The Radical Plan To Phase Out

Earth's Predatory Species

George Dvorsky
7/30/14 2:36pm

63.4K
96922

Should animals be permitted to hunt and kill other animals? Some futurists believe that
humans should intervene, and solve the "problem" of predator vs. prey once and for all.
We talked to the man who wants to use radical Eco engineering to put an end to the
carnage.

A world without predators certainly sounds extreme, and it is. But British philosopher
David Pearce can't imagine a future in which animals continue to be trapped in the
never-ending cycle of blind Darwinian processes. It's up to us, he argues, to put our
brains, our technologies, and our sense of compassion to good use, and do something
about it. It's part of his overarching Hedonistic Imperative, a far-sighted "abolitionist
project" set with the goal of achieving nothing less than the elimination of all suffering
on the planet. And by all suffering, he means all suffering.

No doubt, when I think about the state of our species and our planet tens of thousands
of years from now, it's hard for me to accept the notion that nature and all that's within
it remains the same while we venture out into the next state of our existence. Ignoring
the plight of other animals seems both selfish and irresponsible, particularly if we have
the means to do something about it; the suggestion that we should consciously and
compassionately reboot the Earth's biosphere is as futuristic a proposition as it gets —
but one we should contemplate very seriously.

And we're already starting to think along these lines. Owing to the advent of gene-
editing techniques like CRISPR-Cas9, scientists are proposing that we edit the genes of
wild animals on the fly. We would do so en masse by engaging in "gene drives" where
preferential genes would be driven through wild populations of animals. The end result
would be the emergence of "new" species more to our liking. Today, there are
already proposals to reduce malarial mosquitoes using this very technique.

Should We Deliberately Edit The Genes Of Wild Animals?

A powerful new technique called a "gene drive" is opening up incredible possibilities for …

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It's clear that we're fast approaching the era of wide-scale Eco engineering — a prospect
that David Pearce argues should be used to eliminate suffering. But to get there, he says
we're going to have to eliminate and reprogram our planet's predators. To that end, he's
put together a "blueprint for a cruelty-free world." I recently talked to him about the
idea and how we could possibly do such a thing without completely wrecking the
biosphere. Here's how our conversation unfolded.

io9: The idea of re-engineering the ecosystem such that it's free from
suffering is a radically ambitious project — one that's been referred to as
the "well intentioned lunacy" of a futurist. That said, it's an idea rooted in
history. From where do you draw your ideas and moral philosophy?

David Pearce: Sentient beings shouldn't harm each other. This utopian-sounding
vision is ancient. Gautama Buddha said "May all that have life be delivered from
suffering". The Bible prophesies that the wolf and the lion shall lie down with the lamb.
Today, Jains sweep the ground in front of their feet rather than unwittingly tread on an
insect.

My own conceptual framework and ethics are secular — more Bentham than Buddha. I
think we should use biotechnology to rewrite our genetic source code; recalibrate the
hedonic treadmill; shut down factory farms and slaughterhouses; and systematically
help sentient beings rather than harm them.

However, there is an obvious problem. On the face of it, the idea of a pain-free biosphere
is ecologically illiterate. Secular and religious utopians tend to ignore the biology of
obligate carnivores and the thermodynamics of a food chain. Feed a population of
starving herbivores in winter and we'd trigger a population explosion and ecological
collapse. Help carnivorous predators and we'd just cause more death and suffering to
the herbivores they prey on. Richard Dawkins puts the bioconservative case quite
bluntly: "It must be so". Fortunately, this isn't the case.

It's often said that predators (and most animals for that matter) fall outside
our ethical purview and that we need to perceive them as amoral creatures.
So what's the problem with predators? And why should humans involve
themselves to this degree in the ecosystem's inner workings?

