The issue of whether the beautiful mountains should be destroyed reminds me
of the Yantze River in China and the deep gorge. The plan there is to build
a hydro electric dam which would flood about 1 million acres or more of
farmland, cause a river to dissappear, as well as flood some very beautiful
limestone mountains which are basically 'useless'. 

The destruction of the beautiful mountains is not deliberate but rather an
unfortunate consequence regarding electrical production. 

The ethical issue here is about alternative sources of power which may have
different consequences and so on. 

The easiest and cheapest sources of electrical power may have great
attendent costs and impacts. Flooding one million acres of farmland itself
is not going to solve any problems in a country with food shortages and
overpopulation. The incremental impact around the world associated with
large hydro reservoirs taken cumulatively also has a vast impact on food
production. 

Almost one billion people in the world suffer from malnutrition, food
shortages and starvation. 

john








At 03:10 PM 8/31/00 +0100, David Pearson wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>Here's an anecdote related to questions of what we should and should
>not destroy or preserve.
>
>In conversation with my friend SR, I said something like "Imagine some
>beautiful mountains that are situated in such a way that they cannot
>be of any possible use to anyone. Maybe they are on another
>planet. Someone has the ability to destroy them without anyone else's
>ever knowing this. Is it wrong for that person to so destroy these mountains?"
>
>SR said "Of course it would be wrong!" and I said "Of course it would not
>be wrong!".
>
>We did not follow this up, but my assumption is that SR believed that
>the beautiful mountains have a value in themselves (I won't say "intrinsic
>value", because I'm not sure exactly what that means). On the other hand,
>my belief is that an entity can only have value *to* an entity (which may
>be the same one).
>
>I'm not saying there are any new ideas in this, but Jim's post reminded
>me of this conversation, and it is relevant, and I thought I'd share it.
>
>Anyway, harvesting the ice has much more complex and ramified possible effects
>than my hidden mountains - indeed, many of them can only be determined
>probabilistically, if at all. But at root there seems to be a fundamental
>and irreconcilable disagreement between SR (and similar) and myself (and
similar).
>I don't see a way around (or through) this impasse. Does anyone else?
>
>Is the putative value in something deontological or a consequential?
>
>Regards,
>David.
>
>
>
>-- 
>David Pearson,              Phone: +44 (0)118  9318741
>ESSC,                       Fax:   +44 (0)118  9316413 
>University of Reading,      Email: [log in to unmask]
>Reading RG6 6AL,            
>UK.                         www.nerc-essc.ac.uk/~dwcp/Home.html
>


"You never know where fish will go."




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