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You're right. Birds haven't managed to cause a global mass extinction event. Meanwhile the technology you're touting has permitted our species to very nearly er

You're right. Birds haven't managed to cause a global mass extinction event. Meanwhile the technology you're touting has permitted our species to very nearly eradicate every marine fishery on the planet, fuck up CO2 levels badly enough to alter the climate globally, pump more water out of aquifers than can be recharged through natural processes, and has driven unrecoverable topsoil loss globally in all major agricultural areas. Your claim that carry capacity has been altered significantly doesn't mesh well with the facts on the ground. Available evidence suggests all we're really accomplishing is a temporary increase in humans on the planet in exchange for a bricked ecosystem. That ain't carry.

Baeocystin 3y ago
A small freshwater fern bricked the Earth's climate for a while: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event It is possible that the evolution of a fungus that could degrade lignin is what brought about the end of the Carboniferous, with an associated extinction event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous#Fungi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous#Fungi And, of course, probably the biggest one of the all, the Great Oxidation Event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event // None of this is to downplay humanity's role in our current climate catastrophe. But we are the first of a long line of organisms that have the ability to do something about it, which is not nothing.
- forgetfreeman 3y ago
  Right, and the only non-hypothetical, physics-or-economics-defying solution we have available is to get our population down below some threshold where our existence on this planet becomes long-term sustainable.
oivey 3y ago
I’m not really sure what your comment has to do with carrying capacity. The damage humanity has done to the environment has more to do with a minority of the population using an insane number of resources.
- forgetfreeman 3y ago
  You'd like to believe that and yet the only capital S sustainable human enclaves on the planet are indigenous populations with no industrial capacity.

Baeocystin 3y ago

A small freshwater fern bricked the Earth's climate for a while: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event It is possible that the evolution of a fungus that could degrade lignin is what brought about the end of the Carboniferous, with an associated extinction event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous#Fungi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous#Fungi And, of course, probably the biggest one of the all, the Great Oxidation Event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event // None of this is to downplay humanity's role in our current climate catastrophe. But we are the first of a long line of organisms that have the ability to do something about it, which is not nothing.

forgetfreeman 3y ago
Right, and the only non-hypothetical, physics-or-economics-defying solution we have available is to get our population down below some threshold where our existence on this planet becomes long-term sustainable.

oivey 3y ago

I’m not really sure what your comment has to do with carrying capacity. The damage humanity has done to the environment has more to do with a minority of the population using an insane number of resources.

forgetfreeman 3y ago
You'd like to believe that and yet the only capital S sustainable human enclaves on the planet are indigenous populations with no industrial capacity.