ON GREEN NAIVETY
Letter to Econews April 1990
Every party seems to have its equivalent of the loony left or raving right or slippery centre; we have the 'deep greens' - if Bob Finch's letter (in No. 50) is anything to go by.
What meaningful 'equality of status' can there be between our species and all the other species? What sort of 'equality of status' is it that we grant to the other species? The use of the word 'grant' implies the option to withhold. The reality of unequal status is in the the patent truth that the future of life on this planet (which is the only life of which we have any knowledge) is in our collective human hands and (I as a humanist would say) in no other. Vacuouus slogans like 'equality of status' are no substitute for our proper respect, and indeed reverence, for the compulsions and constraints upon us that our environment imposes. Other species cannot be said to be aware of what is at stake. We need them; they do not need us. We know this (or should do); they do not and cannot know it.
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