4 ms·

Extractive ones will always burn out in the long run as they will run out of resources to extract. They either learn to live in the waste they've produced, i.e.

by titzer 6y ago

Extractive ones will always burn out in the long run as they will run out of resources to extract. They either learn to live in the waste they've produced, i.e. they become recyclers, or they simply die off. It's a question of how much collateral damage they do over their lifetime. No matter how bad they screw up, in the very long run, Earth has a tendency to figure out how to recycle the raw materials. After all, Earth's ecosystems are the result of surviving cataclysm after cataclysm, from volcanism to asteroid strikes to climate change, to invasive species after invasive species. It's got a lot of experience dealing with giant debris piles left over from one shitstorm after another, be that a biological plague or the ash of an impact event.

_carbyau_ 6y ago
Yeah, mother earth is fine. Whether humanity will suffer a catastrophe of our own making is another question.
- javajosh 6y ago
  "Mother earth is fine." I think this ignores the human status as a thinking animal, and the glaringly obvious responsibility we collectively share for keeping our biosphere in good condition. That is, that we keep the remarkable diversity of life intact, and do not pointlessly throw the most unique and precious part of our universe in a chipper to make more particle board furniture. It is interesting that by incrementally converting the life-support system of our planet into dollar store trash, we could have similar impact on the biosphere as an ELE meteor impact! The tragedy is that, at least theoretically, this particular cause is avoidable. Or was. (Maybe science really is to blame? Wouldn't that be sad.)
  - _carbyau_ 6y ago
    While I think our views are similar, I clearly have a differing take on "Mother earth is fine." To me, it implies that planet earth is as implacable as the rest of the universe. It doesn't have feelings. It doesn't care. And it will still be here for millennia yet. This changes the conversation from: "We're hurting mother earth." to "We're thinking animals and yet we're making a poor future for ourselves." https://www.gocomics.com/joelpett/2009/12/13 https://www.gocomics.com/joelpett/2009/12/13
    - titzer 6y ago
      I'm much more fatalistic for humans than either of you. We've been downright nasty to all other forms of life on this planet for millenia, and now we've stepped up from just being nasty to being positively ecocidal, ratcheting up the biodiversity loss with each new techno-monstrosity we create. We are 100% headed for the trash heap, IMHO. You're right that we are "thinking animals", but we've got a global animus now that is obsessed money and growth. We're infected with a greed virus that I think is fatal to its host. And the problem, as I see it, and alluded to in my OP, is that local incentives are all wrong now. Nearly every decision that is rewarded by the markets at a local level is bad in the long term. You can teach a small fraction of people so that they may become enlightened, but greed spreads faster, and is better rewarded. In a game-theoretic view of this, it will always pay to defect from those conserving and living sustainably, as you externalize the losses onto an unseen and uncared-for future, and spread that loss among everyone else. Moral hazard, everywhere. But now, with global civilization and industrialization, and instant communication, we've become more than a diseased troop of chimps headed for a brawl in the forest; we're an insanely overpowerful superorganism driven by unquenchable lust for exponential growth and armed with millions of years of energy reserves--even nuclear weapons! There's literally nowhere on Earth that we can't or won't go in search of resources or vacation potential. As much of an atheist as I am, I can't help but feel a pang of spirituality about this, and that pang is, unfortunately, despair for the inhabitants of this green jewel that is being ravaged. And by inhabitants, I'm broad in including all living things, regardless if they are cute or have fangs and spit venom. All those funny animals, frogs, plants, fungi. They got fucked because money.
      - javajosh 6y ago
        I'm not sure it's about money, per se. Consider all the societies that had money and didn't get as "successful" as the current one, not anywhere close. The culprit is the scientific method, and in particular it's ability to give people repeatable, inhuman action-at-a-distance that amplified moral hazard 10000-fold. The longer the distance between extraction and consumption the more fucked your civilization is. As horrible as that sounds, there is a beautiful symmetry: science gives hope to spread life beyond Earth, and yet it is also provides a real path to the destruction of Earth, our only home. Clearly Nature thinks the gamble is worth it.
  - cdash 6y ago
    We don't have any "responsbility" to anyone or anything but our own desires.
    - stjohnswarts 6y ago
      You may not have loyalty, but if you're enjoying the fruits of society there is also responsibility to that society, otherwise one should probably extricate himself from society and see how long he makes it in the woods without it.
      - cdash 6y ago
        When I was referring to our own desires I was including human society.
    - javajosh 6y ago
      The problem with psychological egoism is that it doesn't say anything.
- anonporridge 6y ago
  Mother earth will be fine only until the sun expands to the point that it boils off the oceans and completely sterilizes all life within the next billion years. I guess the dead rock ball will still be fine.

