Why Not Have Rights

Since the dawn of time, humans have pretentiously stomped through Earth lacerating trees and slaughtering animals without even one ephemeral compunction. Is this destruction not commensurate with murdering a human? Society has decided that it is not; however, we’ve also agreed we have an obligation to conserve the plants and animals--who are also arguably sentient--of the Earth. Why then should the law protect humans from senseless killing but not equally-sentient beings? If the two are not as diametric as we think, we have to ask: can things that are not sentient have rights?
But, before discerning whether or not non-human beings should have rights, one must ask two integral questions: what is a human and what rights are these “humans” entitled
We wouldn’t be able to eat meat. We wouldn’t be able to cut trees. We wouldn’t even be able to buy Clorox wipes that “kill 99.9% of bacteria.” Hence, the question of whether non-human organisms can have rights is more of a question of whether they should have rights. And the answer is limpid: all things with a soul are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; however, the chance that non-human organisms will acquire these rights is minuscule at best. If humans are hesitant to acquiesce and extend these rights to other humans of a different race, gender, religion, etc. how can we ever augment justice to include things that don’t even remotely resemble us? We won’t, but that doesn’t mean we should disregard the issue. If the government suddenly decided to enact and implement laws entitling non-human organisms to fundamental rights, not only would we have to face the onerous problems above, but we’d have to answer a new question: do the lives of certain organisms take precedence over others? For example, if a human, who lacks nutrition found in meat, is about to die due to malnutrition, is it morally and ethically acceptable to kill a cow or a chicken to save his life? Under these new laws, the law would have to decide whose life is more important and who can be stripped of their rights. Obviously,
Obviously, this would be applied to situations on a case-by-case basis. In the example of the malnourished man, we’d have to take into account just how many animals we’d have to kill to feed him and whether or not those animals are healthy and maybe even happy. If we found that we’d only have to murder one, older cow to nourish this man then the morality of this act is greater than if we killed hundreds of healthy cows just to save one man. In addition, the law would also have to consider whether or not there are substitutes for making this man healthy: if he could still eat vegetables and live healthily then killing sentient organisms is not morally acceptable. However, because plants are also sentient, then we run into the problem of whether it is more morally acceptable to kill plants or animals to nourish the man. We automatically think it’s better to kill plants, but only because they are less humanoid looking: we disregard the fact that they grow, reproduce, eat, etc. simply because they don’t look human. Cows, additionally, don’t resemble humans; thus, we have decided it is acceptable--albeit not morally acceptable--to kill them. However, this law would not always place the lives of cows above humans. Consider the argument many humans make: killing cow prevents overpopulation. If this argument is legitimately factual,