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Maybe worth noting: we've lost about half of Earth's wildlife in the past 40 years. [1] [1] https://www.worldwildlife.org/press-releases/wwf-report-reveals-sta

Maybe worth noting: we've lost about half of Earth's wildlife in the past 40 years. [1] [1] https://www.worldwildlife.org/press-releases/wwf-report-reveals-staggering-extent-of-human-impact-on-planet https://www.worldwildlife.org/press-releases/wwf-report-reve...

skratchpixels 7y ago
From 1978 to 2018, the human population grew from 4.3 billion people to 7.6 billion people. That's over a 44% increase. The last 2 years alone, the human population increased by 1.2 billion.
- cknight 7y ago
  We are currently at 7.8 billion. 1.2 billion people ago was 2006 or 2007.
- pintxo 7y ago
  My maths tell me, an increase of (absolute) 3.3b from 4.3b to 7.6b is a (relative) change of 76%.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    My math tells me that 76% is more than 44%. ;D
rapnie 7y ago
This is one of the reasons I think we'll soon be talking about more than 'just' climate change, as the problem is much bigger still: we are committing planet-wide ecocide. Also maybe more focus on root causes will follow: that we are still promoting unbridled consumerism, and that inequality created an upper class that is trying to maintain the status quo. More focus on the latter is already happening.
- jacobush 7y ago
  Don't worry, the upper class will make the other classes consume much less of everything, if things get really bad.
- forgotmypw 7y ago
  We're in a position with a lot of power, but this is obscured from us. When we trace the strings which run from ecocide to ourselves, it is easy to see what changes we need to make.
  - rapnie 7y ago
    While this is true, and I agree, this insight has been obvious for at least the last 40 years. Seeing the change is unfortunately very different than bringing the change. I am afraid most people need the emergency at their own doorstep before they are truly willing to act and make sacrifices to their way of living.
    - forgotmypw 7y ago
      Have you stopped buying plastic? Have you stopped buying the myriad "cleaning" products which pollute your home and create pollution in the process of being produced? Have you stopped buying disposable clothing and plastic trinkets? If you are still buying these things, you are complicit in this ecocide. And now you know it, too. Once you stop yourself, you can tell others, too. Without making changes in your own actions, there's little you can ask of anyone else. This is a change that will come one individual convincing another individual, one at a time, to stop contributing to the problem. No one else will do it for us: politicians don't give a fuck, corporations don't give a fuck, regulators don't give a fuck, military doesn't give a fuck, even "scientists" are mostly in the same camp of not giving a fuck, for the most part. We are the only ones who give a fuck, because it's our close relatives, and soon, us, who are being exterminated. And we are feeding and building our own extermination machine.
      - samatman 7y ago
toxicFork 7y ago
Are we perhaps the paperclip maximizer?
- mint2 7y ago
  Generic and ugly non-native landscaping and beige housing development optimizer.
Razengan 7y ago
News like this keep increasing the overall “background depression”, making it hard to really be happy in this world even if our own lives are perfect. Human society really needs to acknowledge and embrace that we are connected to all life beyond our concrete bubbles.
- CaptArmchair 7y ago
  Okay, this might be a bit meandering stream of consciousness... Feeling bad because entire species go extinct due to our own behavior is an uniquely human experience. It's not something that exists outside of our own human awareness in the broader world. When the last butterfly goes, it's not aware that it was the last of it's kind. It's not even aware of the complexities that caused it and it's kind to vanish. It simply dies. End of story. Now, that butterfly is a part of the Universe. This big thing that just "is", where basic laws of entropy and quantum physics just run their course, unattended, until trillions upon trillions of years from now, all that is left are subatomic particles randomly appearing and disappearing as the last black hole finally evaporates. There's a paradox at the heart of our human condition. Our awareness has brought us to the apex of the food chain. We are seemingly in control of how we shape the conditions for our own survival. But that sense of rational control is just the veneer on top of behavior, feelings, urges and instincts that we share with other species. We can imagine how we can reach for the stars, go to other planets and build great machines to do it. We have created morals, ethics, science, religion, nations, lore and legends to put ourselves at the center of things. But there's a dissonance we can never hope to overcome at the heart of our experience: We are not really in control. And that word "control" is just a mental construct that helps us make sense of the world around us. Whatever you and I, living people, do or do not do, small or big, has an impact. No more, no less. We can't avoid not throwing stones in the pond and causing ripples. Trying to preserve Earth as it exists today, either through technology or through profound policy changes is just as futile is holding your breathe. Our mere existence predicates change, willing or not. The idea that humanity shouldn't exist is just as futile. Remember, the Universe just "is". It does not care about our existence. And that butterfly doesn't care whether humanity is around or not. The only ones who agonize over the morality of existence are... humans. That's the price we pay for having evolved an acute sense of awareness of the past, present, future and the world around us. Even though we are in this extinction event, life will still be around long after we are gone. Bacteria sprung into existence even long before Earth's atmosphere contained 21% of oxygen. If we could travel back in time, Earth would be a very alien place to us. And it will be a very alien place once again eons down the line. Maybe it will be just fungi and algae, maybe it will be dense forests of plants and animal life that are nothing like what we know today. There are more galaxies then there are grains of sands of all beaches on Earth. Even if Earth becomes a barren rock, probability has it that the Universe might be teeming with life. Just at this point, right here, right now, in this corner of the Universe, humans are the only ones agonizing over that question: Are we really alone in our bubble of awareness? Or are there other species who feel and experience what we feel experience? And the vastness of things will never allow us to solve that question, unless by random chance. None of that is by any means an excuse to sit back and just take the ride. The very paradox that is our human awareness forces us to make decisions that will have an impact, that will cause suffering at one point or another. Either by giving up on consumerism, or by grieving over the loss of biodiversity. But when we do feel that creeping sense of depression over what we are losing, it's good to remind ourselves that the stories we tell ourselves - including climate change and mass extinctions - hide a far larger, incomprehensible reality in which mental constructs don't carry any particular larger Meaning our morality. We only control so much after all, it's entirely up to us to define how far we are willing to go to find out to what extent, and what we, humans, are willing to accept as a consequence. Accepting that nothing will ever stay the same anyhow, not even life, humanity, culture or civilization as we know it today on this planet, can help us to find a measure of some comfort and re-frame that journey a bit.
briga 7y ago
Also maybe worth noting: we've gained about half the Earth's population of humans in the past 40-50 years. These two facts are almost certainly related.

