedence over "ephemeral and dispensable" individuals. The bottom line for Rolston was the continuation
of the biotic community. "The systemic process," he explained, "is an overriding value, not because it is indifferent to
individuals, but because the process is both prior t and productive of individuality." Consequently the ecosystem, or nature
in general, is a legitimate holder of rights and an object of human duty.

To take just one more example of biocentric environmental ethic from a growing volume of American, Australian, English,
and Norwegian philosophical literature, Paul W. Taylor of Brooklyn College began to explore what he called "life-centered"
or "biocentric" morality in 1981. His philosophy rested on the now familiar assumption of
absolutely equal inherent value, and hence moral merit, of a forms of life, including
humans. He eschewed ethical hierarchy. Indeed Taylor went so far as to say that, given
the history of his own race's adverse impact on the environment, it seemed reasonable
that the complete disappearance of the human race would not be a moral catastrophe at
all but rather something that the rest of the "community of life," were it articulate, would
applaud with "a hearty 'Good riddance!' " Returning two years later to a defense of his "egalitarian type of
biocentrism," Taylor addressed the charge that in his system killing a human was no more a moral wrong than crushing an
insect or uprooting a plant. Yes, Taylor commented, he really did stand behind this shocking idea, provided it be
understood that there could be "adequate moral reason" for swatting a fly off food or picking plant to eat or killing a
human attacker in self-defense. Without such extenuating circumstances, "the killing of a wildflower.., is just ~ much a
wrong.., as the killing of a human." Moreover, "in some situations it is a greater wrong to kill a wildflower than it is, in any
other situation, to kill a human." The situations Taylor had in mind were taking the flower's life "wantonly" versus killing a
person in self-defense

UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K

13

Nature has value and must be preservedeven in the event of human
extinction
[The Natural and the Artefactual p. 175]
1. The genesis of the universe and of earth are independent of humans. The Big Bang,
which started the universe, is said to have happened 15 billion (or eons) years ago. Earth itself is said to be 4.5 billion years
old. The genesis of life on Earth is also independent of humans. It happened at least 3.6 cons ago during the Archean
period (4.5 to 2.5 cons ago) when the chemistry of the atmosphere was first dominated by oxygen. But the history of
natural organic evolution is a very long one indeed. The lineage of anthropoid apes which led eventually to Homo sapiens
emerged less than one-third of a million years ago.

2. Earth and its biosphere would not be extinguished should humans themselves,
for some reason, become extinct as a species. As far as the biosphere is concerned, the
disappearance of the human species cannot be said to threaten it. Should human
extinction happen, the niches formerly filled by humans will be taken over by other
species. It would also, most probably, provide opportunities for new species to emerge.
The continuing existence of Earth and its biosphere is clearly, in this fundamental sense,
independent of humans. A simple thought experiment should establish this point.
3. Moreover, the ability of the biosphere to function integratively and well is also
independent of humans.
4. In other words, Earth and its extremely complex biosphere are fully autonomous.
'Autonomy' is here used to mean no more and no less than its ability to exist, to function
integratively and well without any reference to, assistance from, or reliance on humans?-
"
5. From the perspective of biospheric integrity, humans are, therefore, dispensable
and could even be redundant.
6. It follows from the above that if an entity exists 'by itself,' and if
its genesis, its continuing existence and survival, are independent of humans, then
these are compelling reasons for us, humans, to recognize that it has a value
independent of us. In turn, we ought then to recognize that we have a duty (in virtue of
our ethical capability) not to undermine or destroy such a thing of value.
C. The Asymmetry Thesis
1. The above shows that there is a distinct asymmetry of causal dependence
between humans and nature. While humans depend on nature, and cannot exist if it
were absent, or if its functioning integrity were too drastically upset by humans, nature's
own existence and functioning integrity is independent of human existence.

2. Our total dependence on nature, but nature's independence of us,
reinforces the Autonomy Thesis and re-emphasizes the view that nature
has value which is entirely independent of us.
UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K

14
A2: Destruction of The Environment Bad

Extend Seed: Extinction is inevitable99% of all species are already
extinct, and most existing species are already doomed by the on-going
mass extinction. Better life will emerge anew and existence will
always have value. Thats explained in the overview.

The belief that human induced mass extinction outweighs is
anthropocentric

William Grey, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Queensland, 1993
Australiasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol 71, No 4 (1993), pp. 463-475

A great deal of hyperbole has been deployed in articulating the claims of deep
ecology. It is common, for example, to encounter claims that destructive human
activityand in particular human technologyis threatening life on the planet;
that we are disrupting the delicate fabric of the ecosphere, and driving it towards
collapse. Such claims are exaggerated. There have been far more traumatic
disruptions to the planet than any we can initiate. From a long-term planetary
perspective, this is alarmist nonsense. However from an anthropocentric point of
view such fears may be well founded. If the concerns for humanity and
nonhuman species raised by advocates of deep ecology are expressed as concerns
about the fate of the planet, then these concerns are misplaced. From a planetary
perspective, we may be entering a phase of mass extinction of the magnitude of
the Cretaceous. For planet earth that is just another incident in a four and a half
billion year saga. Life will go onin some guise or other. The arthropods, algae
and the ubiquitous bacteria, at least, will almost certainly be around for a few
billion years more. And with luck and good management, some of the more
complex and interesting creatures, such as ourselves, may continue for a while
longer as well. Of course our present disruptive and destructive activities are, or
should be, of great concern to us all. But that is a quite properly human concern,
expressing anthropocentric values from an anthropocentric perspective

If Death of Natural

The destruction of extra-terrestrial ecologies throughout the universe

UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K

15
A2 Extinction bad bc destroys species

Were winning extinction is better for nature as a wholethats above.

No value to speciesValue lies in the ecosystem as a whole and its
individual members, and valuing species necessarily devalues the
abiotic.

Eric Katz, Director of Science, Technology, and Society Program at the New Jersey
Institute of Technology, 1997
[Nature as Subject p. 20-21]

In addition, there are conceptual problems with this interpretation of an environmental
ethic. In a practical sense, the moral consideration of species does not provide direct
reasons for the protection of the nonliving environmental background, the natural
objects that form the material structure of ecosystems. Environmentalists, for example,
seek the preservation of beautiful natural rock formations, free-flowing rivers, and
undeveloped wetlands. They seek this preservation, not simply because of the life forms
which live in and around these natural areas, but because of some direct interest in the
nonliving objects themselves. But this concern for nonliving natural objects cannot be
explained by a moral consideration of species.
A more serious problem is the justification of an environmental ethic that focuses on
species as the primary object of moral consideration. Why should species count so
much? Why should species be so important? Joel Feinberg, for one, discounts species
entirely as the proper objects of direct moral concern: "A whole collection, as such,
cannot have beliefs, expectations; wants, or desires.., individual elephants can have
interests, but the species elephant cannot.
"~
For Feinberg, at least, an entity without
interests cannot have moral rights or be an object of moral consideration. Now although
I am not suggesting agreement with Feinberg's views, he does emphasize the oddity of
considering a whole species a morally relevant entity. Indeed, this interpretation of an
environmental ethic has rather an ad hoc aura to it: since environmentalists desire the
protection of rare and endangered species, they create an ethic that considers species in
themselves as morally valuable. But on what can this moral value be based? Either a
species is important because it fulfills an ecological function in the natural community,
in which case the community model of an environmental ethic will explain its
preservation; or a species is important because the individual members of the species are
valuable, in which case an individualistic model of an environmental ethic will explain
the act of preservation.

In itself, a species-based environmental ethic seems to be an
uneasy, groundless
compromise between the broad view that the natural community is the environmentally
appropriate moral object and the narrow view that natural individuals are themselves
the bearers of moral worth.

UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K

16
A2: Duty to Future Generations

Turn: They are conceiving of our existence in terms of future
generations of humanity. This reflects speciesist bias and disavows
the inevitability of human extinction. Thats Sneed and Nietzsche.

We have no duty to future generationsextinction does not make
everything meaningless
Robin Attfield, Professor of Philosophy at Cardiff University, 1999
[The Ethics of the Global Environment p. 63]

The belief that avoidable extinction would be an evil might seem to be based on
duties owed to future generations. Yet if those generations never live, apparently
they can never be harmed, and thus nothing can be owed to them. Besides, the
belief that the extinction of humanity makes much current activity meaningless
seems to be based either on such duties to future generations, which
apparently could prove empty and thus impossible, or on duties to past gen-
erations to ensure that their concerns and projects are continued into the future;
but people who are dead apparently cannot be either harmed or benefited, and so
these duties seem empty and impossible too.
UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K

17
A2 Extinction Destroys All Value

Extend Seed: Nature has intrinsic value, and so will still have value
without us. This ethic is the only way to give existence value given
that all life will one day go extinct.

Nature has value and must be preservedeven in the event of human
extinction


B. The Autonomy Thesis
1. The genesis of the universe and of earth are independent of humans. The Big Bang,
which started the universe, is said to have happened 15 billion (or eons) years ago. Earth itself is said to be 4.5 billion years
old. The genesis of life on Earth is also independent of humans. It happened at least 3.6 cons ago during the Archean
period (4.5 to 2.5 cons ago) when the chemistry of the atmosphere was first dominated by oxygen. But the history of
natural organic evolution is a very long one indeed. The lineage of anthropoid apes which led eventually to Homo sapiens
emerged less than one-third of a million years ago.

2. Earth and its biosphere would not be extinguished should humans themselves,
for some reason, become extinct as a species. As far as the biosphere is concerned, the
disappearance of the human species cannot be said to threaten it. Should human
extinction happen, the niches formerly filled by humans will be taken over by other
species. It would also, most probably, provide opportunities for new species to emerge.
The continuing existence of Earth and its biosphere is clearly, in this fundamental sense,
independent of humans. A simple thought experiment should establish this point.
3. Moreover, the ability of the biosphere to function integratively and well is also
independent of humans.
4. In other words, Earth and its extremely complex biosphere are fully autonomous.
'Autonomy' is here used to mean no more and no less than its ability to exist, to function
integratively and well without any reference to, assistance from, or reliance on humans?-
"
5. From the perspective of biospheric integrity, humans are, therefore, dispensable
and could even be redundant.
6. It follows from the above that if an entity exists 'by itself,' and if
its genesis, its continuing existence and survival, are independent of humans, then
these are compelling reasons for us, humans, to recognize that it has a value
independent of us. In turn, we ought then to recognize that we have a duty (in virtue of
our ethical capability) not to undermine or destroy such a thing of value.
C. The Asymmetry Thesis
1. The above shows that there is a distinct asymmetry of causal dependence
between humans and nature. While humans depend on nature, and cannot exist if it
were absent, or if its functioning integrity were too drastically upset by humans, nature's
own existence and functioning integrity is independent of human existence.

2. Our total dependence on nature, but nature's independence of us,
reinforces the Autonomy Thesis and re-emphasizes the view that nature
has value which is entirely independent of us.
UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K

18

Future extinction does not make present life meaningless
Robin Attfield, Professor of Philosophy at Cardiff University, 1999
[The Ethics of the Global Environment p. 65-67]
Yet while all this shows that certain current activities would lose one of their
central sources of value if life on Earth were shortly going to be obliterated, it
does not show that life here and now would lose its meaning altogether. Even if
we grant that participation in shared activities is a necessary condition of a fully
meaningful life, the prospect of the curtailment of shared intergenerational
activities would not spell the abandonment of shared activities in general. Would
you, in these circumstances, give up (for example) conversation? Philosophy,
science and the arts could, I suggest, also continue (in principle, right up to the
last moment). So could sports like football; and it would be morally imperative
that some shared activities should not be abandoned, such as the nursing of the
dying. Given what was granted above about the value of shared activities, these
shared activities could well continue to be sources of value, muted by gloomy
anticipations, and beset, no doubt, by the reservations of some participants about
whether these activities were really worth pursuing in the circumstances.

The world would still have value without a consciousness to observe
it.