Humans already massively "interfere" with Nature in countless ways ranging from
uncontrolled habitat-destruction to captive breeding programs for big cats to
"rewilding". Within the next few decades, every cubic metre of the planet will be
computationally accessible to surveillance, micro-management and control. On current
trends, large nonhuman terrestrial vertebrates will be extinct outside our wildlife parks
by mid-century. So the question arises. What principle(s) should govern our
stewardship of the rest of the living world? How many of the traditional horrors of
"Nature, red in tooth and claw" should we promote and perpetuate? Alternatively,
insofar we want to preserve traditional forms of Darwinian life, should we aim for an
ethic of compassionate stewardship instead. Cognitively, nonhuman animals are akin to
small children. They need caring for as such.

Getting rid of predation isn't a matter of moralising. A python who kills a small human
child isn't morally blameworthy. Nor is a lion who hunts and kills a terrified zebra. In
both cases, the victim suffers horribly. But the predator lacks the empathetic and mind-
reading skills needed to understand the implications of what s/he is doing. Some
humans still display a similar deficit. From the perspective of the victim, the moral
status or (lack of) guilty intent of a human or nonhuman predator is irrelevant. Either
way, to stand by and watch the snake asphyxiate a child would be almost as morally
abhorrent as to kill the child yourself. So why turn this principle on its head with beings
of comparable sentience and sentience to human infants and toddlers? With power
comes complicity. For better or worse, power over the lives of all sentient beings on the
planet is now within our grasp.

Inevitably, critics talk of "hubris". Humans shouldn't "play God". What right have
humans to impose our values on members of another race or species? The charge is
seductive but misplaced. There is no anthropomorphism here, no imposition of human
values on alien minds. Human and nonhuman animals are alike in an ethically critical
respect. The pleasure-pain axis is universal to sentient life. No sentient being wants to
be harmed — to be asphyxiated, dismembered, or eaten alive. The wishes of a terrified
toddler or a fleeing zebra to flourish unmolested are not open to doubt even in the
absence of the verbal capacity to say so.

Predators play an invaluable role in the world's ecosystems. Upsetting this

balance could have disastrous consequences. How does your plan for a
predator-free Earth deal with these constraints? And how do you
distinguish between selective extinction strategies and reprogramming?

Carnivorous predators keep populations of herbivores in check. Plasmodium-carrying

species of the Anopheles mosquito keep human populations in check. In each case, a
valuable ecological role is achieved at the price of immense suffering and the loss of
hundreds of millions of lives. What's in question isn't the value of the parasite or
predator's ecological role, but whether intelligent moral agents can perform that role
better. On some fairly modest assumptions, fertility regulation via family planning or
cross-species immunocontraception is a more civilised and compassionate policy option
than famine, predation and disease. The biggest obstacle to a future of compassionate
ecosystems is the ideology of traditional conservation biology — and unreflective status
quo bias.

The distinction between selective extinction and genetic reprogramming is not clear-cut.
It's still useful. All but most ardent conservationists and advocates of the status quo
would prefer to see the Anopheles mosquito extinct in the wild — or at least rendered
harmless. By common consent, humanity should aim to wipe out malaria world-wide.
No doubt fewer human and nonhuman animals will sicken and die in consequence,
putting further strain on the environment. But access to family planning in the human
population of sub-Saharan African can be improved too. In the long run, editing out of
the human genome the terrible sickle-cell allele that confers partial resistance to malaria
should be feasible too. 

However, the idea of allowing predatory species of iconic
vertebrate to go extinct usually elicits a different response from the idea of phasing out a
mosquito — regardless of the suffering they cause. Most city-dwelling suburbanites are
aghast at the thought of a world without free-living lions or tigers and other
"charismatic mega-fauna".

I'm not personally convinced that we need such predatory species to survive in any
shape or form — not even genetically "reprogrammed" to be harmless to their usual
victims. But let's assume otherwise. Can the twin principles of conservation biology and
compassionate ecosystem design be reconciled? In principle, yes. If we really want to
preserve free-living crocodiles, snakes and tigers and deliver a cruelty-free biosphere,
then the carnivorous members of tomorrow's wildlife parks will need to be genetically
and behaviourally tweaked — with neurochips, GPS tracking and abundance of other
high-tech safeguards to prevent accidents.

