Should we get rid of the biosphere instead of rewilding earth?
I'm not sure if this is the best subreddit to post this but here it is, I know the post ended up being kinda long, but I'd relaly appreciate if you took the time to read it and share your thoughts of it below <3
I’m sure this topic is going to become one of the biggest discussions of the next decades, maybe even the next few years. So I’d like to start by explaining the reason behind the title of this post. Most people love the biosphere. Most of us have a kind of biophilic instinct, and that’s completely understandable. But many people also tend to idealize nature as something inherently beautiful, where animals live happy and fulfilling lives. Obviously, that isn’t really true. Yes, nature can sometimes be breathtakingly beautiful. Some landscapes leave you speechless, and some animals with highly developed nervous systems can form deep emotional bonds that we interpret as love, not only with humans, but also with members of their own kind. We see this in countless videos on internet that makes us say "Aww" or want to be in those places.
But that is only a very small part of what's truly going on in the real world, I live in a rural area, so I know what I’m talking about. Real wilderness is, most of the time, messy, brutal, dirty, and extremely violent. Most wild animals live under constant chronic stress because they are trying not to be eaten. Illness, parasites, injuries, starvation, and genetic mutations can make their lives miserable (check r/natureismetal if you want to check it by yourself but be aware that that subreddit is very uhh traumatizing). In some cases, evolution itself seems to condemn certain species to tragic existences, animals with forms of “programmed obsolescence,” like salmon that rapidly deteriorate after reproduction, or species whose bodies continue growing in ways that eventually become fatal. Most animals die young, indeed most animals have a lot of offspring because they know most of their childs are going to die. Predation most frequently is a process of prolonged pain instead of a fast quick death. Can we really justify all of that with the brief moments of happyness these animals experience day to day? If gazelle may enjoy grazing peacefully, but is that enough to justify an existence where it ends up being eaten alive? does brief happiness outweigh terror, injury, or chronic stress? Put yourself in the place of that gazelle, would you like to be it? (I know we can 100% put ourselves in their places since we have different brains and ways to interpret the world even while being both mammals but is not as far as reality as it may seems), not to mention animals that besides being conciouss have some kind of rationality like basically most mammals birds and a lot of fish and mollusks, they can remember traumas, feel prolonged fear and in cases like elpehants experience social grief. Life was not wisely designed so that every animal could experience a meaningful or enjoyable existence. Evolution does not care about happiness, fairness, or wellbeing. It only “cares” ( metaphorically speaking) about replication. Animals endure and evolved the hability to feel constant fear, disease, hunger, pain, and suffering simply because those traits and behaviors allow genes to survive long enough to reproduce. That is the system our reality produced and the one most people think is a good idea to preserve.
So my question is: should we really preserve this system indefinitely? Should we rewild everything and act as if humanity never existed? Should we eventually spread life across the galaxy through panspermia, reproducing the same cycle on countless worlds? Or should we instead ask whether it would be more ethical to end this cycle of suffering once and for all? Humans already interfere massively with the biosphere. Factory-farmed animals arguably experience some of the most miserable lives imaginable, and we are directly responsible for that suffering. Even though technologies like cultured meat may eventually reduce or replace industrial farming, the suffering we have already caused cannot simply be undone.
At the same time, our moral intuition about suffering in nature is inconsistent. If we see a starving dog in a city, Most of us immediately want to help it. We look at it and think, “poor thing.” But when thousands of deer starve during winter, many people suddenly describe it as “natural” and therefore something we should not interfere with. But why? At what point does suffering become acceptable simply because it happens in the wild?
And if we do decide that reducing suffering in nature is morally important, where would that logic eventually lead us? Would we try to eliminate diseases and parasites? Eradicate viruses that cause immense suffering to conscious beings? Sterilize predators to reduce predation? Genetically redesign ecosystems? Put animals into artificially controlled environments where pain is minimized as much as possible? Straight up put them in pleasure machines to ensure they never ever feel pain again?
Of course, I’m exaggerating on that last one but the underlying question remains the same: if suffering is bad, why should “naturalness” automatically justify it? Even if humanity someday managed to engineer a more balanced biosphere where suffering was drastically reduced, that balance would be temporary. Ecosystems constantly change, evolve, collapse, and reorganize themselves. Eventually everything would drift back toward the same evolutionary pressures that created suffering in the first place. And in the long run, Earth itself is doomed anyway. In roughly five billion years, Sol will become a red giant and wipe out all life on this planet. So what exactly are we trying to preserve? A beautiful miracle? Or an endless machine that continuously creates conscious beings capable of fear, pain, stress, disease, and death?