Holmes Rolston III, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorodo, 2001
[Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology p. 144]

But the valuing subject in an otherwise valueless world is an insufficient premise for the
experienced conclusions of those who respect all life. Conversion to a biological view
seems truer to world experience and more logically compelling. Here the order of
knowing reverses--and also enhances--the order of being. This, too, is a perspective, but
ecologically better informed. Science has been steadily showing how the consequents
(life, mind) are built on their precedents (energy, matter), however much they overl.eap
them. Life and mind appear where they did not before exist, and with this levels of value
emerge that did not before exist. But that gives no reason to say that all value is an
irreducible emergent at the human (or upper animal) level. Nature does, of course, offer
possibilities for human valuation, but the vitality of the system is not something that
goes on in the human mind, nor is its value. The possibility of valuation is carried to us
by evolutionary and ecological natural history, and such nature is already valuable before
humans arrive to evaluate what is taking place.
UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K

19

Non-human existence including the abiotic has independent and
intrinsic value

A. The 'No External Teleology' Thesis
-"
Earth did not come into existence and does not continue to exist to serve human
purposes. In this sense, as we have seen, the thesis of external teleology is simply false, and should be
distinguished from the thesis of intrinsic/immanent teleology which holds true in the case of organisms. An
alternative language to make a roughly similar, though not identical, point may be used for instance, the
biologist Mayr distinguishes between teleomatic processes at work (in abiotic nature) which simply follow
physical laws, such as the law of gravity and the second law of thermodynamics, and teleonomic processes at
work (in biotic nature), as a result of which, organisms display programmed behavior, the program being the
product of natural selection. Neither teleonomic nor teleomatic processes and their products have come into
existence or continue to exist to serve human purposes.
2. Humans, of course, find parts of nature useful as food, clothing, shelter,
etc., just as nonhuman life forms find other parts of nature of use to them
Plants (autotrophs) can make use of abiotic nature to sustain their own
functioning integrity and in this sense, the carbon dioxide, minerals,
water, heat and light from the sun, etc., have instrumental value for the
plants. But it would be misleading to say that abiotic nature exists for the
purpose or end of keeping plants alive. Similarly, the leaves of plants
have instrumental value for insects but it would also not be correct to say
that plants sustain their own functioning integrity in order to be of use to
insects. As already argued earlier (see Resisting Humean Projeetivism),
neither can it be said that plants and animals exist for the purpose of
keeping humans alive and flourishing although they, clearly, have
instrumental value for humans.
3. From 1 and 2 above, it follows that just as nature does not exist for us
humans, we humans do not exist for nature either. By this is meant the
following: for instance, lice and microorganisms, no doubt, find human
hair and human guts of instrumental value to them. But from this, we do
not infer that the primary justification for human existence and its sole
purpose is to serve lice and microorganisms in this instrumental fashion.
Similarly, humans may find certain plants and animals useful as food,
and caves useful as shelter, but from this one does not infer that the
primary justification for their existence and their sole raison d'etre is to
serve us in this instrumental fashion.
4. The points above~ show that there is need to distinguish between two senses of 'for itself.' The
standard sense is the one used so far and is fled up with individual organisms and the notion of their striving
to maintain their own functioning integrity--see preceding sections. However, a different sense is used in
this context here which is not involved with the notion of striving, and is much wider, as it includes abiotic
entities to which it may be conceptually inappropriate to ascribe the notion of striving. This sense is to be
marked by calling it 'by itself.' It is simply an entailment of the 'No External Teleology' thesis?" The more
standard 'for itself' involves the thesis of intrinsic/immanent teleology. An organism exists, then, both 'by
itself' (that is, it has not come into existence, nor does it continue to exist in order to serve human ends or
purposes) as well as 'for itself' (that is, it strives to maintain its own functioning integrity). On the other
hand, an abiotic item exists only 'by itself.'
5. If we were to consider humans as a locus of value because we are entities
who exist 'by ourselves' (in the sense just characterized), then
consistency should lead us to conclude that nature as a whole and the
various items in it, too, are loci of value, for they, too, exist 'by them-
selves.' This, however, is not to deny what is obvious, that what has
intrinsic value in this sense may have instrumental value, as a matter of
fact, for another.
UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K

20
A2 Humans are only way for other species to survive

Extend the overview: Non-living nature will still have value even if all
species on Earth die.

Extend the Lee cardshumans will just maintain an artificial nature,
all of it re-engineered for our benefit. This amounts to the destruction
of everything which is non-human, and so its better to let species die
than become an object in our museum. And extinction will also
prevent us from terraforming the rest of the universe.

And humans will maintain billions of animals in factory farms
Ball, 03
<Matt, January 5, 2003, Vegan Outreach, Working in Defense of Animals,
http://www.veganoutreach.org/enewsletter/20030105.html>
A few years into the new millennium, with several decades of animal
advocacy behind us, it is shocking that the number of animals
exploited and killed in the United States has far more than doubled since 1975. At the same time, the
treatment of most of these animals is worse today than ever before.
Although every animal in a lab, pound, or fur farm deserves our consideration, ~99 percent of all the animals killed in the
United States are killed to be eaten. In recent years, the annual increase in the number of land animals slaughtered for
food has been much greater than the total number of animals killed for fur, in labs, and at shelters, combined. In other
words, each year in the United States: The number of animals killed in shelters is approximately equal to the human
population of New Jersey. The number of animals killed for fur is approximately equal to the human population of
Illinois. The number of animals killed in experimentation is approximately equal to the human population of Texas.
The increase in the number of land animals farmed and slaughtered
is greater than the total human population of the United States. The total
number of mammals and birds farmed and slaughtered is
approximately equal to one and two-thirds times the entire human
population of Earth. Hidden away from the public eye, farmed animals endure an excruciating existence.
Written descriptions can't convey the true horror of what goes on in
factory farms. Photographs and videos come closer layer hens with open sores, covered with feces, sharing
their tiny cage with decomposing corpses of fellow hens whose wings, faces, or feathers were trapped in the cage such that
they couldnt get to food or water (Compassion Over Killings Hope for the Hopeless); pigs sodomized by metal poles,
beaten with bricks, skinned while still conscious (PETAs Pig Farm Investigation); steers, pigs, and birds desperately
struggling on the slaughterhouse floor after their throats are cut (Farm Sanctuarys Humane Slaughter?, PETAs Meet
Your Meat). But even these tapes cant communicate the smell, the noise, the desperation, and most of all, the fact that
each of these animals and billions more unseen by any camera or any caring eye continue to suffer like this, every
minute of every day.

UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K

21
A2 Humans are only way for other species to survive

Factory farms are a fate worse then death

Mitchell, 03
<Brian's Poultry Services Investigation Statement of Whistleblower Sally Mitchell
http://www.goveg.com/brianspoultry_sally.asp>
The next barn was absolute hell. You wouldnt believe what it was like unless you were there. We
had to wake 38,000 sleeping baby chickens and terrify and break them. In this barn, there were none of the restrictions of
the first barn. We were told to pick up eight chickens at a time and to hold each one by one legfour chickens in each
hand. Chad told me that he could feel the chickens legs snap and pop when he handed them up to the loader on the truck.
The chickens tried to huddle in groups, but occasionally, one would stray into the middle of the floor and get stepped on
and kicked around. It broke my heart. I only worked a little while in this barn before I had to sit down because of the
combination of exhaustion and emotional strain. I made eye contact with some of the young chickens, who were so little
that they werent even clucking yet, just cheeping. It just killed me. They started huddling under me for safety when I knelt
down. Some people think that chickens dont have feelings, but it was perfectly clear how scared these animals were. It
was absolute hellthere are no better words to describe that graphic scene. It was death. It was screaming babies with no
one to help them. Worse, I knew that I was only seeing a very small percentage of the billions of chickens who are killed
every year in the industry. I couldnt do it anymore, so Chad and I both went and sat out for the last hour while the final
truck was loaded. I cried the whole way home. I only made it half of one night, but the biggest shock came when I realized
that the catchers do this every day and have been doing it for yearssome of them for their entire working lives. The
brutality that these people inflict on animals shocked me. Ever since that day, my boyfriend and I have sworn off meat.
Most people dont know what happens to animals in the meat
industry, but now, you know that there is a fate worse then death for
these chickenstheir journey to slaughter.

UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K

22
A2 Big Crunch

Humans will live forever and humanize everything, destroying all
non-human existence. Its better to let existence survive as long as it
can without humans.

This evidence assumes we should want to live forever. But the Epstein
and Sneed evidence says we must accept our place in the cosmos,
which includes the inevitability of extinction.

Big Crunch would just result in a new universe.
New Scientist 2007
[http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12178]
Some cosmologists think that our universe has been cycling through an endless
series of big bangs and big crunches. If so, it implies the universe is doomed to
repeat the same thing over and over. A new study, however, suggests that with
each big bang, the universe mostly forgets its past and starts anew.
The accepted wisdom in modern cosmology is that it is meaningless to ask what
came before the big bang. That's because the big bang is what physicists call a
"singularity" - a moment at which the equations of physics break down. "No one
is happy with the big bang singularity," says Martin Bojowald, a theorist at the
Pennsylvania State University, University Park.
Bojowald works on loop quantum gravity (LQG) - a theory that seeks to unify the
otherwise incompatible theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics. In
LQG, space-time is made of tiny interconnected loops, each only 10
-35
metres
across, that form a smooth fabric much like a shirt's fabric is smooth even though
it is woven from separate threads.
Bojowald and his colleagues have run the equations of LQG backwards and shown that
they can avoid the singularity. They showed that as the universe collapses, it reaches a
point at which it bounces back in a big bang, and the process repeats.
UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K

23
A2 Big Crunch

And its better to let the universe be destroyed to create again.

Holmes Rolston III, Professor of Philosophy at Colorodo State University, 1986
[Beyond Spaceship Earth p. 163-164]

One principle here is called a tendency to collapse, as when a galaxy, star, or dust
cloud collapses on itself. But the "collapse" so called is matter prone to gravita-
tional alliance with itself, yet in such a way that the swirling, differentiating result
is a tendency to construct as much as to collapse. Gravitation couples dust to
dust, clump to clump, and spins and heats the whole. The gravitating is
counterbalanced by electromagnetic forces, tending to prevent overcollapse into
black holes, and protracting the life of stars as sources of materials and energy.
The result creates temperature differentials in aggregates kept in turbulence,
energy irradiated over matter, all of which is order waiting to happen.
After moral consciousness arises, there can be evil creativity. Perhaps there can
be disvaluable creativity within ecosystems, when a new organism evolves to ruin
an ecosystem, although the principle that only the better adapted within their
communities survive protects against this. But at astronomical levels, it is
difficult to think what bad creativity would mean. Nor does a systemically
projective nature suppose that all astronomical events are creative. Some are
destructive, as when an asteroid crashes into a planet with highly developed
landscapes, perhaps even one with ecosystems. Destructions may be inevitable if
there is to be perpetually rechurning creativity, an astronomical parallel to the
way that biological death is required for there to be ongoing evolutionary life. The
destruction of stars as supernovae seeds the matter that later collects into
planets. Things are perpetually destroyed, but their destructions are regularly
preludes to re-creations. What the model of projective nature finds is a
systemically positive creativity that moves events-at least at fertile locations and
over significant stretches of time-higher upslope than the destructive forces move
events downslope. At such
place-time locations there is recurrent formed integrity. This does not have to be
uninterrupted, and it will not be unending. Yet if this stops at one place, it will
reappear elsewhere.
UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K

24
A2 tech is safe

Extend Lee: Even if nanotech is completely safe, it will produce safety
by engineering everything to human standards: the climate will be
safe, but will no longer be itself.

Even if emerging bio- and nanotechnologies proves safe, peaceful,
and ecologically benignthey will still destroy the Natural as all of
existence become a byproduct of human manufacturing


The philosophical worry expressed in this book would not be overcome even if biotechnology turns out, in the long run, to
incur no greater risk of pollution and contamination than less radical techniques of genetically transforming organisms. It is not about the risk
of environmental pollution as standardly understood, but the risk about the ontological supersession of the natural by the artefactual, at least as far as biotic
nature is concerned. Sagoff has also drawn attention to this tendency, that biotechnology is a nature-replacing rather than a nature-saving
technology." He writes: Maryland's former director of tidal fisheries, recognizing the benefits of genetic engineering, argued that the Chesapeake Bay
"should be run more like a farm than a wilderness." He believed that the state should subsidize efforts to fabricate fish the way Frank Perdue manufactures
chickens. Many experts agree that industrial mariculture, by pushing fish populations far beyond the carrying capacity of ecosystems, will render capture fisheries
obsolete."- He .continues: [Biotechnologists] are engineering [fish] to withstand pollutants to which they now succumb. They have perfected a nonmigrating
rockfish that need not transit the anoxic stem of the Bay. (They have also perfected an acid-tolerant trout that does well in acidified lakes.) It may not be efficient to
regulate pollution to accommodate species. It may be cheaper to regulate species to accommodate pollution,
t3
Sagoff also cites the biologist Dan Janzen about the
fate of tropical forests in the light of advances by biotechnology. Janzen has written: Tropical wildlands and most of the earth's contemporary species still exist
because humanity has not had organisms capable of converting all tropical land surfaces to profitable agriculture and animal husbandry. Within one to three
decades, organisms modified through genetic engineering will be capable of making agriculture or animal husbandry, or both, profitable on virtually any land
surface. Agricultural inviability, the single greatest tropical conservation force, will be gone." But as the details of the more general argument will be spelled out in
the following sections, there is only one point which needs emphasis here. The risk of the natural as an ontological
category being made redundant is much greater than it might at first sight appear. Molecular
nanotechnology of the near future which is capable of transforming abiotic nature into the
artefactual will join hands with biotechnology, the end result of which is to turn biotic and abiotic entities into
artefacts. The synergistic results of such an alliance will constitute a very much greater and more distinct radical threat to the ontological category of the natural
than if only the one were in place but not the other. Future Technology and the Radical Threat to the Natural The main threat to nature from most of
extant technology, as the first section shows, comes from its polluting effects which may set in train other technological forces to correct them; but these may, in
turn, as the technological pessimists have pointed out, bring further iatrogenic damage in alternative forms to other parts of the biosphere. The
real flaw is simply that extant technology is by and large ecologically insensitive in this way, as we have seen. But what if the technology of the near
future were to overcome this central flaw, that it would not produce a pollution problem on a scale which could subvert the
functioning and integrity of the biosphere? An environmental ethic which regards pollution as the key disvalue and, correspondingly, its prevention as the crucial
value would have to welcome such a technology as a good thing indeed, perhaps even an unqualified good thing--as it has no resources within its framework to
criticize and resist it. At first sight such a technology may sound too far fetched, and so can be ignored. But before dismissing the notion out of hand, two matters
should be pointed out:
UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K

25
A2: no nanotech

Thats irrelevant. Extend Lee: Biotech or tech that hasnt yet been
invented like terraforming will enable massive human engineering of
entire ecosystems. The history of the humans species proves our
technological ingenuity.