by titzer 6y ago

_carbyau_ 6y ago

Yeah, mother earth is fine. Whether humanity will suffer a catastrophe of our own making is another question.

javajosh 6y ago
"Mother earth is fine." I think this ignores the human status as a thinking animal, and the glaringly obvious responsibility we collectively share for keeping our biosphere in good condition. That is, that we keep the remarkable diversity of life intact, and do not pointlessly throw the most unique and precious part of our universe in a chipper to make more particle board furniture. It is interesting that by incrementally converting the life-support system of our planet into dollar store trash, we could have similar impact on the biosphere as an ELE meteor impact! The tragedy is that, at least theoretically, this particular cause is avoidable. Or was. (Maybe science really is to blame? Wouldn't that be sad.)
- _carbyau_ 6y ago
  While I think our views are similar, I clearly have a differing take on "Mother earth is fine." To me, it implies that planet earth is as implacable as the rest of the universe. It doesn't have feelings. It doesn't care. And it will still be here for millennia yet. This changes the conversation from: "We're hurting mother earth." to "We're thinking animals and yet we're making a poor future for ourselves." https://www.gocomics.com/joelpett/2009/12/13 https://www.gocomics.com/joelpett/2009/12/13
  - titzer 6y ago
    I'm much more fatalistic for humans than either of you. We've been downright nasty to all other forms of life on this planet for millenia, and now we've stepped up from just being nasty to being positively ecocidal, ratcheting up the biodiversity loss with each new techno-monstrosity we create. We are 100% headed for the trash heap, IMHO. You're right that we are "thinking animals", but we've got a global animus now that is obsessed money and growth. We're infected with a greed virus that I think is fatal to its host. And the problem, as I see it, and alluded to in my OP, is that local incentives are all wrong now. Nearly every decision that is rewarded by the markets at a local level is bad in the long term. You can teach a small fraction of people so that they may become enlightened, but greed spreads faster, and is better rewarded. In a game-theoretic view of this, it will always pay to defect from those conserving and living sustainably, as you externalize the losses onto an unseen and uncared-for future, and spread that loss among everyone else. Moral hazard, everywhere. But now, with global civilization and industrialization, and instant communication, we've become more than a diseased troop of chimps headed for a brawl in the forest; we're an insanely overpowerful superorganism driven by unquenchable lust for exponential growth and armed with millions of years of energy reserves--even nuclear weapons! There's literally nowhere on Earth that we can't or won't go in search of resources or vacation potential. As much of an atheist as I am, I can't help but feel a pang of spirituality about this, and that pang is, unfortunately, despair for the inhabitants of this green jewel that is being ravaged. And by inhabitants, I'm broad in including all living things, regardless if they are cute or have fangs and spit venom. All those funny animals, frogs, plants, fungi. They got fucked because money.
    - javajosh 6y ago
      I'm not sure it's about money, per se. Consider all the societies that had money and didn't get as "successful" as the current one, not anywhere close. The culprit is the scientific method, and in particular it's ability to give people repeatable, inhuman action-at-a-distance that amplified moral hazard 10000-fold. The longer the distance between extraction and consumption the more fucked your civilization is. As horrible as that sounds, there is a beautiful symmetry: science gives hope to spread life beyond Earth, and yet it is also provides a real path to the destruction of Earth, our only home. Clearly Nature thinks the gamble is worth it.
- cdash 6y ago
  We don't have any "responsbility" to anyone or anything but our own desires.
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    You may not have loyalty, but if you're enjoying the fruits of society there is also responsibility to that society, otherwise one should probably extricate himself from society and see how long he makes it in the woods without it.
    - cdash 6y ago
      When I was referring to our own desires I was including human society.
  - javajosh 6y ago
    The problem with psychological egoism is that it doesn't say anything.
anonporridge 6y ago
Mother earth will be fine only until the sun expands to the point that it boils off the oceans and completely sterilizes all life within the next billion years. I guess the dead rock ball will still be fine.