Ecocide or Environmental Self-Destruction?

Fall 2019 237 Ecocide or Environmental Self-Destruction? Sandra Baquedano Jer* The anthropocentric destruction of nature can be viewed as a form of self-destruction, which affects individuals and also the human species. It entails active destruction of the natural surroundings that are vital for the preservation of the planet’s biodiversity. But should ecocide, or environmental self-destruction of the life of certain species, be considered an “interruption” to the life of such species, or it is part of their natural life course? Are ecocide and environmental destruction identical, or substantively different, phenomena? Prevention of the death of biotic species, and of the massive destruction of abiotic species, constitutes the ultimate challenge for both environmental and animal ethics. Modern mass extinction of species can be understood as a form of speciesism, and the prevention of such extinction is the most urgent challenge for any ethics centered on the recognition of the value, or rights, of nonhuman species. ETYMOLOGY AND DERIVATION OF THE TERM ECOCIDE: A TERM COINED IN WARTIME The term ecocide only emerged in common usage a few decades ago. However, its origins involve a dual history: the use of the word itself and its associated problematic. In other words, the phenomenon of individual and environmental self-destruction dates back to prehistoric times. The term now used to refer to this was coined in the context of armed conflict, emerging in the mid-twentieth century, the era of Western wars with Southeast Asia. From the prefix eco- (in Greek, oikos), which denotes “home” or “household,” and is the root from which the words ecology and economy are both derived, the concept of ecocide was originally used to denote all such practices adopted in wartime that turned the environment into a military objective. The dynamics of ecocide triggers environmental disasters, forced migration, and the death or mass destruction of both human and nonhuman beings. Notable scholars and commentators, from a range of different conceptual starting points and premises, have described essentially similar situations, emphasising the devastating impacts upon affected societies. These impacts are felt in abrupt decline in levels of human population, and in disintegration of the social basis that sustains political organization, economic complexity, and norms of civility across the vast territories that human beings colonize or dominate in this way. The legacies of these extreme situations live on well beyond the lifespan of the generation that first created them. * Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades, Universidad de Chile, Av. Capitán Ignacio Carrera Pinto 1025, Ñuñoa, Santiago, Chile; email: [email protected]. 237 238 ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS Vol. 41 The devastating effects of herbicides and defoliants used as chemical weapons in Vietnam drove Arthur Galston, a biologist, and at the time chair of the Department of Botany at Yale University, to coin the term ecocide. A group of scientists and academics brought attention to its meaning to denounce the environmental and humanitarian catastrophe that had followed in the wake of Operation Ranch Hand.1 The defoliation of jungles and woodlands, and destruction of crops, were adopted as military strategies by the United States, and routinely deployed in Vietnam, including its borders with Laos and Cambodia. The targets were Vietcong insurgents, but also local peasant communities. The aim was to starve them out and deny them any forest cover that could potentially serve as a hideout, using hunger and contamination to force rural populations to migrate towards towns and cities controlled by U.S. forces. Between 1962 and 1971, the U.S. Air Force sprayed more than eighty million liters of herbicide and defoliants in the region, most of it sourced from Dow Chemical and Monsanto. Twenty million gallons of Agent Orange were dumped in a single year (1966).2 Official sources in Vietnam estimate that around two million human victims, and three million hectares of land, were contaminated by the toxins. Still today, there are thousands of children born to parents affected by chemicals known to cause damage to DNA that produce birth defects or develop early childhood cancers.3 The use of herbicides as a tactic of war took a longlasting toll on human health, and also devastated the future of thousands of square kilometers of jungle and arable land pulverized by so-called “Rainbow Herbicides” (including Agent Orange). These legacies added weight to the idea that the Vietnam War had been a theater of ecocide, in contravention of international law.4 A group of intellectuals, environmentalists, and pacifists of the day took up the anti-ecocide cause, conscious that ecocide was part of a much broader spectrum of war crimes that were being committed. At this point in this account it is helpful to pause and 1 See Paul Frederick Cecil, Herbicidal Warfare: The Ranch Hand Project in Vietnam (New York: Praeger, 1986). 2 See Philip Jones Griffiths, Agent Orange: Collateral Damage in Vietnam (London: Trolley Books, 2004). 