Big picture wise isn’t this making a normative judgement? Assuming a carrying capacity of earth for total biomass, less humans means more animal lives who are unable to record or communicate their experiences. We don’t know what animals experience pre language but it’s possible they are unable to reliably encode their experiences without the structure of a human language. (Similar to how humans have little memory from early childhood)
I am not sure it’s a fair normative judgement to conclude this is an improvement.
Take it to the limit. All of humanity has died off except a small 100 person tribe. Nature has reclaimed everything else. Is this a net better world?
That biomass assumption has fallout if it’s correct. For example blocking housing expansion for more wolf habitat might be the same tradeoff. Are the qalys of wolves better than the humans who might live there?
I think the biomass assumption does have a flaw: when we generate artificial fertilizer from fossil fuel and feed humans and pets with the agricultural products we are in disequilibrium, we can only do this for a finite amount of time before we can’t.
Big picture wise isn’t this making a normative judgement? Assuming a carrying capacity of earth for total biomass, less humans means more animal lives who are unable to record or communicate their experiences. We don’t know what animals experience pre language but it’s possible they are unable to reliably encode their experiences without the structure of a human language. (Similar to how humans have little memory from early childhood)
I am not sure it’s a fair normative judgement to conclude this is an improvement.
Take it to the limit. All of humanity has died off except a small 100 person tribe. Nature has reclaimed everything else. Is this a net better world?
That biomass assumption has fallout if it’s correct. For example blocking housing expansion for more wolf habitat might be the same tradeoff. Are the qalys of wolves better than the humans who might live there?
I think the biomass assumption does have a flaw: when we generate artificial fertilizer from fossil fuel and feed humans and pets with the agricultural products we are in disequilibrium, we can only do this for a finite amount of time before we can’t.