4 ms·

Oh but we devastated natural populations through farming. According to the IPCC, humans have transformed _more than 70%_ of all ice-free land if you take stuff

• graderjs 6y ago
  I don't doubt that. And I definitely think farming can do much better in many ways, and that improvements in agritech can make a huge impact for humans and Earth's ecosystem. I still feel that using the land like this, even when it destroys natural habitats (which is very undesirable), and farming animals for food, is still a much better use of land and animals, than the "let's hunt a natural population from 7 tribes down to 4 tribes for our trinkets, aha!" Elephants are intelligent and social and I guess I feel sadder about them being slaughtered like this, than about fish dying as a result of an oil spill, tho that's still pretty sad for me. If we were farming elephants for meat, or even tusks, and we went about it in the most humane way possible, along with supporting and not interfering with their natural populations as much as possible, I still might think that's wrong, but I wouldn't feel nearly so sad about it. I just think these elephants had real lives, nothing to do with these humans, and we slaughtered them for stupid trinkets. What gives us the right? To me, it's an example of the kind of gratuitous cruelty humans are expert at. I don't just feel sad for the elephants, I feel sad for us.