4 ms·

Yikes. The sheer, unacknowledged hubris of this is bewildering. Let’s just remake the arid west?

jackyinger 2y ago
Truly, even if we were to disregard the ecological and social impacts on existing inhabitants, the energy required would be extreme. And thankfully that alone is enough to make this simply a fantasy. I actually quite like the arid west, if anything we should be letting it return to aridity as current water use (I.e. rerouting a lot of the Colorado River to California) is well known to be on shaky ground at the least. If you don’t like arid areas move somewhere else.
boxed 2y ago
One mans hubris, another mans hope for a better future. To put this proposed project into context: humans already did something similar in scale in what is now the Amazon. We accidentally rewilded the entire area via plagues. The Sahara is also a pretty new thing, and something we could reverse. We've long past the point of playing god or not. We now only have two options: 1. playing an incompetent god, pretending that our actions are not our fault 2. playing a competent god, taking responsibility and trying to do better
- kibwen 2y ago
  Surely you acknowledge that "taking responsibility and trying to do better" means learning from our past mistakes and not repeating them? The project in the OP is motivated by vanity, not necessity.
  - ordinaryradical 2y ago
    Wanting to make a biome more habitable is not vanity. Is it vanity to want a park in your city or a river to be clean of pollutants? We are scared of projects like this because the scale betrays our inability to do them or perhaps fully anticipate the consequences, which is good enough reason for caution. But vanity? A garden is never reducible to vanity, it is the cultivation of the earth and the prosperity of living things, regardless of how vainglorious the gardener may be.
    - giraffe_lady 2y ago
      A measurable ratio of a continent is not a garden or a city park. Even just using this metaphor seriously is, yes, straightforward hubris and vanity.
      - ordinaryradical 2y ago
        The whole world has been formed already by our presence and will continue to be. Humans modify our environment, for good and ill, and this is happening in all cultures and at all scales of civilization. Gardening proves microscopically what happens on the macro scale. To presuppose that is hubris is one way of looking at it, but a very narrow one. The real fault in your reply, besides missing the substance of mine, is that framing such things as “hubris” doesn’t really help us weigh the value of the idea. At most it’s a critique of ambition, but an idea’s ambition isn’t related to its validity. Also, wanting other humans to flourish is nearly the opposite of vanity.
    - chewbacha 2y ago
      There is already a biome living in the arid west. It’s hubris and vanity to remove and destroy that biome and replace it with our own.
      - boxed 2y ago
        How much of that biome is the result of a previous ecological disaster? The US is covered by those from what I've understood. Vast tracts of lands are arid because beavers were hunted to extinction for example. Protecting the accident of the previous 100 years doesn't sound so compelling.
        chewbacha 2y ago
        The west is not arid due to beaver hunting. It’s been arid for thousands of years due to tectonic plate activity and a cold deep ocean that flows clockwise bringing colder water down from the north. The cold water and tall mountains produce arid inland conditions. This happened so long ago that the ecology evolved to the arid land.
- seadan83 2y ago
  The Amazon is losing forested area, is nearly carbon positive, and was previously sparsely populated (it being a jungle and all). I have trouble squaring this understanding with the idea it was recently rewilded.
  - VVertigo 2y ago
    It sounds like the parent comment was referring to geological timescales. In that case, the 16th century would count as recent.

Truly, even if we were to disregard the ecological and social impacts on existing inhabitants, the energy required would be extreme. And thankfully that alone is enough to make this simply a fantasy. I actually quite like the arid west, if anything we should be letting it return to aridity as current water use (I.e. rerouting a lot of the Colorado River to California) is well known to be on shaky ground at the least. If you don’t like arid areas move somewhere else.

boxed 2y ago

One mans hubris, another mans hope for a better future. To put this proposed project into context: humans already did something similar in scale in what is now the Amazon. We accidentally rewilded the entire area via plagues. The Sahara is also a pretty new thing, and something we could reverse. We've long past the point of playing god or not. We now only have two options: 1. playing an incompetent god, pretending that our actions are not our fault 2. playing a competent god, taking responsibility and trying to do better

kibwen 2y ago
Surely you acknowledge that "taking responsibility and trying to do better" means learning from our past mistakes and not repeating them? The project in the OP is motivated by vanity, not necessity.
- ordinaryradical 2y ago
  Wanting to make a biome more habitable is not vanity. Is it vanity to want a park in your city or a river to be clean of pollutants? We are scared of projects like this because the scale betrays our inability to do them or perhaps fully anticipate the consequences, which is good enough reason for caution. But vanity? A garden is never reducible to vanity, it is the cultivation of the earth and the prosperity of living things, regardless of how vainglorious the gardener may be.
  - giraffe_lady 2y ago
    A measurable ratio of a continent is not a garden or a city park. Even just using this metaphor seriously is, yes, straightforward hubris and vanity.
    - ordinaryradical 2y ago
      The whole world has been formed already by our presence and will continue to be. Humans modify our environment, for good and ill, and this is happening in all cultures and at all scales of civilization. Gardening proves microscopically what happens on the macro scale. To presuppose that is hubris is one way of looking at it, but a very narrow one. The real fault in your reply, besides missing the substance of mine, is that framing such things as “hubris” doesn’t really help us weigh the value of the idea. At most it’s a critique of ambition, but an idea’s ambition isn’t related to its validity. Also, wanting other humans to flourish is nearly the opposite of vanity.
  - chewbacha 2y ago
    There is already a biome living in the arid west. It’s hubris and vanity to remove and destroy that biome and replace it with our own.
    - boxed 2y ago
      How much of that biome is the result of a previous ecological disaster? The US is covered by those from what I've understood. