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Past people really make me angry sometimes. So many animals and environments are just gone, for nothing. I have an optimistic but perhaps futile hope that we

• thriftwy 5y ago
  I don't see much activity in trying to bring back recently extinct creatures. Neither around reconstruction or reintroduction of extinct ecosystems, aside from the Pleistocene park. I can see people on HN deeply concerned about the Amazon or Indonesian ecosystems, but noone seems to be doing anything where they live.
  • HPsquared 5y ago
    It's easier to tell others what they should do, than to actually do something. People can convince themselves that with the level of interconnectedness, effort spent on messaging will have greater effect than actually taking action themselves (a single person). Of course when you're shouting into a deafening noise, it doesn't add much and the best approach is to actually do something, but of course the former option is easier.
    • thriftwy 5y ago
      Everyone is a propagandist today, but there's no longer any audience. You don't have to be single - Pleistocene park is not a single person but rather an organization.
    • hulitu 5y ago
      You can't do much on a destroyed ecosystem ( see the past discussion about Thames). We are starting to live in a world with "forests" without animals, with only one insect which is eating the forest. In a world with rivers without fishes or with introduced species.
      • thriftwy 5y ago
        Then maybe people who have already destroyed an ecosystem and can't restore it, stop givind advice (and push) to those who still have it. It sounds like a good idea but isn't.
• southerntofu 5y ago
  Very unlikely we'll see them again, but we can do all we can to protect the 1M+ endangered species: - build communities with cooperation, not competition; shared pantries/kitchens help reduce waste - in general, mutualize as much infra as possible to reduce resource usage - go low-tech as much as you can (as a community) ; every single piece of electronics is close to the worst you can do for the environment - sabotage surrounding industry? organize with fellow concerned citizens? chances are the psychopaths running the show (hello bezos) will never stop until we're all dead or they've successfully colonized Mars, so we should help them stop peacefully or find their way to the guillotine Strongly recommend watching the (not-so-recent) End:Civ documentary (you can find it pretty much anywhere on the Internet).
• drran 5y ago
  Today we are wiping insects as a class, and all birds that prey on them.
  • jgwil2 5y ago
    We'd better hope not. If insects disappear civilization will not be far behind.
  • otabdeveloper4 5y ago
    I doubt we'll wipe out e.g. ants out as a class. Ants and such seem to be at the top of the evolutionary ladder, like humans.
    • naikrovek 5y ago
      we are wiping out the proper use of things like "e.g." thanks to comments like yours, and the comments you've read to make you think this is the proper use. no one gives a damn about literally anything anymore.
      • drran 5y ago
        I'm not a native speaker.
      • otabdeveloper4 5y ago
        "e.g." is an abbreviation for "for example". So, "I doubt we'll wipe out, for example, ants as a class". Meaning that the comment wasn't particularly about ants, just used them as an illustrative example.
        • naikrovek 5y ago
          "e.g." is for lists of examples. not just one.
          • DrSiemer 5y ago
• ethbr0 5y ago
  It requires no personal sacrifice to lament the fact that prior peoples didn't make sacrifices. It requires personal sacrifice to be the people who future people's don't lament. Inaction vs action.
  • mkl 5y ago
    I'm not sure I understand. It would have required no personal sacrifice for the collectors to not push the great auk to extinction through their actions.
• hulitu 5y ago
  How about current people ? "Last chance to see" by Douglas Adams and a photographer (i forgot the name) was very eye opening.