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That’s a beautiful discovery and makes me sad to think what global damage industrialization must have caused. I wish so dearly there was a way to let earth rep

That’s a beautiful discovery and makes me sad to think what global damage industrialization must have caused. I wish so dearly there was a way to let earth reproduce her fruits that didn’t involve destroying humanity.

ars 5y ago
The earth doesn't care, only humans care. Earth without humans would be pointless, so you have to take humans as they are, the good and the bad both. But please remember things are way better now than they used to be, pre-industrialization was not the utopia many think.
- tmountain 5y ago
  I don’t think it would be any more or less pointless than it is now. If heat death is inevitable, nothing really “matters”. That said, the planet’s ecological health was indisputably better before the industrial revolution. Things sucked for humans in a lot of ways, but almost every other species was in a much better place.
  - yesenadam 5y ago
    Surely not the place for this topic, but anyway. > If heat death is inevitable, nothing really “matters”. I never understand how, for people who say this, whether things go on forever the same (or slow down in trillions of years, or something else,) affects whether things matter here and now. How would anything be any different if things were going to go on forever the same? What kind of ideal universe would you like for it to seem like "things really matter"? It seems similar to (what seem to me mistaken) ideas of life being meaningless if it's not eternal, or if there's no god, or if the universe is so huge etc.. I don't see how anything of those things would change the here and now, or the significance of things.
    - tmountain 5y ago
      For clarity, I’m speaking to something mattering in the grand philosophical scheme of things—-not to whether anyone’s life has meaning, is worth living, etc. When confronted with a question of what matters to the earth (something that is 4.5 billion years old), you start looking at things on a cosmic scale. For whatever it’s worth, I enjoy my life, and I don’t really care if it “matters”. It’s a lot more fun to just follow the thread than worry how my short time here fits into time scales orders of magnitude longer than my lifespan.
- thelittleone 5y ago
  Earth without humans would be pointless? I disagree. Seems astonishingly arrogant to assume all else is nothing without humans. What about before the evolution of humans? One could argue that every step leading up to the first human was required for humans to appear in the first place. What about love? Do you think a chimp mother loves it's chimp child? Do you think that is pointless too?
  - animal_spirits 5y ago
    I think the point they are trying to make is that chimps will also fight and murder and steal in order to survive. It's natural for certain life to take over other life. However in the end us humans have the ability to study these situations over long periods of time, and we know how harmful biodiversity loss can be to our own species as well as to others. These are values we cant assume isn't as deeply held within the animal/plant/fungi kingdoms
  - usrusr 5y ago
    > Earth without humans would be pointless? Yeah, please forgive my sarcasm first, then imagine we'd somehow send a probe to an exoplanet and discover it to be full of life. But it only has equivalents of giraffes, carp, magpies, ants and so on, but not a single being that could be considered human-like that might be able to, say, invent the automobile or something like that. Sure we'd want our money back for that pointless probe?
perihelions 5y ago
The one comment in the other thread [0] speculates the Newfoundland banks could have had things similar to this, except they wouldn't today, because industrial trawling would have destroyed them [1]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29923951 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29923951 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottom_trawling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottom_trawling
bufbupa 5y ago
If it makes you feel better, we're ahead of schedule on population decline, especially due to covid baby bust. It's quite plausible humanity will find balance with nature with a much smaller population in the long term.
- culi 5y ago
  busts are usually followed by booms. Current projections expect the population size to level out around 10.9 billion eventually. This winter Brussels Airlines made 3,000 unnecessary flights just to maintain their airport spots. We certainly have a lot of efficiency gains to make first with regards to our consumption before looking at the sheer number of people we have to feed
  - hetspookjee 5y ago
    It wont be long till a long read will be published that will summarise all the empty flights that have taken place just to maintain the rights. I’ve never heard of Brussel airlines at all so I’m sure this is just a part of the tip of the iceberg. I truly hope the airline industry stops being the sweetheart of politics and finally gets the pummelling that they’ve long deserved. The race to the bottom has been long done and to think it’s ok to fly to Spain from Amsterdam for 30 euros is just a slap in the face for anyone that has a semblance of interest in the climate.
    - culi 5y ago
      It certainly is just the tip. The parent company of Brussels Airlines, Lufthansa, operated a total of around 18,000 empty or near-empty flights this winter. I totally agree. And it's important to remember that, at least in the US, the airline industry is one of the most heavily subsidized industries
- firecall 5y ago
  Capitalism has priced out having large families! We went from a western world where one salary could support a partner and 3 children, to a world where to two full-time salaries are barely enough for one child. And where one salary is being soaked up on child-care fees much of the time...
29athrowaway 5y ago
When people are hungry, you cannot tell them "there's no food", or "we cannot harvest this resource now because it would be unsustainable". They need food now, so they will eat fish before they reach reproductive age, kill the O-horizon layer in the soil, kill all the pollinators, pump all the groundwater, burn all the fossil fuels... because if you do it you will be rewarded with food in the short term. But then the people that depended on those unsustainable feeding capacity increases will have a hard time finding food.