Nanotech is inevitable: it will transform everything and form the
basis for 21
st
century engineering

Los Alamos National Laboratory 2004
[http://www.lanl.gov/mst/nano/definition.html]

The new concepts of nanotechnology are so broad and pervasive, that they will influence every area of technology and science, in ways that are surely
unpredictable. We are just now seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of the benefits that nanostructuring can bring:

* wear-resistant tires made by combining nanometer-scale particles of inorganic clays with polymers
* medicines as nanoparticles with vastly improved delivery and control characteristics
* greatly improved printing brought about by nanometer-scale particles that have the best properties of both dyes and pigments, and
* vastly improved lasers and magnetic disk heads made by controlling layer thickness to better than a nanometer.

Many further and greater advances resulting from nanotechnology are inevitable. Within a few decades,
healthcare will be revolutionized by combining nanotechnology with biotechnology to produce ingestable systems that will be harmlessly flushed from the body if
the patient is healthy but will notify a physician of the type and location of diseased cells and organs if there are problems.Nanometer-scale traps will be
constructed that will be able to remove pollutants from the environment and deactivate chemical warfare agents. Computers with the capabilities of current
workstations will be the size of a grain of sand and will be able to operate for decades with the equivalent of a single wristwatch battery. Robotic spacecraft that
weigh only a few pounds will be sent out to explore the solar system, and perhaps even the nearest stars. What will government do for nanotechnology?
Government will play the key role in assuring that the enormous benefits of nanotechnology will be realized quickly and the U.S. will share the global benefits. The
goals of nanotechnology are too long term (greater than ten years) for industry to take an immediate leadership role, although the high level of industry interest
and concern for the field is almost unprecedented. Because of its interdisciplinary nature, the development of nanotechnology requires creating teams of physicists,
chemists, biologists, and engineers to tackle the problems, and the funding agencies will need to be organized to foster this teamwork. The enabling infrastructure
and technologies must be in place for industry to take advantage of nanotechnology innovations and discoveries. Industry is frequently reluctant to invest in risky
research that takes many years to develop into a product. In the US the university and government research system fills this gap. The increasing pace of
technological commercialization requires a compression of past time scales and parallel development of research and commercial products and a synergy among
industry, university, and government partners. New infrastructure at the universities and national labs is required for the field to grow. A worldwide
competition is underway, and the US response is fragmented in comparison to the approach of
European and Asian countries. For all of these reasons, this is a moment of opportunity to create an inter-agency initiative in
nanotechnology to catalyze academe, industry, health, business, and national security efforts.Looking to the future The total societal impact of
nanotechnology is expected to be greater than the combined influences that the silicon integrated circuit, medical imaging, computer-aided
engineering,and man-made polymers have had in this century. Significant improvements in performance and changes of manufacturing paradigms will lead
to several industrial revolutions in the 21st century. Nanotechnology will change the nature
of almost every human-made object. The major questions now are how soon will these revolutions arrive, who will benefit the most,
and who will be in position to control or counter their negative aspects? How can we embrace and facilitate the new industrial revolution to maximize the benefit to
US citizens? We believe that a national initiative is required to advance this goal because the needs for and from nanotechnology transcend anything that can be
supplied by traditional academic disciplines, national laboratories, or even entire industries
UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K

26
A2: no nanotech

Nanotechnology has reached critical massits development is
inevitable.

Medical Nanotechnology Markets 10/9/08
http://www.nanotech-now.com/news.cgi?story_id=30955

Nanotechnology has reached critical mass. Nowhere is this more evident than in
medicine. Rising medical costs, demands for less-invasive procedures and pressures for
immediate feedback of medical conditions, all point to nanotechnology as offering a new
approach in healthcare. According to U.S. National Science Foundation estimates, by
2015 the annual global market for nano-related goods and services will top $1 trillion,
thus making it one of the fastest-growing industries in history. Assuming that these
figures prove to be accurate, nanotechnology will emerge as a larger economic force than
the combined telecommunications and information technology industries at the
beginning of the technology boom of the late 1990s. This TriMark Publications report
covers the specific segments of the medical nanotechnology markets, with particular
emphasis on those segments where this emerging technology is or shows the potential to
be most impactful. Nanotechnology, a field of science and technology that aims to
control matter at the atomic, molecular and macromolecular level, potentially has far-
reaching and paradigm-shifting implications for biology, drug discovery and medical
technologies. The discipline has already yielded healthcare discoveries that have been
used for drug delivery and diagnostic purposes. In this study, we describe various
nanotechnologies under development for biological and medical purposes and assess
their potential.

The nanotech revolution has already begun

National Geographic News 2005 [3/24]
After decades of hype, speculation, and multimillion-dollar laboratory research, the
long-promised nanotechnology revolution is finally coming to a store near you. For
proof, check out the transparent sunscreens, spillproof pants, and tennis rackets with extra
pop now on sale. Nanotechnology gets its name from the nanometer, a unit of measurement that is one
billionth of a meter. A human hair is about 20,000 nanometers thick. Scientists say materials and devices
manufactured at the nanoscale promise to change life as we know it. "I'd say [nanotechnology] has the
potential to be truly revolutionary," said Gregory Rorrer, a chemical engineer at Oregon
State University in Corvallis. "That's why there's so much interest in it right now." Rorrer is
less than a year into a four-year, 1.3-million-dollar (U.S.) grant from the National Science Foundation to
develop a process to produce nanostructured semiconductor materials using single-celled marine organisms
called diatoms. The grant is a small piece of the billions of dollars the United States government is funneling
into research and development to spur the nanotechnology revolution. Lawrence Gasman is the founder of
NanoMarkets, a Sterling, Virginia-based nanotech market analysis firm. He said the coming revolution will
be akin to the plastics revolution of the 1960s. At that time, plastics transformed everything from kitchen
appliances and food containers to housing construction and medical safety. "What it's really about is
applying the latest and greatest in materials science to solving real-world problems,"
Gasman said. "That's where the money will be made, and that's where [nanotechnology]
will change lives."
UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K
27
A2 MPX not inevmaybe humans wont be so bad

Cross apply Lee from the Overviewnature replacing technologies
will inevtaibly triumph because they are more economical. Also, once
the process starts its impossible to stop because we wont be able to
restore nature once we start replacing it.

We outweigh on magnitude. The destruction of existence throughout
the universe is ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE greater than destruciton of
life on earth. If we win a risk that humans will terraform, you must
vote neg.

Terraforming is inevitable
Martin Beech, Astronomy at Campion College, 2009
[Terraforming: The Creating of Habitable Worlds p. 8-9]

The desire to explore and the craving to understand have underpinned much of human history. Indeed, the thirst
to appreciate what resides over the distant horizon, or to appreciate the workings of an atom, the properties of a distant star, or the minutia of, say, the life cycle of
the Richardson ground squirrel have brought humanity to its present expansive viewpoint, and our collective horizon is now very, very broad. Between the
quantum world of the atomic nucleus and the mapped-out realm of the cosmos, humanity's gaze encompasses an incredible 10 61 orders of magnitude in scale.'
Certainly, there is much that we don't understand about the myriad objects within the observable universe, and no doubt many of our currently lauded and much
cherished theories about the workings of the cosmos are wrong; the point is, however, we keep searching and we keep exploring, yearning to find out what resides
over that far, distant horizon, beyond our present physical reach.
Not only do humans thirst for intellectual knowledge and understanding, but they also have an innate wanderlust for
physical exploration. To climb to crawl, to fly, to swim, to dive the oceans, all these adventures have preoccupied our ancestors. The distant
horizon is not just the muse for our intellectual struggle; it is also the physical barrier beyond which we strive to move. Within this context, terraforming
is a distant horizon that challenges both human intellect and the innate desire to explore and experience he
cosmos. The exploration and colonization of other terrestrial planets and moons within our Solar System has not unreasonably
been described as humanity's destiny. We seemingly have no choice; these other worlds will he our
future homes, but before we can move in a great amount of preparation will be required. This book is essentially about the pre-moving terraforming
stage.
Perhaps every human generation has lived under the delusion that it exists at a special time. We are no exception but it is probably fair to say that for the very first
time we live with the danger of our outgrowing the planet Earth. As shall be seen in Chapter 4, the Earth might seem unimaginably large, but it is nonetheless a
finite world, and it has a finite carrying capacity. Although it may seem that the Earths distant horizon has begun to shrink in our ever-more connected, been there,
done that society, our collective gaze is primed to explore the more distant and remote horizons that envelop other planets. The Earth is under
stress; we pollute it, we ignore it, we abuse it, and yet it still sustains its. Humanity may never have the power to fully destroy the Earth itself, but
we might destroy ourselves (time will tell), and we are rapidly approaching the limit beyond which the Earth can support us.
We must either adapt ourselves to expect less, or we must adapt to other worlds, and here is humanity's first big break, for we
live in a Solar System full of prime terraforming real estate
UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K
28
A2 MPX not inevmaybe humans wont be so bad

Humans will treat extra-terrestrial existence terriblytreatment of
animals proves

J. Baird Callicott, Professor of Philosophy at University of Wisconsin, 1986

Ethics is more a normative than descriptive study of human behavior. That is, in ethics we want to know less how people might than how they should or ought to
act, do, treat, or live. The sense of norm in normative is not the sense of norm in the vulgar meaning of normal-that is, average, mean, lowest common
denominator. Rather, norm in normative (and in the medical meaning of normal) connotes a benchmark, a standard, an ideal.
The ethical question of this paper is how to treat extraterrestrial life-if there is any and if we ever find any. As an ethicist, I am not competent to predict how we will
in fact treat extraterrestrial life if and when we encounter it. However, as it seems to me, an untrained observer, the human track
record-average, or in that sense, normal human behavior-does not bode well for any extraterrestrial life unfortunate enough
to be discovered by us. I am not at all sure that, as an ethicist, I can even address with confidence the question how we ought to treat extraterrestrial life. The
question is made remote and speculative by two general uncertainties, one metaethical, the other epistemic.
Firstly, while today almost everyone of sound mind and good will agrees that human life without qualification is the subject of unambiguous and
incontrovertible moral concern, there is by no means general agreement that other-than-human terrestrial
life should be the subject of a similar concern. The suggestion that other-than human
terrestrial life possesses moral value--value, that is, apart from its utility to serve human ends-is greeted at best with
skeptical indulgence and at worst with impatient ridicule, not only by popular moralists and their constituents, but more especially by mainstream
Western moral philosophers.20 In the prevailing contemporary ethical climate, the hypothesis that we might even entertain just the possibility of human moral
obligations to extraterrestrial life, assuming that it is not anthropomorphic, therefore will likely be regarded as so absurd as to be beneath contempt.2' Animal
liberation/rights moral philosophers, who attempt to extend moral considerability to a narrow range of our closest terrestrial nonhuman relatives, are by their own
estimation at the leading edge of ethical theory and, by the estimation of their mainstream philosophical critics, muddled sentimentalists 22
The chilly reception greeting even such comparatively modest proposals as animal welfare ethics for a more generous and expansive provision of moral consid-
erability for nonhuman life forms cannot be attributed simply to the churlishness and/or niggardliness of reactionary guardians of the Western moral tradition.
Rather, Western moral thought from Plato and St. Paul to Tillich and Hare provides few conceptual resources
theoretically to underwrite such generosity of spirit and rigorously to effect such an expansion. But a more embracing ethic to be a
proper ethic must have a sound conceptual basis and logical rigor, and it must somehow connect with historical moral theory. A life-centered and literally
biocentric-ethic discontinuous with traditional moral philosophy would not be recognizable as a species of ethics, and so could not be seriously entertained or
critically appraised.

UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K
29
A2 nature still have value even if engineered

Ontological simplification is the standard for evaluating magnitude.
Post human engineering, the diversity of the universe will be reduced
to the ontological monoculture of human manufacturing.

Replacing nature with technology destroys its value and must be
rejected

Institute of Technology, 1997 [Nature as Subject p. 129-131]

The ethical importance of the distinction between artifacts and natural entities is thus derived
from the anthropocentric nature of artifacts, their ontological reliance on human interests, plans, and
projects. In contrast to natural entities, artifacts, as human instruments, are always a means to the furtherance of some human end. The normative implication of
this relationship can be found in the practical moral philosophy of Kant, if we are willing to look beyond the boundaries of human rational subjects. The second
formulation of the categorical imperative states that we are to treat moral subjects as ends-in-themselves, never as a mere means. If the categorical imperative is
applied to a treatment of artifacts and natural entities we find a crucial.' difference: artifacts must be treated as means, for their existence and value
only exist in a dependent relationship with human aims and goals; but natural entities, existing apart from human
projects, can be considered as ends-in-themselves. Kant teaches us that the possibility of moral consideration lies in an entity's independence from rational control
and design, its existence as an end-in-itself. This consideration of Kantian moral concepts suggests that two crucial notions in the development of an ethical
environmental policy are the Kantian ideal of "autonomy," and its moral opposite, domination. In analyzing the value of natural organisms, Rolston writes: "the
values that attach to organisms result from their nonderivative, genuine autonomy . . . as spontaneous natural systems.

This is not true merely for organisms.
Complex holistic natural systems and communities also exhibit autonomy, in that they are independent from external design, purpose, and control. Even nonliving
natural entities, which do not, in themselves, develop, grow, or achieve self-realization, are essential components of autonomous natural systems. When
humans intervene in nature, when we create artifacts or attempt to manage environmental systems (such as forests),
we destroy that natural autonomy by imposing a system of domination. As Eugene Hargrove notes: "Historically,
manipulation of nature, even to improve it, has been considered subjugation or domination.

