In trying to take in the reality of our Earths future I have been thinking about many aspects of human life. Kohak asks an important and interesting question, "How can humans live on this Earth so that they do not destroy the preconditions for their own existence." We have survived before without taking such a damaging toll on our Earth. The scientific aspect of ecological philosopy comes into play here because we must know exactly what we are doing now that we did not do then to cause such drastic and devestating changes to the Earth. A classmate in a biology class this week said to me, "without animal research and consquently euthanized animals, we would not have made great medical advances or progress in human living." I am not sure how I feel about animal research but her comment made me think about the fact that non-humans have allowed us to cure, and treat many illnesses and now we are inevitibaly bringing them to an end. This made me think about the goal of this class, ecological ethics. How should we behave ourselves and interact with the non-human world? I also had flashbacks of our "Cheeta" discussions from class. It seems absurd to me that a primate so advanced not have some kind of "rights." I thought what if there was something humans had that chimpanzees could use to ensure their survival. Would it be okay for them to test us and then get rid of us as needed? Obviously the answer is no, but I think we at least have an obligation to ensure that our actions do not harmfully affect their survival.