I actually had a chat about this the other week with a friend who's studying environmental science. He said that long long ago, Antarctica and Australia (and most likely some other places) were completely covered with forests, and said that the hypothesis about why these enormous creatures have died out is to do with the fact that there isn't as much forest as there was in prehistoric times, and therefore isn't as much oxygen around, and therefore animalkind evolved to not need so much oxygen (ie, got much smaller). I could be wrong though, I know nothing about this field of knowledge at all;-)
My bit of the world (South-East Queensland, Australia) is in a bit of a water crisis at the moment. We're in the middle of one of the worst droughts in recorded history, and consequently our dams are getting a bit empty. The government's response has been to introduce water restrictions, announce new dams, float (pun intended) the idea of desalination and pussyfoot around the idea of water recycling. I wonder if this technology could be put to good use - good as in generates a substantial amount of water for one of Australia's fastest growing regions at reasonable cost while being environmentally friendly?
I wasn't saying "this isn't ok", I was *asking* "is this ok?" I wanted to get the critical thought flowing and read some opinions about this. Most people have pointed out that we "subvert" plant and animals all the time, to eat them. I think this is ok, as long as the suffering for the animals involved is kept to a minimum. I also think it's ok to kill bacteria & whatnot that cause human suffering and illness, and within reason to use bacteria for our own purposes (for good, not for evil), etc. My initial question comes from my philosophy about living creatures, which is that everything has a right to live it's own life, free from human exploitation - everything doesn't exist solely for human consumption. Perhaps I'm taking this to an unreasonable extreme applying this to virii, which is why I asked my original question in the first place:-)
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I actually had a chat about this the other week with a friend who's studying environmental science. He said that long long ago, Antarctica and Australia (and most likely some other places) were completely covered with forests, and said that the hypothesis about why these enormous creatures have died out is to do with the fact that there isn't as much forest as there was in prehistoric times, and therefore isn't as much oxygen around, and therefore animalkind evolved to not need so much oxygen (ie, got much smaller). I could be wrong though, I know nothing about this field of knowledge at all ;-)
My bit of the world (South-East Queensland, Australia) is in a bit of a water crisis at the moment. We're in the middle of one of the worst droughts in recorded history, and consequently our dams are getting a bit empty. The government's response has been to introduce water restrictions, announce new dams, float (pun intended) the idea of desalination and pussyfoot around the idea of water recycling. I wonder if this technology could be put to good use - good as in generates a substantial amount of water for one of Australia's fastest growing regions at reasonable cost while being environmentally friendly?
I wasn't saying "this isn't ok", I was *asking* "is this ok?" I wanted to get the critical thought flowing and read some opinions about this. Most people have pointed out that we "subvert" plant and animals all the time, to eat them. I think this is ok, as long as the suffering for the animals involved is kept to a minimum. I also think it's ok to kill bacteria & whatnot that cause human suffering and illness, and within reason to use bacteria for our own purposes (for good, not for evil), etc. My initial question comes from my philosophy about living creatures, which is that everything has a right to live it's own life, free from human exploitation - everything doesn't exist solely for human consumption. Perhaps I'm taking this to an unreasonable extreme applying this to virii, which is why I asked my original question in the first place :-)
This raises an ethical concern for me. I think we should be asking ourselves "Is it really ok to subvert lifeforms like this for our own use?"