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I'm no scientist, but it amazes me that people can still think with all the industry, all the forests cut down, all the cars on the road, that our planet is mag

I'm no scientist, but it amazes me that people can still think with all the industry, all the forests cut down, all the cars on the road, that our planet is magical and can handle it all.

aphextron 8y ago
>I'm no scientist, but it amazes me that people can still think with all the industry, all the forests cut down, all the cars on the road, that our planet is magical and can handle it all. No one really does. They just have enough accumulated conflicts of interest to accepting that fact that life is easier for them to not do so.
- ergothus 8y ago
  I think you underestimate the various causes for willful ignorance. It is very easy for a tiny human to assume the planet is huge and little the human can do will be significant. Ask a human to imagine 100,000 people and they are already outside our capacity. To ask them to realistically imagine millions or billions over decades and, well, the behavior is undefined. I certainly think there are a LOT of people choosing to take the easiest (short-term) belief, but I also think there are plenty of people who just can't imagine people-scale impacting world-scale. I had a friend who made the argument that he thinks it is arrogance to assume humans can harm the global environment on the scale of climate change. I see it as arrogance to assume we CAN'T. But I don't think he's being disingenuous - he just handles the overflow error differently.
laxd 8y ago
One thing that has made an impression on me is using google maps in satellite view and appropriate zoom level. Start at northern europe and go south, or western us and go east, or any similar journey. Short of the mountain ranges, it's pretty much agriculture everywhere. Entire continents. It used to be forest.
- jhanschoo 8y ago
  Same here; I'm awed that just about every bit of green is parceled into pixellated rectangles, punctuated by a webwork of roads and small towns at certain junctions.
aaronbrethorst 8y ago
The planet will be fine. It's humanity—and the rest of the flora and fauna we're used to right now—that are fucked.
tertius 8y ago
I believe we have more trees in the northern hemisphere than before...

I'm no scientist, but it amazes me that people can still think with all the industry, all the forests cut down, all the cars on the road, that our planet is magical and can handle it all.

aphextron 8y ago

>I'm no scientist, but it amazes me that people can still think with all the industry, all the forests cut down, all the cars on the road, that our planet is magical and can handle it all. No one really does. They just have enough accumulated conflicts of interest to accepting that fact that life is easier for them to not do so.

ergothus 8y ago
I think you underestimate the various causes for willful ignorance. It is very easy for a tiny human to assume the planet is huge and little the human can do will be significant. Ask a human to imagine 100,000 people and they are already outside our capacity. To ask them to realistically imagine millions or billions over decades and, well, the behavior is undefined. I certainly think there are a LOT of people choosing to take the easiest (short-term) belief, but I also think there are plenty of people who just can't imagine people-scale impacting world-scale. I had a friend who made the argument that he thinks it is arrogance to assume humans can harm the global environment on the scale of climate change. I see it as arrogance to assume we CAN'T. But I don't think he's being disingenuous - he just handles the overflow error differently.

laxd 8y ago

One thing that has made an impression on me is using google maps in satellite view and appropriate zoom level. Start at northern europe and go south, or western us and go east, or any similar journey. Short of the mountain ranges, it's pretty much agriculture everywhere. Entire continents. It used to be forest.

jhanschoo 8y ago
Same here; I'm awed that just about every bit of green is parceled into pixellated rectangles, punctuated by a webwork of roads and small towns at certain junctions.

aaronbrethorst 8y ago

The planet will be fine. It's humanity—and the rest of the flora and fauna we're used to right now—that are fucked.

tertius 8y ago

I believe we have more trees in the northern hemisphere than before...