ars 5y ago

The earth doesn't care, only humans care. Earth without humans would be pointless, so you have to take humans as they are, the good and the bad both. But please remember things are way better now than they used to be, pre-industrialization was not the utopia many think.

tmountain 5y ago
I don’t think it would be any more or less pointless than it is now. If heat death is inevitable, nothing really “matters”. That said, the planet’s ecological health was indisputably better before the industrial revolution. Things sucked for humans in a lot of ways, but almost every other species was in a much better place.
- yesenadam 5y ago
  Surely not the place for this topic, but anyway. > If heat death is inevitable, nothing really “matters”. I never understand how, for people who say this, whether things go on forever the same (or slow down in trillions of years, or something else,) affects whether things matter here and now. How would anything be any different if things were going to go on forever the same? What kind of ideal universe would you like for it to seem like "things really matter"? It seems similar to (what seem to me mistaken) ideas of life being meaningless if it's not eternal, or if there's no god, or if the universe is so huge etc.. I don't see how anything of those things would change the here and now, or the significance of things.
  - tmountain 5y ago
    For clarity, I’m speaking to something mattering in the grand philosophical scheme of things—-not to whether anyone’s life has meaning, is worth living, etc. When confronted with a question of what matters to the earth (something that is 4.5 billion years old), you start looking at things on a cosmic scale. For whatever it’s worth, I enjoy my life, and I don’t really care if it “matters”. It’s a lot more fun to just follow the thread than worry how my short time here fits into time scales orders of magnitude longer than my lifespan.
thelittleone 5y ago
Earth without humans would be pointless? I disagree. Seems astonishingly arrogant to assume all else is nothing without humans. What about before the evolution of humans? One could argue that every step leading up to the first human was required for humans to appear in the first place. What about love? Do you think a chimp mother loves it's chimp child? Do you think that is pointless too?
- animal_spirits 5y ago
  I think the point they are trying to make is that chimps will also fight and murder and steal in order to survive. It's natural for certain life to take over other life. However in the end us humans have the ability to study these situations over long periods of time, and we know how harmful biodiversity loss can be to our own species as well as to others. These are values we cant assume isn't as deeply held within the animal/plant/fungi kingdoms
- usrusr 5y ago
  > Earth without humans would be pointless? Yeah, please forgive my sarcasm first, then imagine we'd somehow send a probe to an exoplanet and discover it to be full of life. But it only has equivalents of giraffes, carp, magpies, ants and so on, but not a single being that could be considered human-like that might be able to, say, invent the automobile or something like that. Sure we'd want our money back for that pointless probe?

perihelions 5y ago

The one comment in the other thread [0] speculates the Newfoundland banks could have had things similar to this, except they wouldn't today, because industrial trawling would have destroyed them [1]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29923951 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29923951 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottom_trawling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottom_trawling

bufbupa 5y ago

If it makes you feel better, we're ahead of schedule on population decline, especially due to covid baby bust. It's quite plausible humanity will find balance with nature with a much smaller population in the long term.

culi 5y ago
busts are usually followed by booms. Current projections expect the population size to level out around 10.9 billion eventually. This winter Brussels Airlines made 3,000 unnecessary flights just to maintain their airport spots. We certainly have a lot of efficiency gains to make first with regards to our consumption before looking at the sheer number of people we have to feed
- hetspookjee 5y ago
  It wont be long till a long read will be published that will summarise all the empty flights that have taken place just to maintain the rights. I’ve never heard of Brussel airlines at all so I’m sure this is just a part of the tip of the iceberg. I truly hope the airline industry stops being the sweetheart of politics and finally gets the pummelling that they’ve long deserved. The race to the bottom has been long done and to think it’s ok to fly to Spain from Amsterdam for 30 euros is just a slap in the face for anyone that has a semblance of interest in the climate.
  - culi 5y ago
    It certainly is just the tip. The parent company of Brussels Airlines, Lufthansa, operated a total of around 18,000 empty or near-empty flights this winter. I totally agree. And it's important to remember that, at least in the US, the airline industry is one of the most heavily subsidized industries
firecall 5y ago
Capitalism has priced out having large families! We went from a western world where one salary could support a partner and 3 children, to a world where to two full-time salaries are barely enough for one child. And where one salary is being soaked up on child-care fees much of the time...

29athrowaway 5y ago

When people are hungry, you cannot tell them "there's no food", or "we cannot harvest this resource now because it would be unsustainable". They need food now, so they will eat fish before they reach reproductive age, kill the O-horizon layer in the soil, kill all the pollinators, pump all the groundwater, burn all the fossil fuels... because if you do it you will be rewarded with food in the short term. But then the people that depended on those unsustainable feeding capacity increases will have a hard time finding food.