Should We Be Trying to Bring Extinct Species Back to Life?

There's a buzz now around bringing species back from the dead. There's even a spiffy new name for it: "de-extinction." To some people, it sounds cute and cool and seems to be a sort of compensation for the human complicity in driving species out of existence in the first place. To others, it's a business opportunity. Environmentalists should not be fooled by the flim-flam and should be very wary of the implications of this campaign.

Of course, there is an attraction to the idea of seeing near-mythical creatures walk. It tugs on the heartstrings and makes us feel better about things that we know are getting worse and at least suspect are partly our own damn fault. All this encourages us not to look too closely at the gift horse being dangled in front of us. In short, proponents — at least some of them — are guilt-tripping us into letting them follow their own agenda, which they are carefully and thoroughly greenwashing.

Actually, the short-term commercial goal is to create or modify farm animals. On a further horizon is...