3 See Arnold Schecter, Le Cao Dai, Olaf Päpke, Joelle Prange, John D. Constable, Muneaki Matsuda, Vu Duc Thao, and Amanda L. Piskac, “Recent Dioxin Contamination From Agent Orange in Residents of a Southern Vietnam City,” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine 43 (2001): 435–43; J. L. Collins et al., Medical Problems of South Vietnam (Corinth: Black Mountain Press, 1967); N. Thi Bình et al., Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin in Vietnam—The Expectations (Hanoi: Research Centre for Gender, Family, and Environment in Development, Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference, 2006); Hugh Warwick, “Agente Naranja: el Envenenamiento de Vietnam,” The Ecologist 28 (1998): 17–18. 4 See David Zierler, The Invention of Ecocide: Agent Orange, Vietnam, and the Scientists Who Changed the Way We Think About Environment (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011), p. 14. Fall 2019 ECOCIDE OR ENVIRONMENTAL SELF-DESTRUCTION? 239 consider whether, and how, the concept of ecocide can plausibly be extrapolated beyond its original wartime frame of reference. THE INDIRECT INTENTION IN DYNAMICS OF SELF-DESTRUCTION: THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM Ecocide is the phenomenon that reveals in the most tragic way how so-called development really has been a bad development. Its successes, far from leading humankind down the path of environmental progress, have produced backsliding of humanity’s instrumental self-knowledge about nature and its value. The complexity of ecocide is bound iogether with other self-destructive and interconnected global dynamics. Consider, for example, consumerism and human overpopulation. Both phenomena have a burdening effect on Earth, reducing the planet’s effectiveness in absorbing human waste,5 which in turn impacts climate change, creating problems of water scarcity, water management, contamination, deforestation, erosion, salinization, soil fertility and, ultimately, wars resulting from control over natural resources.6 Nature in relation to the human being, has become a shared space acted upon by a range of different living beings, but in which one single species has managed to impose its dominance over the rest, due to its particular biological capacity for reasoning. Nature has been reified from within. The power to create language; cultivate philosophy, art, and science; build civilizations that have lasted for millennia; and construct magnificent works of technology, also proves itself capable of destroying the environment that it inherited. The subordination of technical-scientific power to the dominant economic system, overpopulation, industrialized wars, global climate change, and growing consumerism have led to a present-day situation that is not only destructive, but self-destructive. This self-destruction underlies a speciesist reification of nature, causing the anthropogenic destruction of habitats, and mass species extinction. As distinct from duty, the responsibility toward other living beings and to degraded environments implies protecting the quality of life generated by relationships between humans, and also nonhuman species. The greater the power of the inflicted damage, the greater the responsibility of protecting what has been harmed. In spite of this increase in responsibility, the reach and scope of technical-scientific capacity has grown at a pace that has far outstripped the historical capacity of these same dynamics to create a countervailing balance, in the form of a sense of responsibility toward the resulting disproportionate consequences. Ecocide is the clearest signal of dissociation in this equation because this same proceeding has generated an intentional destruction of the environment weakening those societies immersed 5 See Giovanni Sartori and Gianni Mazzoleni, La Tierra Explota (Madrid: Editorial Taurus, 2003), pp. 125–30. 6 See Vandana Shiva, Las Guerras del Agua (Barcelona: Icaria, 2004), pp. 55–119. 240 ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS Vol. 41 in this bad development.7 Self-destructive environmental dynamics, on the other hand, refer to habits with a conscious tendency to damage or wreak significant destruction on the human ecosystem and biodiversity on Earth, without there necessarily being any direct intention to cause such effects.8 Mere awareness of how the actions of each person contribute to the speciesist reification of nature is not sufficient to avert the continuation of destructive practices, which cause global degradation and the mass death of species. BACKGROUND EXTINCTION VERSUS MASS EXTINCTION OF SPECIES While many relationship forms exist between different cultural groups and nature, sources suggest that many societies have been known to inflict hostile treatment toward other living beings since time immemorial; and have also overexploited the vast zones of the Earth they went about settling.9 The particularly alarming factor of the current situation, however, lies in the fact that in recent decades, the expanded reach of human actions has created what is by far the most serious scenario of environmental degradation and anthropogenic extermination in recorded history: “Homo sapiens is poised to become the greatest catastrophic agent since a giant asteroid collided with the Earth sixty-five million years ago, wiping out half the world’s species in a geological instant.”10 Based on fossil records, paleobiologists tend, in general terms, to draw a distinction between two types of extinction rates: background extinction, and mass extinction. Background extinction tends to take place through a continuous process, after a long period during which both the species and its ecological niche manage to endure without substantial changes. By contrast, mass extinction events, on the other hand, in the words of Stephen Gould, “must, by four criteria, be reinterpreted as ruptures, not the high points of continua. They are more frequent, more rapid, more profound (in numbers and habitats eliminated) and have effects more different than those of normal times.”11 Numerous scientists claim that current levels of mass extinction are comparable only with the three most recent of the mass extinction events that occurred in the 0 7 See Vandana Shiva, Abrazar la Vida. Mujer, Ecología y Desarrollo (Madrid: Editorial Horas y Horas, 2004), p. 21. 