There's a Radiolab episode about a subspecies of butterfly that only lives on and around this one US military base, and the 20 years of effort one ecologist spent trying to save the species. The ecologist admits that nothing else depends on that butterfly for existence, but it's still worth saving because of a moral obligation we have for making it endangered.

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL2ZlZWRzLndueWMub3J...

I think we're going to have to make tradeoffs, and spending 20 years of resources on saving a small insect in one area probably isn't worth it.

so this story is amplified, so that those predisposed to this outlook have something to carry around..

> spending 20 years of resources

this overly-simple, too simple, example of one person and "the military" is not at all representative of say, the Bison and praries, or frogs and freshwater. And who are the most prolific polluters in the Federal Government, and who is famous for "20 years of resources wasted for no result" .. ?

Its just as abrasive to hear this pre-baked conclusion, as for others to hear the actual truth of say, entire regions of coral going extinct.

All of it isn't important, in an absolute sense.

Shift your view up a couple levels of abstraction and everything on the planet is ultimately meaningless. People always seem to argue about "saving the planet" as though it has some greater meaning, when in reality it is just a poor proxy for "keep the planet inhabitable for humans".