While our ethical traditions know how to deal with homicide and even genocide these traditions collapse entirely when confronted with ecocide and biocide.

Today we live in an ethically confusing and contradictory world, a world in which sentiment and brutality exist side by side.

At the same time as modern thinkers seek to extend the circle of moral consideration to other animals, humanity inflicts more suffering on more creatures than at any time in history.

Is this really what we want to do to creation... to drive it to extinction? But extinction is irreversible. Species that go extinct are lost forever.

This is not Jurassic Park - we can't bring them back! Over the last century we've participated in something of a binge of unbelievable prosperity.

We may have had some intuition that it was a binge and the earth couldn't support it but aside from the easy things, biodegradable detergent or slightly smaller cars, we haven't done very much. We haven't turned our lives around.