But why is the
domination of nature a moral evil? Why are the products of the domination of nature less valuable than the products of a free and autonomous nature? It is clear
that in the realm of human social and political thought, domination is an evil that restricts or denies individual (and social) freedom. Can the metaphor of
domination be translated into the realm of nonhuman natural processes? Yes: within environmental policy, domination is the anthropocentric alteration of natural
processes. The entities and systems that comprise nature are not permitted to be free, to pursue their independent and
unplanned courses of development, growth, and change. Thus, the existence of domination results in the denial of free and
unhindered growth and development. Wherever the process of domination exists, either in nature or in human culture, it attacks the preeminent value of self-
realization. I am not claiming that all self-realization is a moral good; even some forms of human self-realization can be morally evil. Thus a much larger question,
for both environmental policy and normative human ethics generally, concerns the exploration of criteria for justifiable' intervention in the free and autonomous
development of human beings, natural organisms, and natural systems. I do not claim to establish a "criterion for intervention" in this essay. My point here is more
simple: the denial of the self-realization of natural processes is a crucial part of the human
domination of nature. The creation of artifacts is thus central to the human project of the domination and subjugation of the natural world.
Artifacts enable humanity to control the forces of nature for the betterment of human life. Generally, this artifactual control of natural forces is not a moral evil: the
processes of agriculture, engineering, and medicine are necessary for the fullest possible development of human life--human self-realization. But the management,
alteration, and redesign of nature results in the imposition of our anthropocentric purposes on areas and entities that exist outside human society. Intervention in
nature creates environments based on models of human desire. This is the human project of the domination of nature: the reconstruction of the natural world in
our own image, to suit our human goals and purposes. The ontological and axiological distinctions between artifacts and natural entities are drawn most clearly
when we consider the artifactual reconstruction and control of natural entities and ecosystems--when we turn wild and natural forests into tree plantations or "sus-
tainable" woodland. Artifacts are fundamentally connected to human concerns and interests, in both their existence and their value. Natural entities
and systems have a value in their own right, a value that transcends the instrumentality of human projects and
interests. Nature is not merely the physical matter which is the object of human artifactual practice; nature is a subject, with its own history of development inde-
pendent of human cultural intervention. As with any autonomous subject, nature thus has a value that can be subverted and destroyed by the process of human
domination. The normative implication for environmental policy is that this value ought to be preserved.
UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K
30
A2 No Life Elsewhere in Universe

Extend the Lee. Non-living existence beyond the boundaries of Earth
has intrinsic value. Destruction of atmospheres like Mars or Earth
outweigh even if their no life anywhere in the universe.

We must respect the extra-terrestrial abioticanything with formed
integrity has value
Holmes Rolston III, Professor of Philosophy at Colorodo State University, 1986

Humans ought to preserve projects of formed integrity, wherever found. Already operating in
earthbound environmental ethics, this principle underlies respect for life, organic individuals, species, ecosystems, landscapes. Humans themselves are a lofty
expression of this creativity; the mind and hand epitomize creativity, and our own continuing creativity (expressed in human capacities for space travel, for
understanding alien places, for use of nonearthen resources) is also to be respected. This licenses the exploration and even the exploitation of space. But just as the
human dominion on Earth is constrained by a respect for other forms of being, the human presence in space, which is neither our
dominion nor our native domicile, ought to be constrained by a respect for alien forms of projective
integrity. If an ethicist shrinks from the vocabulary of duty here, there will be ideals of attitude toward these places.
Can this be expressed in more detail? Two caveats follow, with six preliminary rules for nature preservation in the solar system. A first warning: Humans are now
in a poor position to say what the formed integrities elsewhere in the solar system are. Speculating over what places, planets, moons should be designated as nature
preserves would be more foolish than for Columbus to have worried over what areas of the New World should be set aside as national parks and wildernesses. All
the same, in retrospect, our forefathers would have left us a better New World had they been concerned sooner about preserving what they found there, not as early
as the fifteenth century but neither as late as the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Let the twenty-first, the twentysecond, and the twenty-third centuries profit
by the mistakes of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth. Earthlings have little power to affect extraterrestrial places today, but then the Pilgrim Fathers posed
little threat to the ozone layer with fluorocarbons, nor to genetic processes through plutonium radioactivity.
A second warning: Banish soon and forever the bias that only habitable places are good ones (temperature 0-30 degrees C., with soil, water, breathable air), and all
uninhabitable places empty wastes, piles of dull stones, dreary, desolate swirls of gases. To ask what these worlds are good for prevents asking whether these
worlds are good in deeper senses. The class of habitable places is only a subset of the class of
valuable places. To fail as functional for Earth-based life is not to fail on form, beauty, spectacular eventfulness. Even on Earth humans have learned,
tardily, to value landscapes and seascapes that have little or nothing to do with human comfort (Antarctica, the Sahara, marine depths); just as there is appropriate
behavior before Earthen places, regardless of their hospitality for human life, so there will be appropriate (and inappropriate)
behavior before Martian landscapes and Jovian atmospheric seas.
These other worlds are not places that failed. Nature never fails. Nature only succeeds more or less with its projective integrity. We do not condemn a rock because
it failed to be a tree, though we may value it less than a tree. We do not condemn a tree because it failed to be a
person, though we may value it less than a person. We ought not condemn Mars because it failed to be
Earth, although we may value it less than Earth. There may be fewer formed integrities on Neptune, but there will be some that do not exist on Earth.
Learning to appreciate these alien places for what they are in themselves, not depreciating them for what
they failed to be, will provide an ultimate test in nature appreciation. Only as we allow that it is good that Apollo asteroids are of no
"earthly use" will we learn whether they are an outlandish good.
After these warnings, we can think more positively. The following rules probe toward an exploration ethic.
(1) Respect any natural place spontaneously worthy of a proper name. Projective nature is valuable at the systemic
level; and there results a kind of baseline value in every rock and cloud, since even the simplest things are products
of nature's creativity. But such value is so pervasive and relatively minimal (though absolutely impressive) that it cannot be made operational. Many products of nature (meteoroids, lava flows,
dust clouds) have insufficient projective integrity to warrant particular respect or admiration. Others do, and one way to test for these is to see whether an entity commands a proper name. Proper
names are often tags for the convenience of geographers and mapmakers (the Four Corners Area, the Hellas Basin) or needed for historical reasons (Plymouth Rock, Halley's Comet), and humans
sometimes give their artifacts (cities, nations) proper names. Proper names
given for other reasons are not sufficient to warrant protection. But some places seem to warrant proper names for what they spontaneously are in themselves. If so, that signals our perception of
enough topographic integrity to enter its protection into the calculus of tradeoffs. This protection should be at something like the level of scope to which the proper name attaches. Such a place will
have features, differentiation from elsewhere, peculiarity of form, ensemble of components, gestalt and mood, all of which are ingredients of formed integrity.
In this sense we will probably not come to feel that humans have duties to every crater on the Moon or to each solar flare because these places/events as such have little integrated process in them.
But by the time we are drawn to attach a proper name to a place, there is enough particularity, differentiation and integration of locus, enough provincial identity to call for protection. This does
not address the question how much these places count; it only locates one particular sort of thing that can come to count operationally in an extraterrestrial ethic. We might also want to preserve
representative types, but what one is respecting here is not generic landscapes but particular locality.
As test cases, one might ask whether to preserve Phobas or the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. We can imagine (in the not-too-distant future) military commanders testing to see whether they had
enough nuclear muscle to blow these places to smithereens. The rule here is that such testing should not, without overriding justification, destroy places with enough site integrity to command
proper names.
(2) Respect exotic extremes in natural projects. On worlds elsewhere and elsewhen nature will give expression to potential that could not be realized on Earth. This will always be true more or less,
but where true the more, where there is salient quantity, quality, or natural kind, that will be reason for appreciating notable formed in-
tegrity. Just as humans value diversity on Earth, humans should value diversity in the solar system, all part of the robust
richness of nature. For instance, rock volcanoes and the basalt they spout will be common both on Earth and elsewhere, but volcanoes of ice, spouting lava made of
ammonia and water, or liquid methane seas may exist on Titan and not elsewhere. Saturn's splendid rings may be unexcelled in many solar systems. Jupiter's ring
may be dynamic, steadily lost into Jupiter's atmosphere and replenished, by material supplied from satellitesjust outside it, as Saturn's rings are not. That a
formative event in nature is rare is, primafacie, reason for its preservation. At such places humans can learn something about the nature of things, the nature in
things.
UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K
31
A2 Humans never go into space

Even if humans dont leave the earth, total destruction of Earth and
its atmosphere outweighs. Thats Rowe and Lee.

Terraforming is inevitable
Martin Beech, Astronomy at Campion College, 2009
[Terraforming: The Creating of Habitable Worlds p. 8-9]

The desire to explore and the craving to understand have underpinned much of human history. Indeed, the thirst
to appreciate what resides over the distant horizon, or to appreciate the workings of an atom, the properties of a distant star, or the minutia of, say, the life cycle of
the Richardson ground squirrel have brought humanity to its present expansive viewpoint, and our collective horizon is now very, very broad. Between the
quantum world of the atomic nucleus and the mapped-out realm of the cosmos, humanity's gaze encompasses an incredible 10 61 orders of magnitude in scale.'
Certainly, there is much that we don't understand about the myriad objects within the observable universe, and no doubt many of our currently lauded and much
cherished theories about the workings of the cosmos are wrong; the point is, however, we keep searching and we keep exploring, yearning to find out what resides
over that far, distant horizon, beyond our present physical reach.
Not only do humans thirst for intellectual knowledge and understanding, but they also have an innate wanderlust for
physical exploration. To climb to crawl, to fly, to swim, to dive the oceans, all these adventures have preoccupied our ancestors. The distant
horizon is not just the muse for our intellectual struggle; it is also the physical barrier beyond which we strive to move. Within this context, terraforming
is a distant horizon that challenges both human intellect and the innate desire to explore and experience he
cosmos. The exploration and colonization of other terrestrial planets and moons within our Solar System has not unreasonably
been described as humanity's destiny. We seemingly have no choice; these other worlds will he our
future homes, but before we can move in a great amount of preparation will be required. This book is essentially about the pre-moving terraforming
stage.
Perhaps every human generation has lived under the delusion that it exists at a special time. We are no exception but it is probably fair to say that for the very first
time we live with the danger of our outgrowing the planet Earth. As shall be seen in Chapter 4, the Earth might seem unimaginably large, but it is nonetheless a
finite world, and it has a finite carrying capacity. Although it may seem that the Earths distant horizon has begun to shrink in our ever-more connected, been there,
done that society, our collective gaze is primed to explore the more distant and remote horizons that envelop other planets. The Earth is under
stress; we pollute it, we ignore it, we abuse it, and yet it still sustains its. Humanity may never have the power to fully destroy the Earth itself, but
we might destroy ourselves (time will tell), and we are rapidly approaching the limit beyond which the Earth can support us.
We must either adapt ourselves to expect less, or we must adapt to other worlds, and here is humanity's first big break, for we
live in a Solar System full of prime terraforming real estate

UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K
32

Future technological advances will ensure colonization of the
universe.

Kazan 2009, (Casey is editor of the Daily Galxan., Syndicated globally by
reuters news, Planet's Experts on Space Colonization -Our Future or
Fantasy?, April 16
th
)
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/about-us.html

Renowned science-fiction writer, Charlie Stross, argued last week in his High Frontier Redux blog that space colonization is not
in our future, not because it's impossible, but because to do so effectively you need either outrageous amounts of cheap energy, highly efficient robot
probes, or "a magic wand." "I'm going to take it as read that the idea of space colonization isn't unfamiliar," Stross opens his post, "domed cities on Mars, orbiting
cylindrical space habitats a la J. D. Bernal or Gerard K. O'Neill, that sort of thing. Generation ships that take hundreds of years to ferry colonists out to other star
systems where as we are now discovering there are profusions of planets to explore." "The obstacles facing us are immense distance and time -the scale factor
involved in space travel is strongly counter-intuitive." Stross adds that "Planets that are already habitable insofar as they orbit inside the habitable zone of their
star, possess free oxygen in their atmosphere, and have a mass, surface gravity and escape velocity that are not too forbidding, are likely to be somewhat rarer.
(And if there is free oxygen in the atmosphere on a planet, that implies something else the presence of pre-existing photosynthetic life, a carbon cycle, and a
bunch of other stuff that could well unleash a big can of whoop-ass on an unprimed human immune system." Stross sums up by saying that while "I won't rule out
the possibility of such seemingly-magical technology appearing at some time in the future in the absence of technology indistinguishable from magic that,
interstellar travel for human beings even in the comfort of our own Solar System is near-as-dammit a non-starter." Stross's blog received over 450 comments as of
this writing. The most prescient follows: "First, Stross's analysis fails to take into account future civilization types; I get the sense that he takes a normative
view of today's technological and economic realities and projects them into the future. This is
surprising, not only because he's an outstanding science fiction visionary, but also because he's a transhumanist who has a very good grasp on what awaits
humanity in the future. Specifically, he should be taking into account the possibility of post-Singularity, Drexlerian, Kardashev Type II civilizations. Essentially,
we're talking about post-scarcity civilizations with access to molecular assembling nanotechnology,
radically advanced materials, artificial superintelligence, and access to most of the
energy available in the solar system. "Stross also too easily dismisses how machine
intelligences, uploaded entities and AGI will impact on how space could be colonized. He speculates
about biological humans being sent from solar system to solar system, and complains of the psychological and social hardships that could be inflicted on an
individual or crew. He even speculates about the presence of extraterrestrial pathogens that undoubtedly awaits our daring explorers.
This is a highly unlikely scenario. Biological humans will have no role to play in space. Instead,
this work will be done by robots and quite possibly cyborgs (which is how the term 'cyborg' came to exist
in the first place)."
UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K
33

