“Save the ______” —you can fill in the blank with the animal
of your choice.
Does this plea make sense?
I think it’s a desperate uphill slog to believe that human
nature can be persuaded by such moral crusades.
“Save the Elephant” says a recent opinion piece by Lydia
Millet in the Sunday New York Times.
The argument is simple: poachers are rapidly hunting
elephants to extinction, and the countries that buy the most ivory—China and
the United States—aren’t doing anything effective to stop the slaughter. In
Africa, an elephant is killed about every 14 minutes.
I love some animals. I probably “like” animals a bit
less than a lot of people do, and normally I don’t add my voice to the “Save
the ______” chorus.
I think the main point is this: are we likely to be
successful if we apply great energies to persuading or forcing wrong-doers, like
elephant poachers, to stop doing the wrong thing?
Reluctantly, I suspect the answer is “No.”
Math and human nature are the controlling factors. I’m
willing to argue—and believe—that most human beings don’t support and would
spend modest sums to stop the illegal, destructive elephant poaching that is
going to wipe elephants (and new ivory) off the face of the earth.
The intractable problem is that there will always be a small
and renewable number of people who will do just about anything, legal or
illegal, to make a buck today without a care for tomorrow or, specifically, for
the future survivability of elephants.
I make a point of saying “renewable” because even if we
could find and execute every active elephant poacher and all of his relatives
tomorrow, by the end of the week some new bad guys would be stalking elephants
and doing the bad thing.
The poachers most likely have the ability to wipe out the
elephants.
I don’t think we could ever wipe out the poachers, as long
as good folks in China and America and elsewhere want to keep on buying ivory and pretend that it's all legal.
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2015 All rights reserved.
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