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Chesterton's Fence has made the HN rounds lately, but it's again relevant here [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9745149 https://news.ycombinator.c

• noonespecial 11y ago
  Yes but fences don't usually kill more than 700k people per year. Its one thing to think carefully about making a change you don't fully understand, its quite another to see great harm done and act to stop it. Humans (especially first world-ers) have become (somewhat rightfully so) paralyzed with fear about doing anything at all in the environment. Our 20th century hubris lead us to think that we could fully understand and control our biosphere with unfortunate consequences, but there was a huge dose of optimistic humanism that went along with it. Smallpox was a good, good thing to eradicate. Someday we will be able to exercise that measured control successfully. We'll probably have to to survive long term on earth no matter how many low-flush toilets we put in. I'm starting to wish to see some of that optimism again and a world without malaria might be just the kind of small step we need to get our mojo back.