In the case of unpredated herbivorous populations that would otherwise explode, cross-
species fertility regulation via immununocontraception will be a cheap, effective and
low-tech option.

Critics may protest that a lion who eats catnip-flavour cultured meat, or a tiger who has
been genetically tweaked to enjoy a vegetarian diet, is no longer "truly" a lion or a tiger.
Exactly the same argument could be made for contemporary Homo sapiens. Thus
Nature "designed" archaic male humans to be hunters / warriors. If we start wearing
clothes, cure deadly genetic diseases, quit harming nonhuman animals, and stop killing
each other, have we thereby lost some vital part of our "species essence"? And if so,
would it matter? Likewise with lions and herbivores. Why confine the civilising process
to a single ethnic group or species? Taxonomic abstractions don't literally have interests,
only individual sentient beings.


How granular and total does this project need to be? Must we eliminate all
predation? And to what extent are we talking about — like, even insects and
parasites?


In the long run, there is nothing to stop intelligent agents from identifying the
molecular signature of experience below hedonic zero and eliminating it altogether —
even in insects. Nociception is vital; pain is optional. I tentatively predict that the
world's last unpleasant experience in our forward light-cone will be a precisely datable
event — perhaps some micro-pain in an obscure marine invertebrate a few centuries
hence. 

Needless to say, we're going to require extremely sophisticated technologies
to pull this off. But we're already developing precursor technologies to the
ones you describe. Looking ahead to the future, what other technologies
will we need to fulfil this project?


The well-being of large and long-lived free-living mammals could be secured even with
today's technologies. Expanding the circle of compassion further is more technically
challenging. Until a couple of years ago, I'd have spoken in terms of centuries. For
sociological rather than technical reasons, I still think this kind of timescale is more
credible for safeguarding the well-being of humans, transhumans and the humblest of
nonhuman animals alike.

Certainly, until the CRISPR revolution, talk of extending an abolitionist ethic beyond
vertebrates sounded fanciful because compassionate interventions would pass from
recognisable extensions of existing technologies to a speculative era of mature
nanotechnology, self-replicating nanobots and marine drones patrolling the oceans. For
me, the final piece of the abolitionist jigsaw only fell into place after reading Eric
Drexler's Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology (1986) — a
tantalizing prospect, but not a scenario readily conceivable in our lifetime.
 


Then came CRISPR. Even sober-minded scientists describe the CRISPR revolution as
"jaw-dropping". Gene drives can spread genetic changes to the rest of the population.

Whether for large iconic vertebrates or obscure uncharismatic bugs, the question to ask
now is less what's feasible but rather, what's ethical? What kinds of consciousness, and
what kinds of sentient being do we want to exist in the world? 

Naturally, just because
a pan-species welfare state is technically feasible, there is no guarantee that some sort
Garden of Eden will ever come to pass. Most people still find the idea of phasing out the
biology of involuntary suffering in humans a fanciful prospect — let alone its abolition in
nonhuman animals. The well-being of all insects sounds like the reductio ad
absurdum of the abolitionist project. But here I'm going to be quite dogmatic. A few
centuries from now, if involuntary suffering still exists in the world, the explanation for
its persistence won't be that we've run out of computational resources to phase out its
biological signature, but rather that rational agents — for reasons unknown — will have
chosen to preserve it.
 


What's your ultimate vision for our planet and the animals that live on it?

I look forward to a future where all sentient beings enjoy life animated by gradients of
bliss. "Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell",
said Karl Popper. In a similar vein, my sympathies lie with the skeptical reader who
reckons humans will probably mess things up.

On a brighter note, if we get things
right, the future of life in the universe can be wonderful beyond the bounds of human
imagination: a "triple S" civilisation of superlongevity, superintelligence and
superhappiness. I doubt I'll live to see it, but it's a future worth striving for.
 
 


Top image: Gregoire Bouguereau

Follow me on Twitter: @dvorsky