0 0 8 This type of self-destructive dynamic comes under criticism from biocultural ethics, which define that a good, integral, and righteous life must consider living habits in relation to the well-being of the group of (human and nonhuman) co-inhabitants within their shared habitats. See Ricardo Rozzi, “Biocultural Ethics: Recovering the Vital Links Between the Inhabitants, Their Habits, and Habitats,” Environmental Ethics 43 (2012): 27–50. 09 See Jared Diamond, Collapse, How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Barcelona: Editorial Debate, 2008), pp. 1–23. 10 Richard Leakey and Roger Levin, The Sixth Extinction: Patterns of Life and the Future of Humankind (New York: Doubleday, 1995), p. 221. 11 Stephen Jay Gould, The Flamingo’s Smile: Reflections in Natural History (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1985), pp. 231–32. Fall 2019 ECOCIDE OR ENVIRONMENTAL SELF-DESTRUCTION? 241 remote geological past. The difference lies in the fact that the present wave is an anthropogenic one.12 The first of these three, around 250 million years ago, signalled the end of the Permian period (the sixth and final period of the Paleozoic era). It is believed that it may have been caused by climate change and a variation in sea levels, as a product of the fusion of the large continental land masses. This event, together with the later separation of the continents from their tectonic plate, is estimated to have extinguished ninety percent of the species, ushering in the end of an evolutionary history of over 200 million years of the Paleozoic era. The next significant mass extinction took place around 200 million years ago. The causes were multiple and complex, stretching over hundreds of centuries, although two principal triggering events were a meteor impact—which left a crater of more than 100 kilometers in diameter—and a series of eruptions of major lava flows, all on top of dramatic climate change. The combination proved fatal to a good proportion of all living beings. The third and final of the three most recent previous mass extinction events happened about sixty-five million years ago, and ended the lifespan of the dinosaurs and thousands of other species. On this occasion, climate change, variation in sea levels, and, above all, the collision of a giant asteroid with Earth caused fire to break out across a large part of the earth’s surface, setting in motion titanic ocean waves. Millions of tons of rubble and poisonous gases were thrown up into the atmosphere, darkening the skies and rendering the life of more than half the planet’s species unviable.13 After the disappearance of the dinosaurs, many of the surviving species grew in number, and multiplied to a significant degree. Fossil records of anatomically modern human beings, have them dating back some 130,000 years, whereas studies on the origins of modern human beings in Africa trace them back around some 200,000 years.14 Although today there is a fervent discussion surrounding the causes, intensity, and extension of anthropogenic extinctions, there are many authors who maintain that many of the larger sized animal species that survived the ice ages ended up becoming extinct toward the end of the last glacial period due to the hunting capabilities of humans.15 It is true that the diversification and extinction rates vary during the Cenozoic (post-dinosaur), Mesozoic, and Paleozoic eras, but what is relevant here is that with the arrival of humans begins an unprecedented (anthropogenic) catastrophe in the Earth’s biodiversity triggering a mass extinction, caused this time by man. Many authors maintain that it dates back millennia, drastically intensifying in modern times: “In most cases, the megafauna extinctions began shortly after the first arrival of prehistoric humans. . . . Of all continents, the megafauna mass 12 See Franz Broswimmer, Ecocide. A Short History of the Mass Extinction of Species (London: Pluto Press, 2002), pp. 1–3. 13 See Richard Leakey and Roger Levin, Nuestros Orígenes (Barcelona: Crítica, 2015), p. 279. 14 See Broswimmer, Ecocide. p. 20. 15 See Jared Diamond, El Tercer Chimpancé (Barcelona: Random House Mondadori, Debate, 2014), p. 74. 