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I guess it's more a feeling of the a poem by a German Lutheran pastor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_

by sosuke 8y ago

I guess it's more a feeling of the a poem by a German Lutheran pastor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_... It isn't that the butterflies do anything that would impact your smartphones but that they are a concrete sign of change that should be more understood. If we don't focus on it now the fear is by the time we do something it will be too late. The butterflies themselves have an incredible complex life cycle. They only live 2 to 5 week during breeding season but they complete a migration of thousands of miles over 4 generations. It just seems amazingly beautiful to me that it worked and sad to think it might end because we failed to change our ways. This seems like it would be something incredible to witness. https://youtu.be/_zAObMlOIm4?t=362 https://youtu.be/_zAObMlOIm4?t=362 Would you want to save something beautiful if you thought you might have a chance? And you're wrong about folks not caring about already extinct species. I'd love for the dodo to not have been killed out. Or the Passenger Pigeon which we (USA) killed every last one of them. Billions of birds in a flock. By the time they tried to start some conservation effort it was too late. I know I miss the butterflies. Their color and movement always bring a smile to my face. I see less of them every year.

ryanwaggoner 8y ago
I'm not saying that it doesn't matter or that no one will care. But if you think that the average American is going to stop eating meat and buy an electric car so that we have more butterflies....we know different Americans. I just think we can tell a better story about why people should care, other than "we don't know what will happen" or "butterflies are pretty" or "it took a long time to evolve this". Not saying that's all you're saying, but I see a lot of articles and comments that fail to explain why people should accept a lot of personal inconvenience right now for the sake of the biosphere someday.
- sosuke 8y ago
  "Why" falls into dangerous conversational territory in my opinion. That of feelings. You start asking why life at all? Philosophy! Crazy stuff but it can be fun. But I don't think there are any "why"s big enough to make people accept a small amount of personal inconvenience. It just isn't in humans to operate on a macro Earth sized scale. The only way to achieve it is create the alternatives and make them more attractive than the current status quo or force the change through government regulations. You see plenty of people helping out on one cause or another but no one can do all the things all the time. So small changes in culture are what works best. For example the local anti-smoking change which happened only recently was bolstered by the ban on indoor smoking in my city.

by sosuke 8y ago

ryanwaggoner 8y ago

I'm not saying that it doesn't matter or that no one will care. But if you think that the average American is going to stop eating meat and buy an electric car so that we have more butterflies....we know different Americans. I just think we can tell a better story about why people should care, other than "we don't know what will happen" or "butterflies are pretty" or "it took a long time to evolve this". Not saying that's all you're saying, but I see a lot of articles and comments that fail to explain why people should accept a lot of personal inconvenience right now for the sake of the biosphere someday.

sosuke 8y ago
"Why" falls into dangerous conversational territory in my opinion. That of feelings. You start asking why life at all? Philosophy! Crazy stuff but it can be fun. But I don't think there are any "why"s big enough to make people accept a small amount of personal inconvenience. It just isn't in humans to operate on a macro Earth sized scale. The only way to achieve it is create the alternatives and make them more attractive than the current status quo or force the change through government regulations. You see plenty of people helping out on one cause or another but no one can do all the things all the time. So small changes in culture are what works best. For example the local anti-smoking change which happened only recently was bolstered by the ban on indoor smoking in my city.