It's important to have principals that extend beyond one's own selfish desires. We may call those principals community involvement, we may call that environmentalism. We may call that citizen activism on behalf of any number of goals beyond our own material enrichment. Those are human principals, that care for our old people who, when young, gave so much to us when we were younger. Those human principles  also compel us, the current human tenants on Earth, to plan for the future our descendants will own. Will that future include elephants, tigers, giraffes, pangolins, and a menagerie of fantastic creatures? Or will that future be a world stripped of the beauty of natural life? We, all of us, are deciding that future now, in real time.