5 ms·
Sometimes I wonder if the relentless human intervention in every aspect of nature will create or leave only life that has a value to people, like cows and wheat
by rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
Sometimes I wonder if the relentless human intervention in every aspect of nature will create or leave only life that has a value to people, like cows and wheat, or that which can resist domination or destruction by humans, like HIV, treatment-resistant bacteria, and the unassailable cockroach.
Perhaps after a period of rapid upheaval, humanity develops the technology to capture and control those super powerful flora and fauna, and use them for our own devices.
Then we can finally become Pokemon trainers.
- dasil003 11y agoI suspect our ecosystem would collapse and humanity itself would be collateral damage before that actually came to pass, maybe I'm overly pessimistic though.
- noir_lord 11y agoGiven what we've achieved in the last 200 years I wouldn't put it past us to terraform the entire Earth into a giant garden, > Under the FAO's definitions above, agricultural land covers 38.4% of the world's land area as of 2011 [1] You could argue we already have. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_land https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_land
- twirlip 11y agoOf all of Larry Niven's SF, perhaps the most likely future is his Svetz stories. That is to say an overpopulated, polluted world with a global and imperial bureacracy, bereft of any life save man and yeast.
- ars 11y ago> create or leave only life that has a value to people There is a Jewish creation story (Rashi, Genesis 1:11) that God told the trees to make their bark (or the wood itself) edible to humans. The trees refused because "if we did that humans would eat all of us, leaving none behind". It seems to me that the trees got it wrong: Plants that are valuable to humans exist in far greater numbers than those that are not.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y agoFascinating. Maybe that's the point of the story? It's not as if the ancient Hebrews were unfamiliar with agriculture. Perhaps the meaning is that people should listen to God even if it seems counterintuitive, because you could be more wrong than you (a puny mortal) could possibly understand. That was really interesting. Thanks for that.
- qb45 11y agoThe meaning to you or the meaning to the ancient? If the latter, I'm not sure if people back then were so megalomaniac to consider being useful to humans as an advantage. The world was much less developed before steam engines gave us craploads of energy for free.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y agoI'm pretty sure that people back then were rather clear on the idea that if something you put in the ground makes food and seeds you're gonna want to keep the seeds to make more.
- qb45 11y agoBut then you become a slave of those pesky humans and their whims, while trees grow freely in forests where they didn't face much danger from humans before the industrial revolution.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y agoThere's a fun little Roman bedtime story about a determined man who cuts down an important god's favorite forest for firewood and is cursed with insatiable hunger that eventually drives him to sell all of his possessions and even his daughter into slavery before he eats himself to death. Needless to say, people were a threat to forests long before industrialization.
- deleted 11y ago
- gerbilly 11y agoHarpers magazine had an article on just this: Planet of Weeds by David Quammen http://www.botany.wisc.edu/courses/botany_422/readings/Quammen1998.pdf http://www.botany.wisc.edu/courses/botany_422/readings/Quamm...