I saw a story about how global warming is threatening many species of animals with extinction, which got me thinking: Why should we care?

I was going to write a list of all the plants and animals that we could do without, but then I realized it was pretty much all of them. It's actually much shorter to write a list of plants and animals we actually have a use for, as, when you really think about it, it's not that many.

USEFUL ANIMALS

To be honest, we don't actually need any animals as we can survive on plants alone, but here are the ones that we get by far the most use out of:

What do all these animals have in common? They're completely useless!

2. The Cow: I like steak. I like cheeseburgers. I don't particularly care for milk, but it is needed in lots of recipes I like. So the cow gets spot number two. I don't know how many cows there are, but obviously there are enough of them to threaten the planet with global warming due to their gaseous output. Of course, they like it warm, so bully for them. Once again, extinction threat is zero.

3. The Pig: I'm surprised I ended up putting the producer of bacon all the way down in the number three slot, but, because the previous two each produce two kinds of food, the pig simply loses out. Yes, the pig is smart, but we're much smarter. It's not like Arnold is going to come up with a unified field theory. They're only use to us is food, and they fulfill that role well. And (you'll begin to notice a pattern here), there are a jillion pigs out there and of no threat of extinction.

4. The Dog: He may be man's best friend, but, if I had to choose between him and chicken, steak, or bacon, I'm afraid he loses out. Now, since we're civilized, we don't eat dogs, but they're the only service animal out there that hasn't been completely replaced by modern technology. We have better transportation than the horse and better ways to scare Romans than the elephant, but the dog still wins on bomb and drug sniffing versus our best technology. Also, if you want someone to lead blind people around all day without getting bored, no better option than the dog. For guarding purposes, they often get over zealous, but that's still good for certain situations. As for possibility of extinction, ask any pound and they'll tell you we actually have far too many dogs.

5. The Tuna: I felt I should put some fish on here, so I went for the versatile tuna. Good as a gourmet meal and an everyday sandwich. The top three animals beat all fish hands down, though. As for chance for extinction, I have no idea other than there always seems to be more than enough cans of them at every supermarket in America.

And, I think that's absolutely ever single animal we might ever have a use for. Any other animal you can think of might be fun to have around for some reason, but, if you're honest, you'll admit they're not actually useful (or, at least, not replaceable by modern technology). I know some people will be upset I left out cats, but, come on, they're completely useless. And I don't consider companionship a use since you can get that from other people. Any pest control they do can be better done with modern traps and poisons.

I assume one day we'll be able to process plants into meat without the animal in between, and then we'll pretty much never need animals ever again. Currently, veggie burgers are horrendous, though.

USEFUL PLANTS

Plants are still needed because they can turn dead matter, water, and sunlight into food and get oxygen from carbon-dioxide -- things we can't seem to do too efficiently ourselves. The thing is, every single plant does those actions, so it hardly matters which plants survive as long as some do. Here's what we'll want to keep:

1. Grain: I'm not going to bother to list every plant that we eat, but the core ones are all more than abundant and have absolutely no chance of going extinct. I mainly just want them to feed to the chicken, cow, and pig so they can naturally process plants into more tasty material.

2. Trees: Most things we make of wood can be better made with synthetic materials now, but wood still has some use beyond sentimentality. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a tree, so no worry of them going extinct in general. As for trees most useful for wood, the lumberers know which ones those are and plant plenty. I honestly don't find fruit bearing plants that useful, because fruit is not that filling a food or as essential as grain and corn. It's a luxury and not useful enough to make this list.

You'll notice with plants that we plant plenty of all the ones we find useful -- and those also tend to be the more rugged plants. There is no chance of essential plants going extinct or of us losing so many plants we don't have enough oxygen (at least before we can have technology replace plants at oxygen production). As for the aesthetic value of plants, just go buy a painting from Wal-Mart.

OTHER USEFUL ORGANISMS

It's my understanding that there are a number of microscopic organism we need to survive, but there's like a billion of them on each of us so there's no chance of us running out of them. Also, since I've never seen an environmentalist never miss a chance to yell about something but I've never seen one yell about a microscopic organism going extinct, it's my guess that microscopic ogranism pretty much never do go extinct. They're tiny and there are billions of them; we can't even wipe out a specific species if we tried -- at this point in time, at least.

So, that's about all the life forms we currently need or have great use of. I can't think of any insect we actually need -- and I pretty much hate all of them.

Anyway, one day we'll make technology that can do all the functions of plants even more efficiently and then nanotechnology can replace microscopic organism. At that point -- I say within the next hundred years -- we'll have absolutely no more use for the "environment" or the "eco-system" as they call it. Those slave chains will have been cast off.

Some argue that we can't let things go extinct because then future generations won't get to experience.

That argument is pure rubbish.

Dinosaurs, the most interesting animals ever, have been dead for millions of years, and kids do just fine reading about them in books. For those of you who really like plants and animals and want to be a pack rat about them, take a few pictures and a few DNA samples of the ones you like and then they'll be preserved for all time. I think its a pretty reasonable assumption that sometime in the future we'll be able to resurrect any animal from a DNA sample, so I honestly don't see why we worry about extinction at all.

I guess this whole post is just a long way of saying that, if you're logical about it, environmentalism is nothing but a huge waste of time and energy on something of waning importance.

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