If we have a sense of wonder about the universe or our planet, then what we should really do is rid it of us, because all we have ever done is ruin it, make it hideous, inflict pain and destruction on it.
I have kids. My behavior is not consistent with my beliefs. In that I'm very human.
Humanity is beautiful, and the things humanity creates are beautiful. In our solar system, or in the local group of stars, as far as I know, it's the humans who are making the things that are the most beautiful.
There is a type of beauty in nature, but that beauty was based on a harmony. The mountains don't have an intention behind them. The art that humans make does. They're very different things, and the u universe would be at a loss if humans were not a part of it.
What confounds me about this view is that humans are as much a product of the earth/universe as any other part of it. What is so unique about humanity in the universe that gives us the exclusive agency to tarnish it? Why are the products of humanity somehow excluded from the perfection of the other productions of the universe?
If, as you say, humans are as much a product of the earth/universe as any other part of it, what is the justification for speciesism? What gives us the right to take everything for ourselves, kill and decimate other forms of life?
The rate of the extinction of species that the earth is going through right now is unprecedented in all of earth's history, to say nothing of the torture we inflict on farm animals. And this is not an accident. We are doing it on purpose and we're proud of it; we call it "development", when the right word should be: destruction.
Are humans, among the species on earth at least, uniquely capable of speciesism? Are rats or ants guilty of it too, to the extent that they exercise speciesism until they run up against limitations of their environment? Or is speciesism a moral ideal, similar to murder, meaning rats and ants can't be guilty of it because they can't reason and act with intent?