People inevitably underestimate technology. Greed and war
guarantee colonization.
Neil deGrasse Tyson 2006 [PhD in Astrophysics from Columbia. Member of the
Commission on the Implementation of the United States Space Exploration Policy From
Natural History Magazine, November 2006
http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/category/subjects/spacetravel]
On December 30, 1900, for its last Sunday paper of the nineteenth century, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle published a sixteen-page supplement headlined
THINGS WILL BE SO DIFFERENT A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE. The contributorsbusiness leaders, military men, pastors, politicians, and experts of every
persuasionimagined what housework, poverty, religion, sanitation, and war would be like in the year 2000. They enthused about the potential of electricity and
the automobile. There was even a map of the world-to-be, showing an American Federation comprising most of the Western Hemisphere from the lands above the
Arctic Circle down to the archipelago of Tierra del Fuegoplus sub-Saharan Africa, the southern half of Australia, and all of New Zealand. Most of the writers
portrayed an expansive future. But not George H. Daniels, a man of authority at the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, who peered into
his crystal ball and boneheadedly predicted: It is scarcely possible that the twentieth
century will witness improvements in transportation that will be as great as were those of the
nineteenth century. Elsewhere in his article, Daniels envisioned affordable global tourism and the diffusion of white bread to China and Japan. Yet
he simply couldn't imagine what might replace steam as the power source for ground transportation, let alone a vehicle moving through the air. Even though he
stood on the doorstep of the twentieth century, this manager of the world's biggest railroad system could not see beyond the automobile, the locomotive, and the
steamship. Three years later, almost to the day, Wilbur and Orville Wright made the first-ever series of powered, controlled,
heavier-than-air flights. By 1957 the U.S.S.R. launched the first satellite into Earth orbit. And in 1969 two Americans became the first
human beings to walk on the Moon. Daniels is hardly the only person to have misread the technological future. Even experts who aren't
totally deluded can have tunnel vision. On page 13 of the Eagle's Sunday supplement, the principal examiner at the U.S. Patent Office, W. W.
Townsend, wrote, The automobile may be the vehicle of the decade, but the air ship is the conveyance of the century. Sounds visionary, until you read further.
What he was talking about were blimps and zeppelins. Both Daniels and Townsend, otherwise well-informed citizens of a changing world,
were clueless about what tomorrow's technology would bring. Even the Wrights were guilty of doubt about the
future of aviation. In 1901, discouraged by a summer's worth of unsuccessful tests with a glider, Wilbur told Orville it would take another fifty years for someone to
fly. Nope: the birth of aviation was just two years away. On the windy, chilly morning of December 17, 1903, starting from a North Carolina sand dune called Kill
Devil Hill, Orville was the first to fly the brothers' 600-pound plane through the air. His epochal journey lasted twelve seconds and covered 120 feeta distance
just shy of the wingspan of a Boeing 757. Judging by what the mathematician, astronomer, and Royal Society gold medalist Simon Newcomb had published just
two months earlier, the flights from Kill Devil Hill should never have taken place when they did: Quite likely the twentieth century is destined to see the natural
forces which will enable us to fly from continent to continent with a speed far exceeding that of the bird. But when we inquire whether aerial flight is possible in the
present state of our knowledge; whether, with such materials as we possess, a combination of steel, cloth and wire can be made which, moved by the power of
electricity or steam, shall form a successful flying machine, the outlook may be altogether different. Some representatives of informed public opinion went even
further. The New York Times was steeped in doubt just one week before the Wright brothers went aloft in the original Wright Flyer. Writing on December 10,
1903not about the Wrights but about their illustrious and publicly funded competitor, Samuel P. Langley, an astronomer, physicist, and chief administrator of
the Smithsonian Institutionthe Times declared: We hope that Professor Langley will not put his substantial greatness as a scientist in further peril by continuing
to waste his time, and the money involved, in further airship experiments. Life is short, and he is capable of services to humanity incomparably greater than can be
expected to result from trying to fly. You might think attitudes would have changed as soon as people from several countries had made their first flights. But no.
Wilbur Wright wrote in 1909 that no flying machine would ever make the journey from New York to Paris. Richard Burdon Haldane, the British secretary of war,
told Parliament in 1909 that even though the airplane might one day be capable of great things, from the war point of view, it is not so at present. Ferdinand
Foch, a highly regarded French military strategist and the supreme commander of the Allied forces near the end of the First World War, opined in 1911 that
airplanes were interesting toys but had no military value. Late that same year, near Tripoli, an Italian plane became the first to drop a bomb. Early
attitudes about flight beyond Earth's atmosphere followed a similar trajectory. True, plenty of
philosophers, scientists, and sci-fi writers had thought long and hard about outer space. The sixteenth-century philosopher-friar Giordano Bruno proposed that
UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K
34

intelligent beings in habited an infinitude of worlds. The seventeenth-century soldier-writer Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac portrayed the Moon as a world with
forests, violets, and people. But those writings were fantasies, not blueprints for action. By the early twentieth century, electricity, telephones, automobiles, radios,
airplanes, and countless other engineering marvels were all becoming basic features of modern life. So couldn't earthlings build machines capable of space travel?
Many people who should have known better said it couldn't be done, even after the successful 1942 test launch of the world's first long-range ballistic missile:
Germany's deadly V-2 rocket. Capable of punching through Earth's atmosphere, it was a crucial step toward reaching the Moon. Richard van der Riet Woolley, the
eleventh British Astronomer Royal, is the source of a particularly woolly remark. When he landed in London after a thirty-six-hour flight from Australia, some
reporters asked him about space travel. It's utter bilge, he answered. That was in early 1956. In early 1957 Lee De Forest, a prolific
American inventor who helped birth the age of electronics, declared, Man will never reach the
moon, regardless of all future scientific advances. Remember what happened in late 1957? Not just one but two
Soviet Sputniks entered Earth orbit. The space race had begun. Whenever someone says an idea is bilge
(which, I suppose, is British for baloney), you must first ask whether it violates any well-tested laws of physics. If so,
the idea is likely to be bilge. If not, the only challenge is to find a clever engineerand, of
course, a committed source of funding. The day the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, a chapter of science fiction became science fact, and the future
became the present. All of a sudden, futurists went overboard with their enthusiasm. The delerium that technology would advance at lightning speed replaced the
delusion that it would barely advance at all. Experts went from having much too little confidence in the pace of technology to having much too much. And the
guiltiest people of all were the space enthusiasts. Commentators became fond of twenty-year intervals, within which some previously inconceivable goal would
supposedly be accomplished. On January 6, 1967, in a front-page story, The Wall Street Journal announced: The most ambitious U.S. space endeavor in the years
ahead will be the campaign to land men on neighboring Mars. Most experts estimate the task can be accomplished by 1985. The very next month, in its debut
issue, The Futurist magazine announced that according to long-range forecasts by the RAND Corporation, a pioneer think-tank, there was a 60 percent probability
that a manned lunar base would exist by 1986. In The Book of Predictions, published in 1980, the rocket pioneer Robert C. Truax forecast that 50,000 people
would be living and working in space by the year 2000. When that benchmark year arrived, people were indeed living and working in space. But the tally was not
50,000. It was three. The first crew of the International Space Station. All those visionaries (and countless others) never really grasped the forces that drive
technological progress. In Wilbur and Orville's day, you could tinker your way into major engineering advances. Their first airplane did not require a grant from the
National Science Foundation: they funded it through their bicycle business. The brothers constructed the wings and fuselage themselves, with tools they already
owned, and got their resourceful bicycle mechanic, Charles E. Taylor, to design and hand-build the engine. The operation was basically two guys and a
garage. Space exploration unfolds on an entirely different scale. The first moonwalkers were two guys, tooNeil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrinbut behind them
loomed the force of a mandate from an assassinated president, 10,000 engineers, $100 billion, and a Saturn V rocket. Notwithstanding the sanitized memories so
many of us have of the Apollo era, Americans were not first on the Moon because we're explorers by nature or because our country is committed to the pursuit of
knowledge. We got to the Moon first because the United States was out to beat the Soviet Union, to win the Cold War any way we could. John F. Kennedy made
that clear when he complained to top NASA officials in November 1962: I'm not that interested in space. I think it's good, I think we ought to know about it, we're
ready to spend reasonable amounts of money. But we're talking about these fantastic expenditures which wreck our budget and all these other domestic programs
and the only justification for it in my opinion to do it in this time or fashion is because we hope to beat them [the Soviet Union] and demonstrate that starting
behind, as we did by a couple of years, by God, we passed them. Like it or not, war (cold or hot) is the most powerful funding
driver in the public arsenal. When a country wages war, money flows like floodwaters. Lofty
goalssuch as curiosity, discovery, exploration, and sciencecan get you money for modest-size projects, provided they resonate with the political and cultural
views of the moment. But big, expensive activities are inherently long term, and require sustained investment that must survive economic fluctuations and changes
in the political winds.

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Space settlement could occur in 50 years.

Globus 2005
(Al, NASA Employee Visiting research associate at the Molecular Engineering Laboratory in the chemistry department of
the University of California at Santa Cruz, Space Settlement Basics, 9/22,
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/Basics/wwwwh.html)

< How long did it take to build New York? California? France? Even given ample funds the first settlement will take decades to construct. No one is building a
space settlement today, and there are no immediate prospects for large amounts of money, so the first settlement will be awhile. If Burt Rutan's prediction of
affordable orbital tourism in 25 years is correct, however, it's reasonable to expect the first orbital colony to be built
within about 50 years.
If the first settlement is designed to build additional settlements, colonization could
proceed quite rapidly. The transportation systems will already be in place and a large,
experienced workforce will be in orbit. >

The demands of survival make space colonization inevitable

Spudis 2004, (Paul is Principal Investigator in the Planetary Geology Program of the NASA, Office of Space
Science, Solar System Exploration Division and Senior Professional Staff, Johns Hopkins University Applied
Physics Laboratory, The Space Program and the Meaning of Life, August 4th)
http://www.spudislunarresources.com/Opinion_Editorial/The%20Space%20Program%20and%20the%20Meani
ng%20of%20Life.htm

We must not die out here on Earth. Our values, culture and ability to leave this planet set us apart as
a species. We have looked into the past and have seen the future of our world. Life
here on Earth is destined for extinction. By venturing forth beyond Earth, we can
ensure our survival. To extend and preserve humanity and human achievement, we
must advance new capabilities in space travel. The President has asked for $1 Billion
(about 0.0004 of the Federal budget) spread over the next four years, to begin this journey. As we
acquire capability with resources derived from the Moon and elsewhere, we will
create a spacefaring infrastructure. Does human life have a purpose? Our survival may give
us the answer. A journey beyond our Earthly cradle will take eons. Along the way, our species
will populate the universe and preserve our culture. This is our destiny. This is the
Vision.
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Human colonization of space is inevitableThe drive to survive and
expand prove.
Jim Pass, founder of Astrosociology.com, and Albert A. Harrison, Professor Emeritus, Psychology
Department, University of California Davis, 2007 [From Airports to Spaceports: An Astrosociological Model of Social
Change toward Spacefaring Societies, AAIA Space 2007 Conference and Exposition]

In examining these promotional forces, one may separate them into two distinct, though artificial categories: push forces
and pull forces.57 Push forces cause a population or portion thereof to move away from a particular
area. In the present context, it refers to moving from the Earth into outer space. Pull forces
are attractive phenomena that lure individuals and groups into space. First, humans
have been characterized, quite fairly, as exploring animals as we have
expanded into every ecological niche on Earth and stand poised to enter
space.58 Simple curiosity, a hope to find greener pastures, and applications of the tools of science to gain reliable
knowledge about the universe and our place within it all contribute further to space exploration. Space exploration,
starting with astronomy, seems to be a cultural universal for once societies have the scientific and technical capacity to
carry it out it then expands as new technology becomes available (e.g., rockets). 59 These types of
conditions represent pull forces. Second, there is the lure of space-based
resources: solar energy that might be harvested by orbiting facilities and then beamed to Earth; mining
asteroids, moons, and planets, and space commerce including
manufacturing and tourism. These abundant but not yet attainable resources become increasingly
attractive as we strip our home planet of its own resources. As Earths resources dwindle and
population soars these resources are likely to become increasingly powerful
motivators to move us beyond our home planet. Space resources and space program assets
can contribute toward the mitigation of social problems on the Earth.60 These are actually push forces
because they push individuals and groups away from our home planet
where our problems seem intractable. Solutions in space become increasingly attractive in
comparison. American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics 7 Third, space offers room for the
expansion of human populations far beyond any numbers that can be
supported on Earth. This is another push force. Although it is expensive and
very difficult to settle, the abundant availability of space may make it
possible to accommodate unlimited population growth. Generally, it is the bold and the
brave explorers and the military that break new ground. Traditionally, people who work the land and the merchants,
teachers, physicians, and other people who support them come later. Fourth, human dispersal beyond
Earth protects the human species and legacy against obliteration. Dispersed
throughout the solar system, humanity can survive cataclysmic events such
as major asteroid or comet impacts. Because ensuring the survival of the
human species is an attempt to solve a social problem, it is a push force.
Already we have launched space time capsules that will leave evidence of our existence and traces of our culture.61 These
include the Pioneer and Voyager probes bearing greetings from Earth, and radio messages beamed to the stars. Something
like a powerful BBC or Voice of America, such broadcasts may or may not alert distant civilizations to our presence and
culture. In any case, we are pushed into our solar system in an effort to disperse
our gene pool and prevent our species from extinction

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A2 Nature/Human Dualism Bad

Turn: Their impact assume we use constructions of nature to manage
it for human ends, but thats the status quo nature-replacing
technologies described in our impact turn.
The Seed evidence proves we solve their terminal impact by re-
establishing human conneciton to the cosmos.

