Advantageous comparison can reframe ecological harm as morally justified

Evidence

“But no one,” he went on to say, “has seriously proposed eliminating the use of aspirin or exterminating all bees.” This erroneous comparison fails to recognize that, unlike aspirin and bee stings, misuse of pesticides kills a wide range of species on a large scale. He likened public concern over the ecological and health effects of pesticides to Joseph McCarthy’s anticom-munist witch hunt. Diamond also took issue with the environmental ethic that humans should live in balance with nature, arguing that human interests should not be subordinated to those of nonhuman species. He achieved this comparative exoneration by downgrading the value of lower species: “If DDT kills some cats but saves many humans, if weed killer destroys a pocket of wildlife shelter but increases highway safety, so much the better.” — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2659

Categorization

• DEFINE: Word ‘comparative exoneration’ is introduced here as a named mechanism; the passage works as a concrete worked example.
• XREF: connects to: Positive social comparisons are just as harmful as negative ones — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1479; Cost-benefit logic could portray human extinction as welfare maximizing — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 435