3 ms·

So a rational ecology program should advocate irradiating wide swathes of land? Of course the people displaced from the area didn't disappear, they're affectin

by morsch 11y ago

So a rational ecology program should advocate irradiating wide swathes of land? Of course the people displaced from the area didn't disappear, they're affecting wildlife somewhere else. Seems like mostly zero sum in that specific regard.

theoh 11y ago
There's a major question in ecology of how we feel about our "anthropocentric" civilization. For many environmentally conscious thinkers it seems like a world without humans would be preferable.
- mapt 11y ago
  A world without humans would be necessary to fulfill their goals of the environment being unmolested by humans. We cannot live in perfect harmony. That's not a thing. At best, we can establish areas that look roughly like they used to look before humans, but this is no less deliberate design than the styrofoam rocks at the zoo, it's just on a different scale. Many such areas are, in fact, better seen as zoos, because of their small size or limited variety. Most of the productive arable land is predictably already being used for something by somebody. Personally, I'm a humanist. The worst things environmental devastation can do to us are disrupt some of our services, like agricultural collapses; After that environmentalism is mostly a romantic or novelty-based aesthetic, albeit an attractive one. Pit it against human lives and human profit, and groups of humans will nearly always make the same decision. EDIT: Worth tacking on, for some perspective: https://xkcd.com/1338/ https://xkcd.com/1338/
  - hemptemp 11y ago
    As much as i abhor commenting online do bear with me. You say that "We cannot live in perfect harmony". That's not a thing", however what is this in comparison to. Surely this would be comparative to the rest of the eco-system. Animals make changes, they create habitats and dam rivers, however as it is more rudimentary (sticks and holes in earth) we dont consider it a change to the enviroment. Creating our homes in a more ecological and recycleable way would be in perfect harmony. The arguement is whether we should go further and drastically change the enviroment, do we have the right as the dominant species on the planet to abuse its resources for ourselves (as seen in the attached xkcd whose figures roughly show the populations of mammals who we have artifically inflated to such proportions for our dietray wants). So if we changed our architechture and agriculture then yes we could live in perfect sync and harmony, it's just that we wont.
    - jahewson 11y ago
      There is no such thing as "harmony" in nature. Species come and go, some destroy their own habit, others drive their competitors to extinction. We do need to be careful about how we use natural resources and that we don't change our environment in a way that is detrimental to us. But understand that change is the status quo for nature, that's especially easy to miss when it happens on timescales longer than a human life, but happen it does.
mapt 11y ago
"Should" is a word I'm uncomfortable with. Define your goals, and I can provide an answer. If you want to re-establish the wild ecology of ~4000 years ago? You need to get the people out. Modern human habitation & agriculture claims a right to every last square meter of land, and even the supposedly reserved natural areas are often cut & planted as if they were pseudo- lumber factories. If this is your goal, irradiating wide swathes of land is a good start; There are few simpler or more reliable mechanisms to force sustained evacuation and shunning of an area for the centuries or millennia necessary to re-establish, for example, old-growth forest. Some legal regime might buy you a few decades, but don't kid yourself about the longevity and commitment of a particular political system. The changes in species composition associated with the climate, then with megafauna, and later with the Columbian exchange & globalization, are going to pose some durable problems if you want it to look exactly the same, but you can form a complex ecology with most of the same niches filled with at least similar creatures.
mikeash 11y ago
Irradiation works, but it would be a bit silly to advocate it. If you're going to force people to move, you might as well just pass a law reserving the area as a park and prohibiting people from living there. Of course, people who want to live there will oppose you, but they'll oppose your irradiation plan too. Irradiation works here because it was accidental. Nobody accidentally passes a law to reserve a bunch of inhabited land as a park.

by morsch 11y ago

theoh 11y ago

There's a major question in ecology of how we feel about our "anthropocentric" civilization. For many environmentally conscious thinkers it seems like a world without humans would be preferable.

mapt 11y ago
A world without humans would be necessary to fulfill their goals of the environment being unmolested by humans. We cannot live in perfect harmony. That's not a thing. At best, we can establish areas that look roughly like they used to look before humans, but this is no less deliberate design than the styrofoam rocks at the zoo, it's just on a different scale. Many such areas are, in fact, better seen as zoos, because of their small size or limited variety. Most of the productive arable land is predictably already being used for something by somebody. Personally, I'm a humanist. The worst things environmental devastation can do to us are disrupt some of our services, like agricultural collapses; After that environmentalism is mostly a romantic or novelty-based aesthetic, albeit an attractive one. Pit it against human lives and human profit, and groups of humans will nearly always make the same decision. EDIT: Worth tacking on, for some perspective: https://xkcd.com/1338/ https://xkcd.com/1338/
- hemptemp 11y ago
  As much as i abhor commenting online do bear with me. You say that "We cannot live in perfect harmony". That's not a thing", however what is this in comparison to. Surely this would be comparative to the rest of the eco-system. Animals make changes, they create habitats and dam rivers, however as it is more rudimentary (sticks and holes in earth) we dont consider it a change to the enviroment. Creating our homes in a more ecological and recycleable way would be in perfect harmony. The arguement is whether we should go further and drastically change the enviroment, do we have the right as the dominant species on the planet to abuse its resources for ourselves (as seen in the attached xkcd whose figures roughly show the populations of mammals who we have artifically inflated to such proportions for our dietray wants). So if we changed our architechture and agriculture then yes we could live in perfect sync and harmony, it's just that we wont.
  - jahewson 11y ago
    There is no such thing as "harmony" in nature. Species come and go, some destroy their own habit, others drive their competitors to extinction. We do need to be careful about how we use natural resources and that we don't change our environment in a way that is detrimental to us. But understand that change is the status quo for nature, that's especially easy to miss when it happens on timescales longer than a human life, but happen it does.

mapt 11y ago

"Should" is a word I'm uncomfortable with. Define your goals, and I can provide an answer. If you want to re-establish the wild ecology of ~4000 years ago? You need to get the people out. Modern human habitation & agriculture claims a right to every last square meter of land, and even the supposedly reserved natural areas are often cut & planted as if they were pseudo- lumber factories. If this is your goal, irradiating wide swathes of land is a good start; There are few simpler or more reliable mechanisms to force sustained evacuation and shunning of an area for the centuries or millennia necessary to re-establish, for example, old-growth forest. Some legal regime might buy you a few decades, but don't kid yourself about the longevity and commitment of a particular political system. The changes in species composition associated with the climate, then with megafauna, and later with the Columbian exchange & globalization, are going to pose some durable problems if you want it to look exactly the same, but you can form a complex ecology with most of the same niches filled with at least similar creatures.

mikeash 11y ago

Irradiation works, but it would be a bit silly to advocate it. If you're going to force people to move, you might as well just pass a law reserving the area as a park and prohibiting people from living there. Of course, people who want to live there will oppose you, but they'll oppose your irradiation plan too. Irradiation works here because it was accidental. Nobody accidentally passes a law to reserve a bunch of inhabited land as a park.