Extend the Lee: Nature has value independent of humans, and this
strategic dualism is key to preventing the death of everything that
isnt human. Endless destruction of nature outweighs any of their
dualism bad arguments.

Even if theyre right, we still must recognize the distinction between
human artifacts and the natural world to avoid the total destruction
of the non-human

Modem science and its technology are predicated upon nature as the dualized other. Its goal of controlling nature presupposes the inferior status of the dualized
other. The successful execution of the modem scientific/technological program leads inexorably to the virtual extinction of that dualized other, On this view then,
the dualism between human and non-human may finally liquidate itself, if science and technology can in principle systematically and at a deep level transform the
natural to become the artefactual. We have seen that the artefactual is a human intentional structure, belonging to a different
ontological category from the natural, and that to transform the natural to become the artefactual
produces ontological impoverishment. Such impoverishment is thus an inevitable part of modern
anthropocentrism.
Dualism--and hence the scientific/technological program based on it--is unacceptable because it denigrates 'the Other' and leads
to its elimination both at the ontological and empirical levels. But one should not throw out the baby
with the bath water. To prevent ontological impoverishment and to save the natural from being systematically
transformed to become the artefactual, through the activities of homo faber, rightly requires throwing out
dualism, but not the very distinction itself between the natural and the artefactual. As
Plumwood has emphasized, differences should not be obliterated, distinctions not overlooked and respect for 'the
Other' should be based on the recognition of relevant differences, not necessarily of similarities."
Respect for nature in this deep sense requires two distinct ontological categories, the nonhuman and the
human. Far from de-emphasizing the differences between the latter and the former, this argument requires that their differences be put center stage. After
all, the present predicament arises primarily and precisely because humans as a species are so different from
other species on planet Earth--humans, given their peculiar kind of consciousness, brain and other capabilities, have evolved in such a way as to
possess, today, extremely powerful technologies with which they interact with the nonhuman environment. Moreover, as has
been argued, their science and technology enable them systematically to transform the natural to become the artefactual, thereby imperiling
the very existence of what is nonhuman.
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A2 Nature/Human Dualism Bad

We dont create a human-nature dichotomywe just say humans
shouldnt dominate nature
Katz 97
Institute of Technology, 1997 [Nature as Subject p. 137]

But this raises a second objection: the idea that "nature" and "humanity" are opposite points in a
power relationship tends to reinforce the very separation of humanity and nature that
an enlightened envi-ronmental policy seeks to overcome. It is surely one goal of the envi-roumental movement to end the
common belief that humans are separate from natural processes--to instill the ecological idea that humans are an interdependent part of the natura/system,
requiring a well-func-tioning natural environment to survive. But the notion of interdependence itself requires, at least
conceptually, the idea that there are separate entities that are, in fact, interrelated. To say that humans
are connected to natural processes requires an idea of a distinct human presence, a
distinct human ontology, that is, nevertheless, dependent on the "otherness" of the non-human natural world. It
is not a mistake to claim that humans can dominate nature, or that nature can dominate humanity,
even though they are inseparably related. As Don E. Marietta, Jr., once stated to me in conversation, the "sugar can
dominate the pudding"--even in the case where the blending of distinct elements forms a
harmonious unity, one element can dominate the whole.

The claim that everything humans do is natural is inanejust
because we emerged from natural processes doesnt justify us
destroying all of nature

Homes Rolston III, Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University, 2002
[Land Value Community p. 100-110]

Ought there to be any prairies saved for what they are in themselves, with a flourishing population of whooping cranes,
preserved as healthy nature apart from its healthy support of culture and agriculture? This question cannot be addressed without
specifying in more detail whose health is involved; and, sometimes at least, the health of wild natural ecosystems and their members may be at stake, not just that
of humans in their cultures. This again requires the forbidden distinguishing of nature from culture. The most we could do might be to include the cranes and the
wild prairies somewhere in our desires for quality of life. But if we had some other desires, the cranes and the prairies could go, assuming we kept the healthy
cornfields and wheat fields.
Nature differs from culture, and vice versa, in ways we need to specify. The problem is that, anxious not to
be a dualist, Callicott is not discriminating enough to see that although humans
evolve out of nature and its processes, they significantly evolve out of it. That can confuse him and others
into saying that humans are just natural because they are products of various natural laws and events operating through
evolutionary history, and because their origins were natural, they continue to be natural. But
that is to fall into a "nothing but" fallacy (more accurately, the genetic fallacy), which confuses what a thing
now essentially is with what its historical origins once were. It cannot take emergence seriously. Environmental philosophy needs
to see the difference in being human, and only after we get clear about that, do we also want to see the senses in which, although evolved out of it, culture has to
remain in relative harmony with nature.
Humans superimpose cultures on the wild nature out of which they once emerged with
radical innovations, leading to the contrast we regularly make in ordinary language, between the natural
and the artifacted, between a clam in the Great Barrier Reef and a Styrofoam cup in Chicago. The difference
in ordinary language is catching something significant, something of which we need to take account (regardless of whether one is a metaphysical naturalist).
Culture does introduce emergent novelties not previously present in wild nature.

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A2 Nature is a Social Construct

Extend the Lee: Nature has value independent of humans
construction. Even if perception of nature is social mediated, we must
give non-human existence independent value to prevent the death of
everything that isnt human.

Turn: Their impact assume we use constructions of nature to manage
it for human ends, but thats the status quo nature-replacing
technologies described in our impact turn.
The Seed evidence proves we solve their terminal impact by re-
establishing human conneciton to the cosmos.

The idea that nature is a social construct is anthropocentric. That fact
that we are humans does NOT foreclose recognizing the value of non-
human existence.
Lee 99
What needs pointing out immediately is that it is not clear what the thesis that nature necessarily is a social
construction really amounts to. Two things in particular are unclear: what constititues the thesis and what could be its target, witting or
unwitting? Take the latter question first. It appears to undermine any attempt on the part of environmental thinkers to
defend in any way the integrity of nature. If all accounts of nature are but mere human
representations, then in one important sense, there is nothing to defend apart from the human
interests behind these various representations. It thereby rules out any attempt to argue for non-
anthropocentrism, namely, that nature may be morally considerable irrespective of humans and their interests. It will be argued that the thesis does
not succeed if that were its (unwitting) objective.But what actually constitutes the thesis? As a general thesis, it seems itself to be a derivation from another which is
meant to be universal in scope, namely, that all definitions and meanings of terms, all categories are social constructions which in turn appears to be an implication
of the theory of deconstructionism.

The remarks which follow are concerned not so much with the generic thesis but when it is applied in the context of attempting
to elucidate the meanings of 'nature.' This more limited derivative is susceptible to at least four different interpretations which, unfortunately, upholders of the
thesis often fail to distinguish:
1. Any account is necessarily anthropogenic as only humans can engage in delineating terms and defining them in
certain ways and, therefore, humans are the source of all accounts.
4
However, defining terms is a linguistic activity; furthermore, human consciousness itself is
necessarily mediated via language. But language is public and social, not private and individual.
2. Any account is necessarily anthropocentric. As humans are beings which engage in delineating and defining terms in certain ways, these delineations
and definitions are bound, therefore, to be filtered through the human perspective, thereby reflectihg and embodying their interests, preferences or biases.
3. Any account necessarily reflects, embodies and, therefore, implicitly advances the interests, preferences or biases of particular groups in society.
Socially and politically, humans do not constitute a single group. On the contrary, they are fragmented into different groups which are delineated in terms of coloi,
gender, race, class, money, status, historical ages and periods, etc. An individual necessarily falls under more than one of the various groups thus constructed. Each
group may give its own account of nature, but the dominant account is that propagated by the most powerfnl group in social and political terms. In the global
context, that group today consists of those in charge of transnational corporations, the World Bank (and similar organizations), national governments including
key bodies like their central banks who are, in the main, males and white.
4. Any account of nature, whether anthropocentric or nonanthropocentric in character, is necessarily advanced by a particular individual or group
whose behavior or conduct, in turn, is necessarily socially and normatively constituted.
Under the first interpretation, the thesis that nature is socially constructed is true. However, it is but a truism and, therefore, innocuous. It
cannot as such undermine the possibility of articulating a critical epistemology and metaphysics
UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K
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A2 Nature is a Social Construct

concerning nature of which the delineation and definition of terms is a part. Language is the collective product of human consciousness which in
turn shapes and informs that consciousness. But as thought cannot be articulated without language, language in that sense lays down the limits of what can be said
at any particular time. But so long as this is not taken to imply that what can be said exhausts what is (and what can be thought), it remains innocuous--
language can be stretched via metaphors, the introduction of new terms minted from old or dreamed up afresh, etc., to enable
new thoughts and insights to be articulated, discussed and critically assessed. Under the second interpretation, the thesis appears to have failed to
distinguish between anthropocentric and anthropogenic. 'Anthropogenic' means 'caused, produced by humans' or that humans
are the source of something. 'Anthropocentric' means 'putting the interests, preferences of humans at the
center of things'--an anthropocentric worldview is one which celebrates only human achievements, promotes only human interests, preferences and values,
which always prioritizes human over nonhuman interests, or which claims humans alone to have intrinsic value while nonhumans are only of instrumental value to
humans?Failure to distinguish between the two notions makes it possible for the thesis to pass off
as a true one. A nonanthropocentric viewpoint can only be formulated and articulated by humans who possess language. Other nonhuman naturally-
occurring beings, without our unique type of consciousness, ex hypothesi, cannot do so. If these do have interests or embody certain values, then only humans can
say so on their behalf.

In this sense, any nonanthropocentric perspective or viewpoint is necessarily anthropogenic, just as any anthropocentric perspective or
viewpoint is also necessarily anthropogenic. 'Anthropocentric' is not the antonym of 'anthropogenic'; the antonym of the latter is 'nonanthropogenlc,' which means
'not caused, produced or generated by humans.'
The failure to grasp the distinction could also lead to the following reasoning: as humans alone are capable of articulating interests or preferences, the only
interests or preferences they can articulate are those which directly concern themselves only. From an anthropogenic premise, an anthropocentric conclusion is
derived. But the reasoning as it stands is unsound. The conclusion does not necessarily follow unless it akeady presupposes that only beings which are capable of
articulating their interests or preferences via linguistic categories are morally considerable beings. This additional premise would then role out nonhuman beings
from the domain of moral considerability, as they necessarily cannot articulate their interests or preferences.
7
It also follows that, ceteris paribus, morally
considerable beings alone would enjoy fights protecting their interests or preferences, or are owed duties by fellow morally considerable beings not to have those
interests trampled upon. But beings which are not morally considerable neither have rights against morally considerable beings nor do morally considerable beings
owe them any direct duties to safeguard their unarticulated interests or preferences. At best morally considerable beings owe them indirect
duties." But the additional premise and its implications are precisely those which nonanthropocentrists, of one sort or another, strenuously challenge.
Furthermore, once the clarifications made. above have been grasped, it is clear that not all accounts of nature are socially
constructed in the sense of necessarily advancing anthropocentric interests and values. Some accounts
are distinctly nonanthtopocentric, including the one advanced in this book. These deny, each in its own ways, that humans alone are morally considerable, that
human interests necessarily trump nonhuman ones in all conflicts between the two~ Each affirms, in its own ways, the
moral standing of nonhuman nature and pleads that nature or their targeted bit of nature be treated by fellow humans with respect because of their moral
considerability. As such, the thesis under scrutiny is simply false.

We dont create a human-nature dichotomyhumans can dominate
nature even if we are connected to it
Eric Katz, Director of Science, Technology, and Society Program at the New
Jersey Institute of Technology, 1997
[Nature as Subject p. 137]

But this raises a second objection: the idea that "nature" and "humanity" are opposite points in a
power relationship tends to reinforce the very separation of humanity and nature that
an enlightened envi-ronmental policy seeks to overcome. It is surely one goal of the envi-roumental movement to end the
common belief that humans are separate from natural processes--to instill the ecological idea that humans are an interdependent part of the natura/system,
requiring a well-func-tioning natural environment to survive. But the notion of interdependence itself requires, at least
conceptually, the idea that there are separate entities that are, in fact, interrelated. To say that humans
are connected to natural processes requires an idea of a distinct human presence, a
distinct human ontology, that is, nevertheless, dependent on the "otherness" of the non-human natural world. It
is not a mistake to claim that humans can dominate nature, or that nature can dominate humanity,
even though they are inseparably related. As Don E. Marietta, Jr., once stated to me in conversation, the "sugar can
dominate the pudding"--even in the case where the blending of distinct elements forms a
harmonious unity, one element can dominate the whole.

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A2 Other Universes

1. They destroy a great deal of natural existence in this universe,
which outweighs the magnitude of extinction on Earth. Even if there
are other universes, this doesnt justify destroying this one.

