Preface

Our technology provides us with enormous and wide-ranging power with respect to species. We are causing species to go extinct at extraordinary rates, altering existing species in unprecedented ways, and creating entirely novel species. More than ever before, we require an ethic of species to guide our interactions with them and our choices regarding them. Central to an ethic of species are accounts of the value of species and the ethical significance of species boundaries. Developing these is the core theoretical project in this book. The core applied issues are what the value of species and ethical significance of species boundaries imply for species preservation under conditions of global climate change, modification of existing species (including ourselves), and engineering novel species. Species and the individuals that comprise them possess myriad varieties of value that need to be appreciated and considered in action, practice, and policy contexts. But species are not sacred. They do not have absolute or unconditional value, and they are not untouchable. It is sometimes permissible to alter them; it is sometimes permissible to let them go extinct (even when we are a cause of the extinction); and it is sometimes permissible to invent new ones. In fact, sometimes we ought to do these things, in just, caring, compassionate, and ecologically sensitive ways.