242 ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS Vol. 41 extinction data are clearest for North America, where seventy species (ninety-five per cent of the megafauna) disappeared about 11,000 to 14,000 years ago. This is exactly the time when North America was colonized by humans, and their arrival and skill as hunters at that time are documented by the appearance of artifacts. In some cases, accurate dating methods have shown that certain species became extinct at exactly the times that humans arrived.”16 ANTHROPOGENIC EXTINCTION AND ANIMAL SPECIESISM Background extinction is part of a slow, natural process, unlike the current mass extinction, that is taking place on an accelerated timescale as a result of multiple anthropogenic causes. The extension of the ethical field to include nonhuman living beings must, therefore, be considered one of the greatest challenges facing both environmental and animal ethics. The main shared obstacle is, at root, the problem of speciesism. This particular form of discrimination is derived from a belief in the superiority of one species over others, a belief that, moreover, advocates for the segregation of species or groups, to the detriment of those which are thereby rendered vulnerable.17 Explicit use of the term speciesism has until now been mainly limited to references toward nonhuman animals. This bias calls for the extension of antispeciesism to vegetable species, even in cases where this variant of discrimination is less evident. This need is particularly apparent from an ecocentric point of view when we consider that each species constitutes a whole that is distinct from the sum of the individual beings of which it is composed. From the biocultural ethics perspective, it also becomes clear how certain groups within our species seek and obtain material and superficial privileges in the world, in ways that impose costs in the form of a profound global deterioration of the system within which other species exist.18 Biotic and abiotic system destruction is predicated on a hermeneutic that degrades the world not only biologically, but also spiritually. The irreversibility of extinction implies a definitive loss to humanity of certain living beings. This constitutes both a moral, as well as an intellectual impoverishment, as the absence of those other living beings makes the Earth a more desolate place in which the speciesist culture has taken hold and become consolidated over the course of thousands of years. Even when speciesism is understood from the animal sphere perspective, 16 Broswimmer, Ecocide. pp. 24–25. See Richard Ryder, “Experiments on Animals,” in Animals, Men and Morals, ed. Richard Ryder (London: Victor Gollancz, 1971), p. 79. 18 See Ricardo Rozzi, “Implications of the Biocultural Ethic for Earth Stewardship,” in Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice, ed. Ricardo Rozzi et al. (Dordrecht: Springer, 2015), pp. 113–36. 17 Fall 2019 ECOCIDE OR ENVIRONMENTAL SELF-DESTRUCTION? 243 it can be seen that speciesism, and anthropogenic extinction of species, are parts of the same problem. This problem, which still lacks a solution, nonetheless has a history.19 THE ANAMNESIS OF SPECIESISM IN MODERN ANTHROPOGENIC EXTINCTION The types of anthropogenic depredation that possibly led to the extinction of megafauna were associated with methods as crude as simply surrounding large animals and herding them over a precipice. This and other types of archaic practices had become common by the end of the Quaternary in various parts of the world. Franz Broswimmer emphasizes the fact that physical anthropologists and palaeontologists alike strongly defend the thesis that the mass extinction of megafauna was not necessarily caused by extra-human factors, but by the massification of hunting by humans, and that this “preindustrial” form of ecocide can now be amplified into a “global ecocide.”20 Whether or not this affirmation is valid, all time periods have seen the repetition of a common pattern: in many of the places that were colonized by human populations, many populations of vegetable and animal species entered into a precipitate process of extinction. In more recent times, for example between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries, modern trading in furs led to the extirpation of certain animals from the areas in which they were exploited. In another example, technological developments in the eighteenth century set in motion the commercial hunting of cetaceans. A few decades later, whale hunting on an excessively industrial scale led to a sharp decline in populations, placing whales at risk of extinction.21 A common modus operandi was repeated: a commercially desirable species would be discovered, and intensively hunted to the point where local stocks were exhausted. New populations were then sought out in alternative locations, only to be subjected, if found, to the same cycle of extermination. From the ecocide concept perspective, this manner of relating to other species appears to place human groups at the center of their own universe, one which turns on an egotistical axis of indifference, and in accordance with a pattern within which speciesism, reification, pillage, and destruction have been the rule rather than the exception. The potentially fatal novel aspect resides in the impact of the sheer reach that these self-destructive dynamics have acquired in the present day. Their cumulative effects are the inevitable corollary of the anthropogenic disorder that has caused humans to be responsible for mass extermination of species and the destruction of biotic and abiotic systems. Jarred Diamond alludes to other thinkers that have managed to extrapolate from 19 See J. Baird Callicott. “Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair,” Environmental Ethics 2 (1980): 311–38. 20 See Broswimmer, Ecocide, pp. 34–35. 21 Ibid., pp.121–22. 