Gaia question

So reading Abbey's section I had a thought concerning one of the questions brought up in the section.
Somebody questioning the concept of Gaia asks how it could be possible if certain creatures and components of the planet aren't aware of the overall scheme of the planet as a whole entity. My question then is, does a component of the Earth NEED to be aware of the big picture? Think of a human being. Does an arm truly know what the job of the leg is?

Language

It seems one of our major problems is how to connect to other species. Without doing so we can't begin to see things from their point of view. It doesn't seem like we can learn their languages, at least not fully, so perhaps we can teach them one of our languages. In my book the latest chapter shows studies of sign language being taught to great apes. It shows some incredible findings, such as mothers teaching signs to their children with aid from humans. Also it shows apes adapting signs to mean new things such as the sign for poop to mean dirty, for example, one ape using this sign to call someone bad. This could be a huge step towards making a great connection to other species.

Ramble

So this might just be me rambling but...
The first few chapters of my book about great apes seem to be an attempt to cause sympathy for the apes. Is this okay? It seems like a blatant attempt to make them seem human so we can allow ourselves to feel sensitive towards them. This might be the best way to start a revolution of thinking among people reading the book, but is it fair of the authors?

Question

This might not directly relate to ethics, but lately we've been discussing the extinctions a lot, and I was wondering if any of you knew how the ocean life has been affected by these extinctions? We talked about that one species that lived through them all and can live in space, are there things in the sea that are similar? It seems plausible.

Negative animals?

I had this thought looking at someone else's blog post.

Are there any other animals besides humans that have a serious negative impact on the planet? The first that came to my mind was cows and the methane that they produce in large quantities, but this seems to be a product of mass farming by humans and therefore not necessarily the fault of the cows. I'm sure there must be some animals out there that have a negative impact, but could any of them possibly add up to the damage we have done ourselves?

Broken System

Cows. We talked about how there could be a perfect closed system of cow and dairy production. But instead we feed them corn which is not their usual diet, and we keep them penned up in warehouse and barns where the methane builds up over time. It seems that we took a perfect system and over time ruined it. So why are we trying to make this broken system work instead of moving back to a closed one?

Not quite Leopold

I would like to talk about a point raised in Leopold's essay. I understand now after reading it a few times, that this sin't Leopold's stance at all. This is something I messed up in my SLAP, but better luck next time I guess.

He points out another side of things that he doesn't believe, but still feels is important to mention.

"The evidence had to be economic in order to be valid."

Obviously this isn't 100% true, but economics still play a vital role in our decisions when it comes to the natural world. If we completely outlaw companies that our polluting the environment at once then an unreasonable amount of people will be out of jobs. So how do we find a balance?