Their quote:
"...selecting the best and most effective types of herbicides for use on dozens of invasive species..."
This reflects the fundamental ethical question: What is (the) good (for man)?
any use of best, or good or any other evaluative terms begs the question of what is the 'telos' of the good? What does it aim at?
In eras where metaphysical science still held sway, possible meanings of the highest good were still taken seriously; but in our 21st century anti-metaphysical culture, (actually it is 'nihilism' in the truest sense)---the terms 'good' and 'better' are employed in all spheres of life and research as here but under a complete forgetfulness and ignorance of God (the the 'telos' of the good). In this regime, it is as Nietzsche said a battle of promoting one system or ideology and calling it truth. Ignorance becomes the driver when one does not know where one is going on the road of life. A human life without a supereminent real object and telos which is not only not subjective, but hyper-objective, if you will since it itself is that which gives rise to any other entity or phenomenon being true, including the phenomenon which does the thinking.
Second note: the other valued term here though more hidden is the term 'invasive'. In God's world what pray tell constitutes 'invasiveness'----how wide, how long must the identification of invasiveness be---what are the epistemic qualifications of 'invasiveness'. You see, it is the nature of these species being 'invasive' which constitutes the legitimacy of the spraying. It is a plant that should not be where it is (alongside the enormous highway banks)---It goes like this: " We must or can eliminate all invasive species because they are invasive. And this answers the first question---it is good that plants that grow along highways must be eradicated, because they do not belong there... Of course it is circular reasoning. Unless one makes the effort to grasp the 'Real' per se, or the form of the Good---that is, that which gives value and goodness to being---one is compelled to circular reasoning, anti-metaphysical (or simply ignorant forgetting) and one is compelled to dwell nihilistically, completely missing the essential truth and quality of life itself---which is the summum bonum, the capacity to live life abundantly and in the richest sense is the essential teaching of the Gospel. The only coherent ethics is an ethics of life through and through. It is not Being, or God, per se, but Life itself that is offered in the mandate that disciples of Christ bear witness to this Life through spreading the good news.
Now the problem is What is to be done?
To take up arms and end this?
To attempt to reason or debate with the policy setters?
To protest or seek other political action?
Perhaps there is a philosophical course of action which is to quote Spinoza: Don't weep, don't laugh. Only Understand.
Nothing can be changed in the course of political action but human freedom consists in seeing, understanding, not steering or changing (do-gooding). Either to act or understand.
Actors do not understand and those who understand do not act. However, I know that the seeming philosophical aloofness is repugnant---so I abridge it as follows: First of all, understand, then having understood, one is under no compulsion to act, and yet, neither is one under a compulsion not to act. Seen philosophically, i.e. sub species eternitatis, the excessive conviction that one's understanding is of political import is mistaken...all things must pass (an must pass in the manner that they must pass).
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