244 ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS Vol. 41 the various stages of life, the trajectory that human civilizations have followed, and may still follow, over time: “Writers find it tempting to draw analogies between those trajectories of human societies and the trajectories of individual human lives—to talk of a society's birth, growth, peak, senescence, and death—and to assume that the long period of senescence that most of us traverse between our peak years and our deaths also applies to societies.”22 This evolution, however, should not cause us to downplay the incidence of humans in ecocide and the environmental self-destruction complex. The damage that people inflict on their surroundings can lead to a long period of decline before societies finally die. Alternatively, the kinds of problems I have described can culminate in extreme situations leading to a collapse in society, as was the case for the human population of Easter Island in the sixteenth century and in the case of the ecological lessons learnt from the demise of the reindeer population of St. Matthew Island in the twentieth century.23 In each case, a population—one human and one nonhuman—upon reaching exorbitant numbers and exceeding the carrying capacity of their respective island, collapsed. While not all now-vanished societies came to quite such a tragic end, the threat of world ecocide does contemplate the possibility that the fate suffered by past populations, decimated by specific environmental problems, may be a sign of things to come for the globalized world. The risk of such an outcome has undoubtedly been radically increased by the multiple factors discussed above. It is not clear whether what follows is a gradual, generalized collapse or if industrial civilization—with its tendency to ruin its surroundings—will decay into an abrupt end. What is certain, however, is that in either case, the scenarios for quality of life, whether they be ecocidal or self-destructive, are both sure to produce degrading, intolerable situations and realities. This situation has already been faced, of course, by numerous species, but has simply remained invisible to humans blinkered by speciesism. The avoidance of such a fate is undoubtedly the most pressing challenge for all environmental and animal ethics. ANTISPECIESIST DISJUNCTURES BETWEEN ENVIRONMENTAL AND ANIMAL ETHIC As soon as a range of speciesist practices were massified and made more acute through technical-industrial development and the rise of a particular dominant economic ideology, human beings began to exploit and systematically eliminate innumerable species from the face of the Earth, spurred on by a host of myths.24 Acquisition of the power to eliminate other species from nature gave rise to the 22 Jared Diamond, Collapse (New York: Penguin Group, 2005), p. 6. See William R. Catton, Rebasados (México City: Editorial Océano, 2010), pp. 249–50. 24 See Vandana Shiva, Cosecha Robada. El Secuestro del Suministro Mundial de Alimentos (Buenos Aires: Editorial Paidós, 2009), pp. 15–33. 23 Fall 2019 ECOCIDE OR ENVIRONMENTAL SELF-DESTRUCTION? 245 notion of a responsibility to protect those same species, in a setting that allowed for their conservation. In this context, some philosophical schools of thought accordingly focused their attention on the survival of species and ecosystem integrity, while others placed more emphasis on the need to end cruelty toward animals, making common cause with movements, that for exemple, fight for animal rights or for the abolition of property rights over animals. Both philosophical schools of thought concur, however, in a critique of the human being’s conception as the only being in the world that conceives of itself as an end within itself, and never as a mean: that is, treating all other species as a mere mean, available to be pressed into service, while never regarding itself in the same way. Hans Jonas has posited that every living being should be considered an end within itself, with an intrinsic value requiring no ulterior justification. From Jonas’ perspective, humans enjoy no particular advantage over other species, because their “ontological dignity” resides only in their unique capacity to be custodian and guardian of the others. On this basis, one can argue that the prototype of responsibility is the intrahuman model of relationships that can be nonreciprocal, and essentially unilateral.25 Various regions of the world have established protected areas, in a more or less conscious effort to compensate for the self-destructive tendencies discussed in this paper by halting the all-out deterioration of the Earth’s surface caused by extractive industries. Are conservation projects exempt from all speciesist practices? Recognized park areas have sprung up to preserve particularly spectacular scenic beauty, found in places that people often must pay in order to visit. This enterprise, however, has no direct bearing on what such visitors do to favor or oppose the causes that lie behind the initiatives. There is no doubt that some tourists, captivated by the sight of unique natural beauty, are in a stronger position to develop a greater awareness towards becoming altruistically involved in causes promoting the protection of unspoilt areas. Nevertheless, conservationism, even of vast areas, is not immune from any vestige of speciesism, when, for example, it selects areas and landscapes for conservation based on their unique appeal to Western aesthetic notions of beauty, while ignoring pastures, ravines, valleys, or wetlands that may be important for other reasons.26 Nonetheless, it would be absurd to deny all legitimacy to these projects and conservation areas that proceed from this aesthetic fascination. Systems of national parks have undoubtedly helped to protect biodiversity and preserve the beauty of unique landscapes against the depredations of global anthropogenic destruction. However, it is worth drawing attention, through this example, the high and profound complexity of speciesism that sometimes derive to the extreme of confronting environmental with animal ethics. The search for beauty in practice has been a motivating factor behind many ecological and animal protection initiatives. The point is that it cannot in itself 25 See Hans Jonas, Das Prinzip Verantwortung (Frankfurt: Editorial Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, 2003), pp. 177-78. 