2. We are controlling the uniqueness there is no potential in other
universes, because they are being consumed by our current universe.
Merali, 2k8. (Zeeya New Scientist, March 27, Could bubble universes
threaten human existence? Online.)

IT IS the ultimate neighbour from hell: a rogue "bubble" universe that could rip
into our world at any time and eat us and everything else in a flash. Eduardo
Guendelman at Ben Gurion University in Beer-Sheva, Israel and Nobuyuki Sakai
at Yamagata University in Japan discovered that our universe might face this
gruesome end as they were investigating how patches of space-time expand.
Alternatively, our universe could be the one feasting on its neighbours right now.

3. They dont read any evidence that these alternate universes posses
the same diversity of non-living existence that ours posses, so we
outweigh.

4. Vote Negative on Presumption even if they win this argument it
means that other universes would non-unique their impact, which
warrants a negative ballot.

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A2 Trans-Humanity Solves

1. This is irrelevant posthumans will still lead to the death of the
natural through nature-replacing technology.

2. The post-human leads to the total triumph of anthropocentrism
this is impacted on the speciesism debate.
John Sanbonmatsu, Asst Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the Worcester
Polytechnic Institute, 2004
[The Postmodern Prince p. 206-207]

The neologism metahumanism intentionally conveys a contradiction or tension.
By emphasizing metahumanism, I am suggesting that we must go "beyond" the
anthropocentrism of the traditional liberal, humanist project. And this we can
only do by incorporating the nonhuman other into our conception of "the human." This theme,
which I develop through an outline of ethical practice grounded in attentiveness to othering, is the main
focus of this chapter. At the same time, by metahumanism I am also intentionally claiming a certain
continuity with the Enlightenment, "progressive" tradition and ideal of a harmonious social order rooted in a
positive account of our natural capacities and qualities as human beings.
Ontology has been in the news lately. Scientists have begun to arrogate to
themselves godlike powers, creating entirely novel kinds of
species in the lab, inserting rogue DNA (taken from other plants ~r a mals) directly into the ova of animals.
New beings-in-the-world are being summoned into existence by the cunning of Reason, "thrown" into alien
and aseptic machine world where they typically arrive chronicllya ill or disabled, disoriented, and utterly
isolated from all other beings the universe. Still other scientists and entrepreneurs are reengineering
our own species being at the physical, genetic level, charting the human genetic
code in order to effect the ultimate reduction of the individual human being-or
"its" parts--to the status of a designer commodity. Adorno once wrote: "In the midst of
standardized, organized human units the individual persists .... But he is in reality no more than: mere
function of his own uniqueness, an exhibition piece, like the fellow that once drew the wonderment and
laughter of children's Now, we see, the uniqueness of the human species has been put on display as an
exhibition piece (the genome) and is threatened with extinction.
Meanwhile, in the Western academy, cultural studies theorists and other academic intellectuals hold conferences celebrating our so-ca1led post-human times,
singing the virtues of cyborgs, prosthetics, and bio-engineering. Post-humanism is merely the
latest in a string of commodity concepts spun off by academic industrialists to shore up the crumbling appearance
of use value in their work. Yet the significance of the discourse, I think, is far greater than this alone would suggest. With the arrival of post-humanism we
may fast be approaching zero hour of the critical tradition. With the subject as such now
placed sous rature (under erasure), but this time not merely by clever critics by scientists who literally manipulate
the stuff our dreams of ourselves are made of, even the poststructuralist project self-destructs, as destruction is
rendered irrelevant by the fragmentation of the ontolog unity of Dasein. This may seem a trivial point, but critical theory is already dangerously in
collusion with the final obliteration of things "human" by capital.
UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K
43

The transhuman would be just another product of human technology.
You should distinguish between nature and human artificats, and give
greater to the diversity of non-human existence they would they
destroy.
Lee 99


Modem science and its technology are predicated upon nature as the dualized other. Its
goal of controlling nature presupposes the inferior status of the dualized other. The
successful execution of the modem scientific/technological program leads inexorably to
the virtual extinction of that dualized other, On this view then, the dualism between
human and non-human may finally liquidate itself, if science and technology can in
principle systematically and at a deep level transform the natural to become the
artefactual. We have seen that the artefactual is a human intentional structure, belonging
to a different ontological category from the natural, and that to transform the natural to
become the artefactual produces ontological impoverishment. Such impoverishment is
thus an inevitable part of modern anthropocentrism.
Dualism--and hence the scientific/technological program based on it--is unacceptable
because it denigrates 'the Other' and leads to its elimination both at the ontological and
empirical levels. But one should not throw out the baby with the bath water. To
prevent ontological impoverishment and to save the natural from being systematically
transformed to become the artefactual, through the activities of homo faber, rightly
requires throwing out dualism, but not the very distinction itself between the natural and
the artefactual. As Plumwood has emphasized, differences should not be obliterated,
distinctions not overlooked and respect for 'the Other' should be based on the
recognition of relevant differences, not necessarily of similarities."
Respect for nature in this deep sense requires two distinct ontological categories, the
nonhuman and the human. Far from de-emphasizing the differences between the latter
and the former, this argument requires that their differences be put center stage. After
all, the present predicament arises primarily and precisely because humans as a species
are so different from other species on planet Earth--humans, given their peculiar kind of
consciousness, brain and other capabilities, have evolved in such a way as to possess,
today, extremely powerful technologies with which they interact with the nonhuman
environment. Moreover, as has been argued, their science and technology enable them
systematically to transform the natural to become the artefactual, thereby imperiling the
very existence of what is nonhuman.

UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K
44

Post-humans will be more aggressive and violent.
Sailer 2k Human Biodiversity Institute President, 00 <Steve, The Future of
Human Nature, National Post 1/29/2000 http://www.isteve.com/Future-of-
Human-Nature.htm>
Otherwise, free-market eugenics will brings us a human race that's the utter
opposite of the sexless, altruistic eggheads of the sci-fi movies. Note how many
affluent California families are holding their little boys back for a second year of
kindergarten. This is so their sons will be bigger, stronger, smarter, more athletic,
and more socially dominant than the other kids in their classes. How much do you think these couples
would pay for the genetic enhancements that would allow their scions to continue to rule as alpha males as adults? In
Beyond This Horizon, the great Robert A. Heinlein's prescient 1942 novel about a genetically engineered future, the world
is populated by highly intelligent but extremely sexy people straight out of a Hollywood casting call. The men are manly
and the ladies lovely. The men are so macho in fact, that no gentleman would be seen without his gun, and duels are
fought daily. Obsessed by equality, bioethicists and other intellectuals today fret most that
the new genetic technologies will let rich parents buy their kids higher IQs. Yet,
considering the coming tidal wave of testosterone that the same techniques are
likely to unleash, I suspect we're going to need all the smarts we can get to keep
the bellicose boys of the future from blowing up the world just to hear the bang.
UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K
45

Post Humanity will not save us from human nature
Smil 2k2 ,
Geography Professor University of Manitoba, 02
<Vaclav, The future: perfect or posthuman? Two scientists different visions of a
bioengineered world
Natural History, Sept, 2002
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_7_111/ai_91040475#continue >

But both books suffer from too much speculation; the actual outcome may not resemble
either of the two visions. The fate of nuclear energy, a technique initially seen as no less a
profound transformer of civilization than bioengineering is today, provides a revealing
analogy. More than half a century after its liberation, nuclear energy does not energize
everything in our civilization, but it has not destroyed it either. The invention has been
useful: nuclear weapons helped keep the global peace during the cold war, and fission
reactors now generate nearly a fifth of the world's electricity. But the invention has also
brought enormous worries about proliferation, accidents, terrorist attacks, and long-
term disposal of wastes. And so it may be with genetic engineering: its tools may
in the long run prove much less powerful than they seem today, and our
worries much exaggerated. Fifty years from now, we may live with a mixture
of welcome benefits, perilous side effects, and continuing concerns--being
no closer to the resolution of that grand challenge of just being human.
UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K
46
A2 Aliens are Smart Enough to Avoid Destruction

Even if true, they still destroy a great deal of non-human existence
that has value. Even if some aliens could escape the disaster, theres
no way non-intelligent ones would escape and certainly Mars could
NOT escape terafforming.

The Localized Nature of Science means that alien life will be unable to
respond in time.
Basalla, History Professor University of Delaware, 05 <George, Civilized Life in the
Universe: Scientists on Extraterrestrials, pg 177>

When philosopher Nicholas Rescher was asked to comment on Drakes
notion of alien science, he dismissed it as infinitely parochial. It was like
saying that extraterrestrials share our legal or political system. Rescher was
well qualified to examine Drakes claims. He had recently studied the
anthropomorphic character of human science and how it related to alien science.
Rescher struck at the heart of the popular conception of alien science when
he challenged the widely held view that there is only one natural world and a
single science to explain it. He called this the one world, one science argument. The
physical universe is singular, Rescher agreed, but its interpreters are many and
diverse. What we know about physical reality stems from our special
biological and cognitive make-up and our unique cultural and social
heritage and experiences. We have no reason to suppose that extraterrestrials share our
peculiar biological attributes, social outlook, or cultural traditions. Human science,
therefore, is incommensurable with extraterrestrial science. If extraterrestrials
cultivate science, it will be their kind of science, not our kind. Alien science is a wholly
different form of knowledge. It is not human science raised to a higher degree. Rescher
offered a compelling illustration of how human biology and our situation on Earth
shaped our science. Astronomy as practiced by humans has been molded by the
fact that we live on the surface of the Earth (not underwater), that we have
eyes, and that the development of agriculture is linked to the seasonal
positions of celestial objects. Intelligent alien creatures living in an oceanic abyss
might develop sophisticated hydrodynamics but fail to study the motion of heavenly
bodies, investigate electromagnetic radiation, or build radio telescopes. Even if
extraterrestrials are surface dwellers, their biological endowment will
determine what they are able to sense, their ecological niche, what aspects
of nature they exploit to satisfy their needs, their cultural heritage, which
questions about nature they find interesting to ask. Rescher acknowledges the
existence of intelligent extraterrestrials who possess the ability to develop science and
technology. He does not dispute the scientists repeated claims (1) that there is a single
scientifically knowable physical reality and (2) that aliens are not simply other humans
inhabiting a different planet. After adopting these claims, he demolishes the idea of a
universal science that serves as a common language in the universe. Rescher
maintains that wherever science exists in the universe, it will be localized.
UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K
47
A2 Aliens Will Destroy the Universe

If aff read no aliens ev concede and cross-apply

We control probability. We dont know what the alien species are
doing and we cant assume the worst of them. However, we do know
that the human race sucks and will destroy natural existence.

This argument can never be offensive. To solve for aliens, humans
would have to first destroy and replace all non-human existence. You
should vote to keep the universe going as long as possible, which
means you should avoid humans destruction of it.

The Localized Nature of Science makes their impact unknowable
Basalla, History Professor University of Delaware, 05 <George, Civilized Life in
the Universe: Scientists on Extraterrestrials, pg 177>
When philosopher Nicholas Rescher was asked to comment on Drakes notion of alien science, he dismissed
it as infinitely parochial. It was like saying that extraterrestrials share our legal or political system. Rescher
was well qualified to examine Drakes claims. He had recently studied the anthropomorphic character of
human science and how it related to alien science. Rescher struck at the heart of the popular
conception of alien science when he challenged the widely held view that there is
only one natural world and a single science to explain it. He called this the one
world, one science argument. The physical universe is singular, Rescher agreed,
but its interpreters are many and diverse. What we know about physical reality
stems from our special biological and cognitive make-up and our unique cultural
and social heritage and experiences. We have no reason to suppose that
extraterrestrials share our peculiar biological attributes, social outlook, or
cultural traditions. Human science, therefore, is incommensurable with
extraterrestrial science. If extraterrestrials cultivate science, it will be their kind of science, not our
kind. Alien science is a wholly different form of knowledge. It is not human science raised to a higher degree.
Rescher offered a compelling illustration of how human biology and our situation on Earth shaped our
science. Astronomy as practiced by humans has been molded by the fact that we live on the surface of the
Earth (not underwater), that we have eyes, and that the development of agriculture is linked to the seasonal
positions of celestial objects. Intelligent alien creatures living in an oceanic abyss might develop
sophisticated hydrodynamics but fail to study the motion of heavenly bodies, investigate electromagnetic
radiation, or build radio telescopes. Even if extraterrestrials are surface dwellers, their
biological endowment will determine what they are able to sense, their ecological
niche, what aspects of nature they exploit to satisfy their needs, their cultural heritage, which questions
about nature they find interesting to ask. Rescher acknowledges the existence of intelligent extraterrestrials
who possess the ability to develop science and technology. He does not dispute the scientists repeated
claims (1) that there is a single scientifically knowable physical reality and (2) that aliens are not simply
other humans inhabiting a different planet. After adopting these claims, he demolishes the idea of a
universal science that serves as a common language in the universe. Rescher maintains that wherever
science exists in the universe, it will be localized.
UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K
48
A2 Omega Point

Turn: They reinforce human supremacy by claiming that humans are
the end-point of cosmic evolution, making everything else just a
reflection of human awesomeness.

They dont solve our impact because humans will still re-engineer
everything through simulations, destroying the autonomy of natural
existence. Extend the Lee evidence that it is the ability of nature to
exist and develop without us that is key to its value.

