Motivations For Environmentalism

Possibilities can prove that certain ideas are true.  For instance, the simple possibility that my sense of sight does not necessarily correspond to the actual nature of external, physical stimuli already proves that I therefore cannot know if an object exists by looking at it.  In other cases, possibilities are not as immediately relevant to the core of some category of philosophy.  This latter type of possibility might be appealed to as something of direct importance to an issue when it is really a red herring that no one at all needs to specifically contemplate.  This is not to say it is something that does not merit at least some consideration upon thinking or hearing of it for the first time; it just resides far from the heart of the issues it is associated with.  Examples are commonplace, but I will share one from my own life several years ago.

A key example I have encountered was that of a professor (a very philosophically shallow one at that, and one I have mocked in another post years ago) stating that humans have an obligation to take care of the environment for the sake of whatever hypothetical dominant species might arise after humanity, a statement he made around a year and a half before my graduation.  Rather than simply discuss the immediate relevance of environmental stability to human life and the evidence that human life and nature have metaphysical value and not just metaphysical natures, he addressed something in the potentially distant future that might not ever happen in the first place.  His motivations for respecting the environment were far from having strong relevance.

How would one possibly prove that a future dominant species that replaces humans is anything more than a mere possibility?  Even if another species was somehow proven to replace humans after our extinction or decline, neither of which is fated to happen by logical necessity, how does it follow that humans have an obligation to labor with their interests in mind?  He never even explored these things with even superficial detail beyond the initial assertion because he made arbitrary claims about morality on a regular basis, ranging from claims in favor of conscience-based moral epistemology to the statement that egoistic utilitarianism is a partly "ideal" moral system.

However, not every motivation for environmentalism is valid even if it is morally good to protect the environment from gratuitous harm and exploitation.  Some things are either less important in their relationship to environmentalism or nothing more than red herrings to any moral obligations that might exist.  The very existence of a future species is irrelevant to whether the natural world has a value that makes humans have an obligation to not destroy it needlessly or thoughtlessly (and it was especially ironic that the professor favorably brought his assertion up as a professed Christian).  If it has such value, which would not be rooted in human perception or preference, then humans should caretake the environment irrespective of how it would enable other species of the future to survive.

Purely speculative reasons for preserving the environment will always bow to reasons based in actual logicality and moral obligations.  A conclusion based on speculation, as opposed to a truth revealed by speculation (such as the aforementioned example of how knowing that one cannot disprove the idea that objects one sees do not actually exist, no matter how much it may not seem to be the case, proves that one is irrational to believe that the objects one sees do exist on the basis of sight), is inherently unproven and perhaps even unprovable.  Were this not the case, it would not be speculation!  It would be possible to logically prove that the given possibility is true in reality.  Environmentalism, basic epistemology, and every other thing one could think about are not confirmed by anything other than sheer logical necessity.