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A global economy built on minimally controlled capitalism will be the downfall of our natural environment and ultimately the species. There is continued proof

by jly 10y ago

A global economy built on minimally controlled capitalism will be the downfall of our natural environment and ultimately the species. There is continued proof all around us that this is the direction we're heading. We have the foresight to recognize this now, but sadly not the motivation to correct it. Read 'Half Earth' by Edward Wilson to see his arguments for setting aside 50% of the surface land as pure wild nature, to preserve biodiveristy and, ultimately, us. I agree with many comments here that many established powerful nations spent much of the last few hundred years destroying parts of their own ecosystem to get where they are. The past is the past, though, and we face an uncertain future unless we band together to change this behavior now, regardless of borders or economies.

M_Grey 10y ago
The problem is that the "We" with the foresight are a tiny minority, and of that tiny minority many either despair (perhaps reasonably) or decide to use their insight to make a profit and make hay while the sun still shines. The problem is that we're human beings, our human nature, and nothing is going to save us from ourselves.
- jchrisa 10y ago
  The problem is that we lack a story for the future. The only coherent ones are sci-fi. It's up to the folks reading HN to build that future before this one runs out.
- marmot777 10y ago
  We have been able to successfully set aside some pretty nice tracks of wilderness here in the United States. I've been out there and it's bigger than you can imagine. This isn't impossible here where I live and it's not impossible to save what's easily the most important ecosystem on earth (the Amazon Basin). I'd say the Amazon rain forest shares that honor with the massive Ocean that obviously covers much of the earth.
e40 10y ago
There are so many humans on the planet now, and they all want a piece of the pie. Billions of them dream of riches, or to put it more precisely, they dream of being richer than most of their fellow humans. Yes, greed. The greedy will always win, because they are better at hoarding than the rest of the humans are at protecting resources from hoarding. Look how easily we in the US were duped into electing a POTUS that is the knife edge of greed and corruption. It's depressing.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- macawfish 10y ago
  According to recent studies of the iterated prisoner's dilemma, the greedy don't win in the long run, they die out.
- marmot777 10y ago
  Yes, greed is insane. It really is insane. I personally try to live as simply as I can not because I want to win virtue points, I almost never mention it, but because I think it's the right thing to do. Greed is a pathology. It feels very sick to me whenever I encounter it. I want to purge when I feel its presence.
jb613 10y ago
Capitalism may also offer answers. For example, as tree supply diminishes, each tree will become more valuable (assuming wood demand stays stable) thereby incentivizing tree farmers to plant trees over other crops. The world changes and humans need to along with it. I'm sure cavemen once sat around the fire worrying about how all the good caves were being used up.
- akiselev 10y ago
  I think you're missing the point. The vast majority of the ecosystem is only economically useful indirectly by maintaining an equilibrium and once that is destroyed, it is almost completely irreversible except for bio- and geoengineering on a scale that humans have never done wittingly. In your example, the delay between the tree getting cut down and replanted is such that the local environment supported by the trees largely disappear and restoring it becomes practically impossible. The consequences of this destruction are easily visible even in forests replanted by the logging industry decades ago. In an information theory sense, the information disappears and cannot be recovered, no matter how many trees you plant. Entire local evolutionary trees disappear or permanently migrate, land erodes under the rain without old root networks to hold it, once diverse micro- and macro-biomes get taken over by opportunistic members better suited to human industrial/agricultural environments, and fertile lands wither without the balance developed over stretches of time far beyond what we as societies or individuals are capable of dealing with. Our Earth cannot be "used up" but it can become unusable through the slow but irreversible destruction of even small parts of the monolithic, heavily interdependent system.
  - jb613 10y ago
    "I think you're missing the point." Ditto. I know exactly what you're saying - tree's take long time to grow, the world is complex and subtly nuanced, once we lose that it's gone, etc. FYI I get all that - or for the purpose of this conversation pretend that I get it and try to look past that and at what I'm saying. We can either fight change or adapt. Cavemen once complained about demand of caves outstripping supply too. The cost of fighting change is likely far greater than the cost of adapting. Secondly, if you're going to worry about the Amazon (not saying we shouldn't worry about it) then why aren't you worried about the lost biodiversity once under Silicon Valley? Or NYC? Or Paris? Or Johannesburg? Or Beijing? It just seems we're getting involved in other people's business when we have a lot to cleanup ourselves.

