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There are entire countries that were deforested, and it's essentially impossible for nature to repopulate those forests. Human intervention destroyed the ecosy

by smt88 3y ago

There are entire countries that were deforested, and it's essentially impossible for nature to repopulate those forests. Human intervention destroyed the ecosystem and there is immediate and ongoing harm to that destruction. It's idiotic to suddenly decide to "let nature do it's thing" now when billions of people are threatened by climate change.

ipaddr 3y ago
You realize nature populated the forests in the first place. Birds carry seeds. It is not impossible.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Over millions of years. If the soil the trees need has washed away they won't grow anytime soon. Some places you can plant a native tree and it will grow. Other places something is lost and it won't grow anymore. Places can be very tiny areas in the case of a desert.
  - hosh 3y ago
    And there are ways to remediate wastelands! It would take a very long time though if we just "left it alone". I think there's a false dichotomy about what "human intervention" means, because as a civilization, we think of human intervention as forces that act upon the ecosystem from the outside. Not all cultures and civilizations sees it that way. I think we think that way in modern times because we see ourselves as apart from the ecosystem rather than a part of the ecosystem. It's pretty common to hear people say, "there's nothing there", even if it is a lush, wildland (or close enough to it). As an example, there are ancient, abandoned perennial food forests that were created by the inhabitants. These work with natural processes so that yields useful to humans are byproducts of the healthy ecosystem, and they can carry on even when humans stop tending them.
hosh 3y ago
Oh, I think something will regrow there even if humans die off. It's more likely that the planet will continue to live, and some other intelligent lifeform arises as a successor. This isn't really about saving the planet. Over a large enough timescale, the planet will recover just fine -- as a living system, the global ecology can and does regenerate. Instead, what we're fighting for is a place for humans within the global ecosystem. "Human intervention" need not be destructive. It has been destructive because we came to see ourselves as apart from the ecosystem, rather than being part of the ecosystem. There have been cultures, to one degree or another, see themselves and conduct themsleves as part of the ecosystem, and tended the lands as such. Wastelands can be remediated. In India, there are people working with marginalized castes and ethnic groups to restore wastelands. It's not something that works over a single season, but it is something that starts yielding stuff useful to humans within a single generation. The work that these people do ends up restoring land from bare rock eroded by poor land management practices. These were land no one wanted, and now they are both productive (yielding something useful) while at the same time, a fertile, active ecosystem beyond the human-centric view of the world. There doesn't have to be a dichotomy between "human intervention", and "leaving nature alone". We're a part of the natural ecosystem -- how could we really ever "leave it alone"?

by smt88 3y ago

ipaddr 3y ago

You realize nature populated the forests in the first place. Birds carry seeds. It is not impossible.

bluGill 3y ago
Over millions of years. If the soil the trees need has washed away they won't grow anytime soon. Some places you can plant a native tree and it will grow. Other places something is lost and it won't grow anymore. Places can be very tiny areas in the case of a desert.
- hosh 3y ago
  And there are ways to remediate wastelands! It would take a very long time though if we just "left it alone". I think there's a false dichotomy about what "human intervention" means, because as a civilization, we think of human intervention as forces that act upon the ecosystem from the outside. Not all cultures and civilizations sees it that way. I think we think that way in modern times because we see ourselves as apart from the ecosystem rather than a part of the ecosystem. It's pretty common to hear people say, "there's nothing there", even if it is a lush, wildland (or close enough to it). As an example, there are ancient, abandoned perennial food forests that were created by the inhabitants. These work with natural processes so that yields useful to humans are byproducts of the healthy ecosystem, and they can carry on even when humans stop tending them.

hosh 3y ago

Oh, I think something will regrow there even if humans die off. It's more likely that the planet will continue to live, and some other intelligent lifeform arises as a successor. This isn't really about saving the planet. Over a large enough timescale, the planet will recover just fine -- as a living system, the global ecology can and does regenerate. Instead, what we're fighting for is a place for humans within the global ecosystem. "Human intervention" need not be destructive. It has been destructive because we came to see ourselves as apart from the ecosystem, rather than being part of the ecosystem. There have been cultures, to one degree or another, see themselves and conduct themsleves as part of the ecosystem, and tended the lands as such. Wastelands can be remediated. In India, there are people working with marginalized castes and ethnic groups to restore wastelands. It's not something that works over a single season, but it is something that starts yielding stuff useful to humans within a single generation. The work that these people do ends up restoring land from bare rock eroded by poor land management practices. These were land no one wanted, and now they are both productive (yielding something useful) while at the same time, a fertile, active ecosystem beyond the human-centric view of the world. There doesn't have to be a dichotomy between "human intervention", and "leaving nature alone". We're a part of the natural ecosystem -- how could we really ever "leave it alone"?