26 See Adrian Monjeau, “Guns and Roses: Violencia y Belleza en la Relación Hombre-naturaleza,” Cuadernos de Ética 24, no. 37 (2009): 1–11. 246 ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS Vol. 41 overcome the many levels and manifestations of speciesism when it is informed by aesthetic norms that can themselves become discriminatory when applied to select certain species over others. Those not favored may be displaced or even eliminated from some protected areas as a result. For example, species likely to be singled out include pandas, dolphins, or huemules (a species of Andean deer) rather than “ugly” insects, such as cockroaches, beetles, or spiders. These and other selection criteria are open to critical reflection in regards to the meaning and extent of varying degrees of speciesism.27 Despite these limitations, it is undeniable that caring for, and valuing, the quality of life of nonhuman species represents at least a move toward antispeciesist motivations, even when it still proves difficult to fully apply. BEYOND ANTI-SPECIESIST DISJUNCTURES BETWEEN ENVIRONMENTAL AND ANIMAL ETHICS: THE SHARED CHALLENGE Mere attentiveness to the ability of non-human species to feel pain and suffering does not automatically spell the end of epistemic and ethical anthropocentrism, as speciesism implies a perception of the world that treats other species as the property of humanity, and behaves abusively toward them. However, such attentiveness does allow us to gain a sense of the breadth of the spectrum of speciesist problems against which both environmental and animal ethics are forced to struggle. It also allows us to consider these challenges as an essentially philosophical, and not merely biological, matter. Human beings, alone among the species, are responsible for the current condition of the planet, because their condition as sapiens could have permitted them to avoid setting in motion a chain of events that has led to a possibly ecocidal scenario, or to the infinite number of environmentally self-destructive dynamics that have undeniably marked human beings’ speciesist role in Earth’s history. The environmental problems that put the lives of various species at risk constitute ever more visible evidence of the need to address ecocidal and self-destructive human tendencies. Homo sapiens is inextricably caught up in these same tendencies, whether as perpetrators or as victims, as powerful members of the human species also prey on their own. Any effort to prevent a fatal outcome turns on a need to understand the problem of speciesism, from within an identity that transcends a person’s gender, race, origins, ideology, and culture. A common consciousness of ethics is required, one that attributes at least the same importance to the care and protection of extra-human relationships as it does to intrahuman ones, and that is also conscious of the stubborn persistence of speciesism, even within practices that attempt to combat against it. 27 See Sandra Baquedano, “Conservacionismo en Eras de Especismo,” Luna Azul 41 (2015): 240–53. Fall 2019 ECOCIDE OR ENVIRONMENTAL SELF-DESTRUCTION? 247 Environmental and animal ethics share a common desire to avoid disastrous levels of large-scale mortality and destruction; this goes for both biotic and abiotic species. The prevention of such destruction is one conscious motivation behind antispeciesism, as it is focused on the value and rights of other species.28 The absence of an ethic capable of stretching beyond humanity means that anthropocentric cultural or mental schemas eventually turn against themselves. Scholars are increasingly able to identify and describe certain self-harming behaviors in other species29 or ecosystems.30 The anamnesis of speciesism in the modern anthropogenic extinction shows that in global terms, these dynamics have had a similarly (self-) harmful impact on the basis that sustain life on Earth. Global losses have ensued in the form of the destruction and self-destruction of species. Human beings are capable of both causing and being caught up in this same (self-) destruction, for multiple anthropogenic reasons. 28 On the irreconcilable issues existing between both ethics, see Óscar Horta, “The Ethics of the Ecology of Fear against the Nonspeciesist Paradigm: A Shift in the Aims of Intervention in Nature,” in Between the Species 13 (2010): 163–87; Catia Faria, “Muerte Entre las Flores: El Conflicto Entre el Ecologismo y la Defensa de los Animales no Humanos,” in Viento Sur 125 (2012): 67–76. 29 See Vitus Drosher, Überlebensformel: Wie Tiere Umweltgefahren meistern: Können Tiere Selbstmord begehen? (Münich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1987). 30 See Catton, Rebasados; Diamond, Colapse.