by jly 10y ago

M_Grey 10y ago

The problem is that the "We" with the foresight are a tiny minority, and of that tiny minority many either despair (perhaps reasonably) or decide to use their insight to make a profit and make hay while the sun still shines. The problem is that we're human beings, our human nature, and nothing is going to save us from ourselves.

jchrisa 10y ago
The problem is that we lack a story for the future. The only coherent ones are sci-fi. It's up to the folks reading HN to build that future before this one runs out.
marmot777 10y ago
We have been able to successfully set aside some pretty nice tracks of wilderness here in the United States. I've been out there and it's bigger than you can imagine. This isn't impossible here where I live and it's not impossible to save what's easily the most important ecosystem on earth (the Amazon Basin). I'd say the Amazon rain forest shares that honor with the massive Ocean that obviously covers much of the earth.

e40 10y ago

There are so many humans on the planet now, and they all want a piece of the pie. Billions of them dream of riches, or to put it more precisely, they dream of being richer than most of their fellow humans. Yes, greed. The greedy will always win, because they are better at hoarding than the rest of the humans are at protecting resources from hoarding. Look how easily we in the US were duped into electing a POTUS that is the knife edge of greed and corruption. It's depressing.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
macawfish 10y ago
According to recent studies of the iterated prisoner's dilemma, the greedy don't win in the long run, they die out.
marmot777 10y ago
Yes, greed is insane. It really is insane. I personally try to live as simply as I can not because I want to win virtue points, I almost never mention it, but because I think it's the right thing to do. Greed is a pathology. It feels very sick to me whenever I encounter it. I want to purge when I feel its presence.

jb613 10y ago

Capitalism may also offer answers. For example, as tree supply diminishes, each tree will become more valuable (assuming wood demand stays stable) thereby incentivizing tree farmers to plant trees over other crops. The world changes and humans need to along with it. I'm sure cavemen once sat around the fire worrying about how all the good caves were being used up.

akiselev 10y ago
I think you're missing the point. The vast majority of the ecosystem is only economically useful indirectly by maintaining an equilibrium and once that is destroyed, it is almost completely irreversible except for bio- and geoengineering on a scale that humans have never done wittingly. In your example, the delay between the tree getting cut down and replanted is such that the local environment supported by the trees largely disappear and restoring it becomes practically impossible. The consequences of this destruction are easily visible even in forests replanted by the logging industry decades ago. In an information theory sense, the information disappears and cannot be recovered, no matter how many trees you plant. Entire local evolutionary trees disappear or permanently migrate, land erodes under the rain without old root networks to hold it, once diverse micro- and macro-biomes get taken over by opportunistic members better suited to human industrial/agricultural environments, and fertile lands wither without the balance developed over stretches of time far beyond what we as societies or individuals are capable of dealing with. Our Earth cannot be "used up" but it can become unusable through the slow but irreversible destruction of even small parts of the monolithic, heavily interdependent system.
- jb613 10y ago
  "I think you're missing the point." Ditto. I know exactly what you're saying - tree's take long time to grow, the world is complex and subtly nuanced, once we lose that it's gone, etc. FYI I get all that - or for the purpose of this conversation pretend that I get it and try to look past that and at what I'm saying. We can either fight change or adapt. Cavemen once complained about demand of caves outstripping supply too. The cost of fighting change is likely far greater than the cost of adapting. Secondly, if you're going to worry about the Amazon (not saying we shouldn't worry about it) then why aren't you worried about the lost biodiversity once under Silicon Valley? Or NYC? Or Paris? Or Johannesburg? Or Beijing? It just seems we're getting involved in other people's business when we have a lot to cleanup ourselves.