Laurance S. Rockefeller '32?

Marta Russell ap888 at lafn.org
Thu Oct 28 08:20:45 PDT 1999


THE WORLD SOCIALIST MOVEMENT(via THE SOCIALIST PARTY of Great Britain) wrote:


> Surely the end result of the conservation "ethic" is the deep green
> position? I.e. thathumans by some bizarre twist of logic have equal rights
> with viruses, and suchlike. Rather than be appalled by the fact that
> someone meant to be "nice" (a conservationist) turned out to be "nasty"
> (infanticidal) we should look at why the one contains the other. The
> contradiction is in the idea of "conservation": it sounds like Singer is
> pursuing the logical end of an antihuman argument past the point where it
> was acceptable.
>
> Simon

Singer does say human life is not more valuable that animal life. But he seems to justify infanticide primarily upon utilitarianism and his definition of personhood. He says that infants under 30 days old are not sentient beings, are not persons (fully human) so therefore it is OK to kill them if it would make the parents happy. He devalues disabled infants who he says can be replaced like chickens in a barnyard. I don't know whether this would be consistent with deep green ethics.

-- Marta



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