This article by Bill Gates was published over a month ago, which might make me seem lazy, but I prefer to think of it as a testimonial to my commitment to filing away any little bit of information that might make an interesting post. Even if it takes me a month to actually bring these ideas to fruition. On to the article:

This week in Seattle, an extraordinary group of people -- scientists, policymakers, and advocates - came together for three days to discuss what can be done to stop malaria. Melinda and I issued a challenge to those attending the meeting. We asked them to begin charting a course to eradicate malaria - not just to control or reduce it, but to work toward a time when no one on earth is infected with malaria, and no mosquitoes carry the disease.

It’s interesting to see Bill Gates so involved with a philanthropic effort. I’m not saying that it hasn’t happened before, just that I’ve never heard about him doing anything similar to this. I’m sure that there’s a great deal to be said about dealing with malaria, but what really caught my attention was this comment, buried about halfway down the thread:

Erdicate [sic] Malaria? What about bio-diversity? Let's hope that if a new virus comes from outer space, our only hope for a cure does not reside in Malaria...

To some degree I feel as though environmentalists have brought this snarky attitude on themselves – the most common talking point in the laypersons’ discourse about biodiversity goes like this: “what if this rare tropical plant holds the cure for cancer?” This is an argument that grabs people viscerally. When we think of tropical plants we imagine orchids, birds of paradise, and other beautiful flowering plans. People love flowers. And they hate cancer. Duh.

But what about other less charismatic organisms? What about the Delhi sands flower-loving fly or the snail darter? What about microorganisms? What about malaria? Cancer is a convenient malady on which to base what I’m calling the layperson’s argument for biodiversity, because it is not an organism. Cancer is a cellular abnormality in an organism; it is life doing what it is not supposed to do.

So, is malaria separate from the biodiversity issue because it’s unicellular? Or because it’s responsible for human death, poverty, and famine? I don’t have specific answers to these questions. What I do have is a more humble, more realistic reinterpretation of what “biodiversity” can mean, care of an early post on this site by my one-time (perhaps again?) co-author, Peter:

The fundamental assumption that the environmental movement tries to foist on the public, whether we're supposed to save the whales, the rainforest, the spotted owl or the six-toed sloth-a-dillo, is that life has intrinsic value. This is not something I would attempt to assert, or even necessarily believe. This belief puts men in the role of "protectors of life," which is as much a rejection of our place in the biosphere as the Christian fundamentalist belief that we should expedite our depletion of the natural resources we use so that Jesus will come back. The centrality of this principle portrays environmental conservation as a wholly selfless pursuit, which it is not.

I’m not sure that clearer and truer words have been written to date about this most fundamental tenet of environmentalism. Human self-interest is apparently at the root of so many of the environmental issues of the day, from a changing climate and industrial pollution to resource overuse and disease epidemics. But if we look past the needs of today to the needs of tomorrow, it becomes pretty clear that human self-interest also has to be at the core of our quest for solutions. Perhaps the real environmental challenge of the 21st century lies in learning how to make decisions about what is and is not in our self interest.

*Title borrowed from a comment on the linked Bill Gates article.