Besides which, remnant or recurrent superstitious nonsense to the contrary, an orbiting ball of rock cares not a whit whether it is a coherent whole or reduced to pebbles and space dust. It's a fine idea but any concept of rights for owls vanishes in the absence of humans sufficiently concerned with owls' happiness. The only rational answer to why we are saving the Earth is that we are saving it for ourselves. But, if that is the case, we must mean to utilize it to our benefit. Of course the radical environmentalists save their most vehement rhetoric for those who would maintain that humans have a right to utilize the resources available to them.
Human beings can have no place within their rhetoric.
In the environmental Newspeak, and its companion dialect, Animal Rights Gibberish, miners become rapists, loggers thieves, and connoisseurs of hamburgers ghouls. Ronald McDonald isn't a clown, he's a murderer. I appreciate trees. They provide shade in the summer and are easy on the eyes. I know all about how they are a source of oxygen, and when properly whittled they provide a fantastic raw material for building and furnishing our abodes.