skratchpixels 7y ago

From 1978 to 2018, the human population grew from 4.3 billion people to 7.6 billion people. That's over a 44% increase. The last 2 years alone, the human population increased by 1.2 billion.

cknight 7y ago
We are currently at 7.8 billion. 1.2 billion people ago was 2006 or 2007.
pintxo 7y ago
My maths tell me, an increase of (absolute) 3.3b from 4.3b to 7.6b is a (relative) change of 76%.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  My math tells me that 76% is more than 44%. ;D

rapnie 7y ago

This is one of the reasons I think we'll soon be talking about more than 'just' climate change, as the problem is much bigger still: we are committing planet-wide ecocide. Also maybe more focus on root causes will follow: that we are still promoting unbridled consumerism, and that inequality created an upper class that is trying to maintain the status quo. More focus on the latter is already happening.

jacobush 7y ago
Don't worry, the upper class will make the other classes consume much less of everything, if things get really bad.
forgotmypw 7y ago
We're in a position with a lot of power, but this is obscured from us. When we trace the strings which run from ecocide to ourselves, it is easy to see what changes we need to make.
- rapnie 7y ago
  While this is true, and I agree, this insight has been obvious for at least the last 40 years. Seeing the change is unfortunately very different than bringing the change. I am afraid most people need the emergency at their own doorstep before they are truly willing to act and make sacrifices to their way of living.
  - forgotmypw 7y ago
    Have you stopped buying plastic? Have you stopped buying the myriad "cleaning" products which pollute your home and create pollution in the process of being produced? Have you stopped buying disposable clothing and plastic trinkets? If you are still buying these things, you are complicit in this ecocide. And now you know it, too. Once you stop yourself, you can tell others, too. Without making changes in your own actions, there's little you can ask of anyone else. This is a change that will come one individual convincing another individual, one at a time, to stop contributing to the problem. No one else will do it for us: politicians don't give a fuck, corporations don't give a fuck, regulators don't give a fuck, military doesn't give a fuck, even "scientists" are mostly in the same camp of not giving a fuck, for the most part. We are the only ones who give a fuck, because it's our close relatives, and soon, us, who are being exterminated. And we are feeding and building our own extermination machine.
    - samatman 7y ago

toxicFork 7y ago

Are we perhaps the paperclip maximizer?

mint2 7y ago
Generic and ugly non-native landscaping and beige housing development optimizer.

