—ravi
Somebody: Sadly, many seem to think so. We know what a left without explicit ethics looks like. The problem is this: even in the absence of a stated ethic, any political project is latent with an implicit ethical framework. And by not elucidating precisely what that ethic comprises, you leave it subject to unrecognized inconsistencies, biases, and prejudices carried over from the past.
For example, the bias against considering animal welfare is simply a matter of traditional "common sense". Any cursory inspection of the matter reveals of course that it is a serious moral issue. Even if you weigh it far less than human welfare, as well I think you should, it remains a serious issue compared to the myriad trivialities politics involves itself with like culture wars and correct speech.
Similarly with the issue of extending human life expectancy. Some on the left would rather pour hundreds of billions to fight global warming than into medicine to provide vaccines, cure diseases, and provide replacement organs to those who will die without them. They may be right about their priorities, but here's the problem. If you pry into their premises, you find that their motives are a jumble. On the one hand we should worry about global warming because of the cost in lives down the road from it's progress. On the other hand, it's also a question of aesthetics - the ecosystem we've been born into is simply better somehow than any new ones we foster because humans can do no right to nature. A frigid Siberia is better than a temperate one, regardless of the consequences. If some people die from hypothermia today, that's not nearly as bad as others dying from heat exposure tomorrow. Finally, you have those who from a stance of moral purity, prefer
that humankind not develop industry beyond a certain point. But any rational person should see that only the first matter - the effect of global warming on human (and animal) welfare really matters. And once you frame it that way, it's perfectly relevant to weigh the costs of climate change to cancer, HIV, and Alzheimer's or to clean water and hygiene in the developing world. What's more important for the people of the Sahel in Africa? That desertification be slowed down or that Mali and Niger become as prosperous as most of Asia and Latin America?
Of course, this sort of cool headed comparison is ruled out as a matter of course. Above all other issues, global warming is a matter of life and death, despite the obvious fact that many other things cause both life and death every day. You see this same issue with nuclear power and radioactivity - the implicit, unstated assumption that some deaths (so called natural ones, like dying from being drowned from a tsunami) are better than rare, unnatural deaths (like dying from cancer twenty years from now from nuclear exposure). Beneath all these assumptions lie artifacts of tradition and age-old prejudice that are much akin to the "nonsense on stilts" Ravi refers to.