Many people consider anthropogenic extinction immoral and the ongoing human-caused mass extinction event to be an urgent moral crisis. But let's suppose you we

Many people consider anthropogenic extinction immoral and the ongoing human-caused mass extinction event to be an urgent moral crisis. But let's suppose you were going to take a cynical argument along the lines of "these species are going extinct due to their poor adaptations to a changing environment, it's just evolution," or let's just say you think moral objections are irrational. Then from this (ignorant and needlessly cruel) perspective, - the destruction of the Amazon is likely to have profound climatological/geochemical impacts, including increased C02 in the atmosphere - widespread defaunation of predators could very well lead to increased pests or disease-carrying animals - loss of insect life could be catastrophic to industrial agriculture - overharvested fishing and agricultural resources means diminshing returns (and possibly famine) for future generations More generally, the destruction we've wrought upon the world in the last 150 years is scientifically uncharted territory, and it's deeply naïve to assume that 150 years of strong economic growth can be extrapolated to suppose that destroying the planet will work out for humans in the long term.