Brian Czech makes the point that habitat loss causes a lot of animal suffering. I think this is almost certainly true, and sad. He mostly blames urbanization. I want to argue with that, because a compact, well-designed city should have a relatively small ecological footprint per person living in it, compared to people spread out over a more rural landscape. For example, the Amish way of farming actually is a big contributor to the water pollution destroying the Chesapeake Bay. If there are going to be 7 billion of us, or 10 billion, we can’t all live like the Amish or it would be an ecological disaster. Of course, it is true that the relatively low-impact lifestyle in the city is supported by an enormous rural base of agriculture, forestry, fishing, resource extraction, mining, and manufacturing that has a huge and growing ecological footprint. It’s possible to envision a world where we eventually turn the corner and manage to grow in quality without growing our physical footprint. But we are far from that, and natural ecosystems are certainly the big losers whether or not we are actually on the verge of destroying ourselves.