Their fantasy of human existence separated us from our bodies is the
eptimoe of anthropocentric dualism.
GRIFFIN, 1984
Susan, received a MacArthur grant for Peace and International Cooperation, an NEA Fellowship, and an Emmy Award for
the play Voices. Ideologies of Madness, Exposing Nuclear Phallacies pg 75-83
Newtonian physics continued the old dualism, but Einsteinian physics does not. When Einstein discovered the formula that eventually led to the development of
the atomic bomb, what he saw was a continuum between matter and energy, instead of a separation. What we call solid matter is not solid, nor is it static. Matter is,
instead, a process of continual change. There is no way to divide the energy of this motion from the physical property of matter. What is more, energy has mass.
And not only is there no division between matter and energy as such, but to divide any single entity from any other single entity becomes an impossibility. No
particular point exists where my skin definitely ends and the air in the atmosphere begins and this atmosphere
ends and your skin begins. We are all in a kind of field together. And finally, with the new physics, the old line
between subject and object has also disappeared. According to Heisenbergs Principle of Uncertainty, whatever we
observe we change through our participation. Objectivity with its implied superiority and control has
also vanished. One might imagine that with the disappearance of a scientific basis for dualism and the appearance of a physical view that is unified and
whole a different philosophy might arise, one which might help us make peace with nature. But instead what this civilization chose to do
with this new insight was to find a way to separate matter from energy (it is spoken of as liberating the
energy from the atom). And this separation has in turn produced a technology of violence which has divided the world into two separate camps who regard each
other as enemies. The real enemy, however, in dualistic thinking, is hidden: the real enemy is ourselves. The same dualism which imagines matter
and energy to be separate also divides human nature, separating what we call our material existence from consciousness.
This dualism is difficult to describe without using dualistic language. Actually, the mind cannot be separated from the
body. The brain is part of the body, and is affect by blood flow, temperature, nourishment, muscular
movement. The order and rhythm of the body, bodily metaphors, are reflect in the medium of thought, in our
patterns of speech. Yet, we conceive of the mind as separate and above the body. And through a subtle process of socialization since birth, we learn to
regard the body and our natural existence as something inferior, and without intelligence. Most of
the rules of polite behavior are designed to conceal the demands of the body. We excuse ourselves, and refer to our bodily functions through euphemism. From this
dualistic frame of mind two selves are born: one acknowledged and one hidden. The acknowledged self identifies with spirit, with intellect, with what we imagine is
free of the influence of natural law. The hidden self is part of nature, earthbound, inextricable from the matrix of physical existence. We have become
very seriously alienated from this denied self. So seriously that our alienation has become a kind of self-hatred, and this self-hatred is
leading us today toward the suicidal notion of nuclear combat. Of course, the body and mind are not separate. And ironically, the warfare incipient between our
ideas of who we are and who we really are is made more intense through this unity. Consciousness cannot exclude bodily knowledge. We are
inseparable from nature, dependent on the biosphere, vulnerable to the processes of natural law. We cannot destroy
the air we breath without destroying ourselves. We are reliant on one another for our survival. We are all mortal. And this knowledge comes to
us, whether we want to receive it or not, with every breath. The dominant philosophies of this civilization have attempted to
posit a different order of being over and against this bodily knowledge. According to this order of being, we are separate from nature
and hence above natural process. In the logic of this order, we are meant to dominate nature, control life, and in some
sense felt largely unconsciously, avoid the natural event of death. Yet, in order to maintain a belief in this hierarchy one must repress
bodily knowledge. And this is no easy task. Our own knowledge of our own natural existence comes to us not only with every breath, but with hunger, with
intimacy, with dreams, with all the unpredictable eventualities of life. Our imagined superiority over nature is constantly challenged by consciousness itself.
Consciousness emergence from and is immersed in material experience Consciousness is not separated from perception, which is not to sensuality, and as such
cannot be separated from matter. Even through the process of the most abstract thought, we cannot entirely forget that we are part of
nature. In the biosphere nothing is ever entirely lost. Death itself is not an absolute end, but rather a
transformation. What appears to be lost in a fire becomes heat and ash.

UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K
49

A2 Omega Point

The Omega Point is highly speculative and would require a drastic
change in consciousness. Overcoming human subordination of other
ecologies is a prerequisite to solving

NIKITA N.MOISEEV, senior academician and member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1999
[The Biosphere and the Noosphere Reader P 170-172]
The ideas put forward by Teilhard de Chardin and Vernadsky about the noosphere were not absolutely identical. Their interests, too, as researchers and thinkers,
likewise did not coincide. Teilhard de Chardin pro- claimed the principle of the unity of humankind, a principle that called for the overcoming of racial
prejudice, individual- ism and a number of other faults of contemporary society. In affirming these principles, nevertheless, he came closer than
Vernadsky to the rationalist view of the world. At times he even took up the position of an observer discussing
humankinds movement towards some final omega, at which point there would occur the complete
fusion of human- kindreason, will and egointo a united whole. He regarded that final state as the end of human
development, the end of its evolutionary path. And yet a number of features of social dynamics and the development of the biosphere in recent decades are not
touched on in his general philosophical analysis. I think his abstraction from contemporary realities and the attempt to see not just over the horizon but to
glimpse in the distance the end of the worlds is a consequence of his education as a thinker and of the religious slant of his mind. Vernadsky had a more
constructive tem- perament, although he was far from attempting to formulate any kind of programme for the study of ways of moving from the biosphere to
the noosphere. At the same time, he realised that this change could not occur noosphere. He was thinking of the approaching victory over Nazi Germany and,
consequently, as he thought, over all the evil that was hindering the application of the principles of humanism on which the idea of the noosphere was based.
The post- war period, the advent of which seemed to Vernadsky the beginning of a triumph of
reason, opening the way to the noosphere for the human race. As we now know, the
reality turned out to be more complex and grim. Before beginning to build the sphere of reason we still have a difficult and painful
road to tread, a road that means the reinterpretation of all mans previous experience. We still have to understand the need for it and work to bring it about. This
why I prefer to speak not so much about the noosphere as about a new state of the biosphere, and to use the age of the noosphere to describe a time when we
shall be able to direct the development of the biosphere, a development that will guarantee the future of the human race, i.e. the co- evolution of nature and
society. Entry into the age of the noosphere will not be automatic; it is a special, lengthy and
purposeful process. At the same time, there is no alternative to it: humankind and civilisation cannot have a future outside the noosphere. It is a
case of eitheror! Either we start along the road leading to the age of the noosphere or there will occur in the shorter or longer run the degradation of human
society, even if society manages to exclude war from the means of settling conflicts. There is no third path! THE ECOLOGICAL IMPERATIVE We have come to
understand a lot in the last few
decades. Science has very substantially widened its horizons. Today we are able to discover the properties of the universe and how it came into being and
reconstruct the history of our planet, life on it, the emergence of the human species and the establishment of society much more fully than Vernadsky and
Teilhard de Chardin were able to do. The word that most of all holds the key to the future, nevertheless, was uttered by them, and that word is noosphere. In
recent years, we have come to understand that entering the age of the noosphere requires the practical reconstruction of the
worldwide order and the establishment of a new thinking, a new scale of values and a new morality. The theory of
the noosphere is today taking a new course. From being a theory of a primarily general scientific and philosophical nature, it is gradually becoming the theory of
the development of the noosphere, which studies possible strategies for the transition of society to the age of the noosphere. Its first stage is to define the
permissible limits of human activity. The human species, like every living species, has interfered, is inter- fering and will interfere in
the structure of the biosphere. This process now occurs spontaneously in response to the prompting of human interests, but they are
not the interests of humankind as a whole: they are the interests of groups or even individuals. We now know that there is some kind of
forbidden limit beyond which people may not go in any circumstances. Beyond it begin irrevers-
ible processes that will convert the biosphere to a new state in which there may be no room for people. The risk of forfeiting the future is far too great to allow the human race to cross that
boundary. We still know very little, however, about that boundaryfar too little to make practical recommendations. We do know something, nevertheless. We know, for example, that nuclear
wars are quite inadmis- sible, as are any large-scale wars in general, since the power of modern weaponry is hundreds and maybe even thousands of times greater than that of the weaponry that
ended fifty million lives in the last world war. And as any small war can always easily become a big war, any means of resolving conflicts by force must be excluded from the array of means for
their settlement. There must be other prohibitions too, however. The future of the race is also threatened by the pollution of the atmosphere and the sea, by the overpopulation of Third World
countries, by the reduction of genetic variety, and by the raising of the mean temperature of the Earth as a result of higher con- centrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and of the
production of manufactured energy. There is much, much else besides. This means that peoples activity cannot follow the principle of laissez-faire: it must be subject to many prohibitions,
most of which still have to be established. These prohibitions form the ecological imperative, one of the most important phenomena of modern times. Defining the
conditions of the ecological imperative must be one of the main tasks of contemporary science. The
limits to what is permissible will, of course, be continually clarified and changed as techniques and technology improve. I am profoundly con- vinced that, as
science develops, people will come to know the limits of the fateful boundary as fully as is necessary. Nevertheless, gaining knowledge of the
ecological imperative is just the first step and the first of the tasks we have to accomplish on our way towards
the age of the noosphere. The next and far more difficult task is already facing us, namely where are the guarantees that society, even if it
knows where the edge of the abyss is to be found, will never-theless not step into it? This, indeed, is the crucial problem of modern times.
UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K
50
A2 Omega Point

The Omega point is foolish speculation
Schermer 02,
teaches history of science, technology, and evolutionary thought, Occidental College,
<Michael, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition & Other
Confusions of Our Time pg 268-269>
The If-Then Argument Problem. Tiplers theory runs something like this: If the density
parameter is greater than I and thus the universe is closed and will collapse; if the
Bekenstein bound is correct; if the Higgs boson is 220 20 GeV if humans do not cause
their own extinction before developing the technology to permanently leave the planet; if
humans leave the planet; if humans develop the technology to travel interstellar
distances at the required speeds; if humans find other habitable planets; if humans
develop the technology to slow down the collapse of the universe; if humans do not
encounter forms of life hostile to their goals; if humans build a computer that
approaches omniscience and omnipotence at the end of time; if Omega/God wants to
resurrect all previous lives; if... ; then his theory is right. The problem is obvious: if any
one of these steps fails, the entire argument collapses. What if the density parameter is
less than 1 and the universe expands forever (as some evidence indicates it will)? What if
we nuke or pollute ourselves into oblivion? What if we allocate resources to problems on
Earth instead of to space exploration? What if we encounter advanced aliens who intend
to colonize the galaxy and Earth, thus dooming us to slavery or extinction? No matter
how rational, an if-then argument without empirical data to support each step in the
argument is more philosophy (or protoscience or science fiction) than it is science. Tipler
has created an extremely rational argument for God and immortality. Each step follows
from the previous step. But so many of the steps might be wrong that the theory is
essentially speculative.

Even Tipler admits there is no solid evidence for the Omega Point
Schermer 02,
teaches history of science, technology, and evolutionary thought, Occidental College,
<Michael, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition & Other
Confusions of Our Time pg 268>

The Hope Springs Eternal Problem. On the first page of the Physics of Immortality,
Tipler claims that his Omega Point Theory is a testable physical theory for an
omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God who will one day in the far future resurrect
every single one of us to live in an abode which is in all essentials the Judeo-Christian
Heaven and that if any reader has lost a loved one, or is afraid of death, modern
physics says: Be comforted, you and they shall live again. So, everything we always
believed to be true based on faith turns out to be true based on physics. What are the
chances? Not good, I am afraid. And, after 305 pages of concise and cogent
argumentation, Tipler finally admits, The Omega Point Theory is a viable scientific
theory of the future of the physical universe, but the only evidence in its favor at the
moment is theoretical beauty. Beauty by itself does not make a theory right or wrong,
but when a theory fulfills our deepest wishes we should be especially cautious about
rushing to embrace it. When a theory seems to match our eternal hopes, chances are
that it is wrong.
UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K
51
A2 Then Kill yourself

This argument is irrelevant. Were saying the status quo is better than
the aff, so vote for the status quo.

Killing two people isnt enough. We need extinction. The argument is
not that individual death is good, but that there must be a die-off of
human race. We need specicide.

This doesnt undermine our position
Fotion 76
Professor of Philosophy Emory, 76 <Nick, All Humans Ought to be Eliminated Ethics,
Vol. 87, No. 1. (Oct., 1976), pp. 87-95. JSTORE, pg 88>

Being clear about the status of the misanthropes position is, then, a kind of test case for
settling the issue between certain kinds of naturalists, on the one side, and the
prescriptivists (among others), on the other side. But before proceeding with this test
case, it is advisable to get three preliminary objections to the misanthropes position out
of the way. For one, it might be objected that the misanthropes position is absurd simply
because he, as its main advocate, is still alive. If he really thinks his theory is correct, why
has he not set us a good example by having done himself in? Needless to say, our
misanthrope has a quick and effective answer to that question. After all, he says, what
would I accomplish by doing myself in now? At this time, very few people understand
what I am saying. I am needed now as an advocate of the Misanthrope Doctrine or, if not
that, as one of the instruments of cosmic justice on the Final Day.

UTNIF 2011 ANTHRO K
52
A2 Wipeout Contradicts Anthro K

Thats covered in the overview. We are making an if-then. We say
embrace the status quo even if the consequences are bad because of
our ethic. If they win util good, we also have impact turns.

Turn: wipeout and the kritik are mutually reinforcing because we
think wipeout is a performative demonstration of the contradictions
inherent to a non-speciest consequentialism.

Theres no abuse because we dont use the fact that theyre answering
wipeout as a link to our kritik.

Death of The Natural Kritik

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