HUMANS AND THE NATURAL WORLD

Humans encroach¹ further on nature with every passing year. Between 1996 and 2016, the Earth lost an area of forest larger than South Africa. Over the past five hundred years, almost nine hundred species have become extinct. Even now, twenty-five percent of mammals² and 12.5 percent of birds are at high risk of extinction. This does not just have a negative impact on flora and fauna³ - it affects humans too.

Agriculture can have a particularly negative effect on the natural world because modern intensive farming creates unhealthy monocultures. These are large areas of land which are used to grow just one crop, and as such, they lack biodiversity. Often, these areas are also treated with pesticides and herbicides. These chemicals kill off any remaining species which might have survived in these artificial landscapes. A lack of biodiversity can have consequences⁴ for humans. For example, the world's bumblebee population has shrunk by as much as ninety-three percent in the last twenty years. Humans rely on bumblebees to spread pollen and produce fruit and vegetables.

Meat farming also has a huge impact on landscapes. Since 1950, the Amazonian rainforest alone has been reduced in size by seventeen percent; we call this deforestation. Much of it has been to create grazing land for cattle. Forested areas help to absorb carbon⁵, and we are losing them just as our cars, airplanes, factories, and power stations produce more carbon than ever before. This results in global warming, which threatens wildlife in untouched⁶ environments such as Antarctica. At the same time, it puts many towns and cities at risk of flooding as sea levels rise.

Humans also encroach on nature through direct physical contact with animals. Factory farming forces animals like cows, pigs, and chickens to live tightly packed together. This is not only deeply unpleasant for the animals, but it also carries a risk for humans. Epidemiology suggests that in these conditions, new viruses are highly likely to develop. Close human contact with these animals can then lead to the transmission of diseases such as bird flu, which is easily passed from farmed chickens to humans.

But the greatest risks come from increased contact with wild animals, which often occurs as cities expand and wild habitats are absorbed. Rats, monkeys, and bats live among humans and are responsible for hosting as many as seventy-five percent of all viruses. Rats carry hantavirus, leptospirosis, and many other diseases; monkeys carry B virus, yellow fever, and rabies. Bats, meanwhile, have been linked⁷ to the SARS and Ebola viruses, among others.

In many developing countries, rather than trying to avoid contact with wild animals, people actively hunt for them. Traders at wildlife markets sell wild animals, or bushmeat, for food. Often, these markets are viewed as traditional, and bushmeat is believed to have positive effects on human health. In many cases, the animals sold at wildlife markets are endangered species; in fact, their rarity⁸ is often why they are valuable and in demand.

There are now several campaigns to end the selling of bushmeat at wildlife markets. However, these may cause cultural tensions between developed and developing nations. Other differences could also arise⁹ over how to battle encroachment. Developed countries are financially¹⁰ able to protect animals; they can set aside land as wildlife reserves because their populations are growing less quickly, or even decreasing. In reality, though, they now rely on developing countries for farming and manufacturing¹¹, leading to more encroachment in these nations. Clearly, it's time for all nations to unify in their efforts to address the human impact on nature.

• unify
• cattle
• biodiversity
• epidemiology
• herbicide
• artificial

Peter Singer and Animal Liberation

In 1975, the Australian philosopher Peter Singer wrote a revolutionary book, Animal Liberation. When the book first appeared, Singer's ideas were seen as strange, fringe beliefs. Today, however, many of Singer's ideas have been accepted by individuals and even governments.

Singer was initially influenced by philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who was born in England in 1748. Bentham was one of the first to write about the rights of animals. The question, Bentham argued, was not if animals could think or if they could talk, but rather if they could suffer.

This argument convinced Singer that humans needed to change the way they treated animals through deforestation, factory farming, animal testing, zoos, and even the way we buy and sell them as pets. In his book, Singer accepted that animal rights and human rights were different. He admitted that if some scientific testing on an animal like a mouse could save millions of lives, then it might be worth it.

However, many of the ways we use animals, Singer argued, were not actually helpful to humans at all. In fact, Singer predicted that the number and variety of diseases would grow as human contact with animals increased. He also suggested that deforestation for cattle farming would have a negative impact on the entire planet. Singer's book argued that what is good for animals is usually good for humans, too. Humans should not think of "the natural world," Singer suggested, as separate from themselves.