I said nothing about caring about arthropods. Side note, I do though, they are immensely important to our well being, without them we're not around, with them, we have trillions of dollars of mess to deal with. Again note that I said nothing about their feelings.
I feel you're still missing the point. I get you might be coming from a binary perspective, as evidenced by going to a nuclear argument, i.e. why bother talking about anything else, but I highly doubt that's the goal of the author. They are trying to make you imagine, and think, about how things fit together. YRMV.
In any case, I just wanted to point out that if you cared about the welfare of damn arthropods, you're going nowhere really fast.
Consider this: the quickest, surest, most efficient way and ONLY way to reduce all suffering on earth to nothing forever and ever is a good ole nuclear holocaust.