Razengan 7y ago

News like this keep increasing the overall “background depression”, making it hard to really be happy in this world even if our own lives are perfect. Human society really needs to acknowledge and embrace that we are connected to all life beyond our concrete bubbles.

CaptArmchair 7y ago
Okay, this might be a bit meandering stream of consciousness... Feeling bad because entire species go extinct due to our own behavior is an uniquely human experience. It's not something that exists outside of our own human awareness in the broader world. When the last butterfly goes, it's not aware that it was the last of it's kind. It's not even aware of the complexities that caused it and it's kind to vanish. It simply dies. End of story. Now, that butterfly is a part of the Universe. This big thing that just "is", where basic laws of entropy and quantum physics just run their course, unattended, until trillions upon trillions of years from now, all that is left are subatomic particles randomly appearing and disappearing as the last black hole finally evaporates. There's a paradox at the heart of our human condition. Our awareness has brought us to the apex of the food chain. We are seemingly in control of how we shape the conditions for our own survival. But that sense of rational control is just the veneer on top of behavior, feelings, urges and instincts that we share with other species. We can imagine how we can reach for the stars, go to other planets and build great machines to do it. We have created morals, ethics, science, religion, nations, lore and legends to put ourselves at the center of things. But there's a dissonance we can never hope to overcome at the heart of our experience: We are not really in control. And that word "control" is just a mental construct that helps us make sense of the world around us. Whatever you and I, living people, do or do not do, small or big, has an impact. No more, no less. We can't avoid not throwing stones in the pond and causing ripples. Trying to preserve Earth as it exists today, either through technology or through profound policy changes is just as futile is holding your breathe. Our mere existence predicates change, willing or not. The idea that humanity shouldn't exist is just as futile. Remember, the Universe just "is". It does not care about our existence. And that butterfly doesn't care whether humanity is around or not. The only ones who agonize over the morality of existence are... humans. That's the price we pay for having evolved an acute sense of awareness of the past, present, future and the world around us. Even though we are in this extinction event, life will still be around long after we are gone. Bacteria sprung into existence even long before Earth's atmosphere contained 21% of oxygen. If we could travel back in time, Earth would be a very alien place to us. And it will be a very alien place once again eons down the line. Maybe it will be just fungi and algae, maybe it will be dense forests of plants and animal life that are nothing like what we know today. There are more galaxies then there are grains of sands of all beaches on Earth. Even if Earth becomes a barren rock, probability has it that the Universe might be teeming with life. Just at this point, right here, right now, in this corner of the Universe, humans are the only ones agonizing over that question: Are we really alone in our bubble of awareness? Or are there other species who feel and experience what we feel experience? And the vastness of things will never allow us to solve that question, unless by random chance. None of that is by any means an excuse to sit back and just take the ride. The very paradox that is our human awareness forces us to make decisions that will have an impact, that will cause suffering at one point or another. Either by giving up on consumerism, or by grieving over the loss of biodiversity. But when we do feel that creeping sense of depression over what we are losing, it's good to remind ourselves that the stories we tell ourselves - including climate change and mass extinctions - hide a far larger, incomprehensible reality in which mental constructs don't carry any particular larger Meaning our morality. We only control so much after all, it's entirely up to us to define how far we are willing to go to find out to what extent, and what we, humans, are willing to accept as a consequence. Accepting that nothing will ever stay the same anyhow, not even life, humanity, culture or civilization as we know it today on this planet, can help us to find a measure of some comfort and re-frame that journey a bit.

briga 7y ago

Also maybe worth noting: we've gained about half the Earth's population of humans in the past 40-50 years. These two facts are almost certainly related.