Marcelino responds to Tyler's question: "What are our personal obligations toward the environment?"

We are part of the environment. Other people are part of my environment. I am part of the environment of other people and of many other organisms such as the bacteria that live in my gut, the birds that nest in my building, or the plants that live in some distant rainforest. The question whether we have obligations towards "the environment" doesn't make sense.

[Tyler continues:] Climate change is not the last environmental burden we will place on the world and probably not even the biggest such burden, but fewer people does mean less human pressure along many environmental dimensions, present and future.

"Burden?" "Human pressure?" I understand that these are just metaphors, but metaphors for what? The choice of words suggests a world in which "the environment" is better off if not touched by us the outsiders, and the well-being of "the environment" is above our well-being. Maybe Cowen and those who speak in similar terms mean some other thing. If so, why don't they choose other metaphors?

Well, some argue that the apparent dualism is a useful abstraction, not a literal truth. It is used to do certain analyses and make decisions. This can be true, but it is seldom so I fear. It is often taken literally and that leads to poor analyses and decisions.

Worse, I think, it leads to dead end ideas such as Tyler seems to hold: - fewer people. This may happen some day, on the other side of the development and wealth curve after a singularity of sorts that allows an inflection point. But that is far away and not something we can grasp from this distance. It's like talking about an after life.

Even that can be innocent enough, a form of entertainment or spiritual holiday, for those who find such things satisfying. The problem is that it gets political and affects policy. The results are necessarily nonsensical, an impediment to the real business of human animals living well and long. Note that living well is a capacious idea that can include any of the environmental neatness and hygiene ideas you'd care to include.