Hi i need help

Question

hi i ned eassy or argument in this  wild animals are waste of resources, do you agree with this statement?

Haoqide · Accepted Answer

I'll give you a short argument...

I disagree. I'm assuming that the argument that wild animals are a waste of resources includes the argument that their habitats are a waste of resources as well...In my opinion, wild animals and their habitats are a resource in themselves. Many diseases or conditions from which we humans suffer have been either cured or helped by the study of animals and their habitats. Many, many of the products and inventions mankind has come up with are just copies of what it finds in nature, in the animals and their habitats. For example, scientists are studying the "lightning bug" in order to find out how to make lightbulbs more efficient in their use of energy. Lightning bugs are around 99% efficient in that 99% of their energy is given off as light rather than heat, which is far, far superior to the way lightbulbs work. That's just one example. I'm sure there are many more, but that's all I can think of right now.

Gs_pradeep1 · Answer

thank you very much. for the eassy.

Haoqide · Answer

You're very welcome.  I'm sorry it's so short.  I don't have a lot of time to devote to long essays, and I hate writing them, too! heheh<img class='emoticon' style='Width:19px;Height:19px;' data-delaysrc='https://uat-englishforward-forums-backend.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Emoticons/5.gif' src='https://uat-englishforward-forums-backend.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Emoticons/5.gif' alt='Emotion: wink'/>

Guest · Answer

This is an interesting argument that may possibly be used for animals. Basically, there has been something of a paradigm shift in our thinking about
nature, it used to be that we thought of nature with respect to our human needs and interests. Now we think, or should think, of nature with respect to its own needs and interests.

Trefil [an author ] will have none of this. His repeated, bottom-line philosophy is: the global ecosystem should be managed for the benefit, broadly conceived, of human
beings. Forget about plant rights. If we like them, they are flowers and we keep them. If we don't like them, they are weeds and we chuck them out. And
so it should be.

'Human Nature': My World, and Welcome to It
By MICHAEL RUSE

HUMAN NATURE
A Blueprint for Managing the Earth -- by People, for People.
By James Trefil.
249 pp. Times Books/ Henry Holt & Company. $26.

About a year ago, some aged English relatives of mine joined like-minded citizens, taking off their clothes and lying down in a farmer's field to spell
out NO GM FOODS. I do not know if they caught a chill but they certainly caught attention. The next morning, in Florida, as I surfed the Net to read the
headlines, there they were. Beaming up at me, as one might say.

This is an emotive issue. Heaven help the British supermarket that is caught with anything that smacks of such Doctor Frankenstein-type entities. And do
not bother to point out that genetically modified foods require less artificial fertilizer or pesticide. They are just not ''natural,'' and that is an
end to things. These and like issues are the topics of James Trefil, a George Mason University physics professor, in his new book, ''Human Nature: A Blueprint
for Managing the Earth -- by People, for People.'' He is concerned about the state of the earth and the denizens thereof. Are we heading for -- are we
already in -- a crisis of ecology, resources, climate, population and more? Is this something we have recently brought upon ourselves? Is this something
about which we must do something, assuming that it is not already too late? And if we are to do something, what is the right approach? Should we be pushing
some kind of return-to-nature strategy, or does the key lie in technology?

Trefil takes a pretty robust attitude to questions like these. The leading philosopher of ecology, Holmes Rolston, tells of a campsite he likes to visit,
up in the mountains around his home in Colorado. The signs on the trail into it used to read: ''Please do not pick the plants. Leave them for others to
enjoy.'' Now they read, ''Let the plants live.'' For many, to use a hackneyed phrase, there has been something of a paradigm shift in our thinking about
nature, a change reflected in these two messages. It used to be that we thought of nature with respect to our human needs and interests. Now we think,
or should think, of nature with respect to its own needs and interests.

Trefil will have none of this. His repeated, bottom-line philosophy is: the global ecosystem should be managed for the benefit, broadly conceived, of human
beings. Forget about plant rights. If we like them, they are flowers and we keep them. If we don't like them, they are weeds and we chuck them out. And
so it should be.

Trefil combines with this philosophy an assertive attitude to the problems and challenges of ecology. He tells us that in the 1970's he did the back-to-the-land
thing, building his own house on an abandoned farm and growing his own vegetables and so forth. The experience seems to have inoculated him against the
joys of the outside world. The Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson has long argued for something he calls ''biophilia.'' He thinks we humans have evolved
in such a way that we need nature, spiritually as well as physically. A world of plastic would, quite literally, be deadly. This is one of the main reasons
that Wilson is an ardent defender of the wilderness in North America and the rain forests in South America. For him, plant rights and human rights are
ultimately one and the same. Trefil thinks that is all pretty silly. He hates rain forests, finding them hot and sweaty. And if cutting down a few of the
trees kills off several species of beetle, it doesn't bother him.

Trefil has an optimistic view of the power of technology. Wilson, again, makes a pragmatic plea. Many new medicines, of value to humans, have come from
plants, especially those in the tropics. We simply cannot afford to destroy one species after another. As we do so, we almost certainly are destroying
one potentially valuable drug after another. Trefil has little time for this. Modern pharmaceutical technology has reached the stage where scientists can
design their own drugs as needed. It is all a question of the shapes of molecules, and we know now how to shape molecules with the kind of skill Michelangelo
showed with a piece of marble. Rain forests are a luxury, not a necessity.

Given the fact that I have the leftish inclinations of most academics, I ought to dislike this book intensely. Trefil tells us proudly that some of his
friends and others who fed him information specifically asked not to be mentioned in the acknowledgments. In fact, I enjoyed ''Human Nature.'' Trefil knows
how to tell a good tale, with just the right amount of science and a nice use of anecdote. There is nothing pompous or preachy about this book, and on
these sorts of topics that is uncommon and refreshing. Moreover, Trefil is right when he tells us that instead of whining about technology and modern society,
we should do more to guide and influence them. The secret is not to give up on the use of electricity but to find ways of producing it that are not so
environmentally harmful.

However, his discussion of issues like G.M. foods is often so quick and unreflective as to be nearly useless. Granted, Europeans are not always entirely
rational about these issues. But the way forward is not simply to say that, but to ask what can be done. Is it just a matter of distrust of new technology,
or is it something deeper? Is it, to go all the way, a manifestation of a deep-seated anti-Americanism, which can be solved only in a much broader context
-- political and other relationships across the Atlantic?

Also, even for a reader with sympathy for Trefil's human-oriented approach, some attempt is needed to justify the stance. Why focus just on the benefit
of humans and not of other organisms? Is there nothing to be said about benefits for the apes? And if for chimpanzees, then why not for warthogs -- and
so forth? Or conversely, why for all humans? Why not just for Americans or just for Floridians? Personally, I have a much closer relationship with my ferrets
than with the citizens of Outer Mongolia. Why should my actions benefit Outer Mongolians rather than my ferrets? I am not saying they should not. I am
saying that in a book-length discussion, especially for the general reader, some attention should have been paid to these questions. Hence, while this
is not as offensive a book as the author rather hopes, it is not as thoughtful a book either -- but worth reading nevertheless.

Michael Ruse is a philosopher at Florida State University. His most recent book is ''Darwin and Design: Does Evolution Have a Purpose?''

Hi i need help

Top answer

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

Related Questions