In “The Meat Eaters,” Jeff McMahan argues that if we care about animal suffering enough to stop being predators ourselves, we should try to remove predation from nature too:
Many thousands of animal species either have been or are being driven to extinction as a side effect of our activities. Knowing this, we have thus far been largely unwilling even to moderate our rapacity to mitigate these effects. If, however, we were to become more amenable to exercising restraint, it is conceivable that we could do so in a selective manner, favoring the survival of some species over others. The question might then arise whether to modify our activities in ways that would favor the survival of herbivorous rather than carnivorous species.
Anticipating that one of the objections to his plan will be “it’s wrong to kill off a species,” McMahan points out that we make species go extinct all the time as a side-effect of our existence. Since killing animals is inevitable, shouldn’t we try to aim for carnivores if we can?
But how could we ever control the species of animal that we accidentally or even intentionally kill as a byproduct of our activities? He isn’t talking about animals we hunt; he’s talking about animals we kill for agriculture and civilization. It makes no sense to say we could ever choose which animals get in the way of those things and thus must die. Would we move all the herbivores out of our fields and forests and put lions there instead, and then run over lions with our wheat threshers or shoot them for prowling our orchards?
It doesn’t matter. McMahan isn’t concerned with practicalities. He just wants to pose a philosophical question: is suffering reduction or the inherent value of a species more important? Should we protect the lion because there’s something worthwhile about lions existing? Or is this outweighed by the terror and pain that lions cause, which would mean we should get rid of lions to make the world a less brutal, painful place? McMahan believes that since species have come and gone throughout the world’s history, it doesn’t make sense to say that the exact species that are alive now are the right ones and should never change. Therefore, goodbye lions.
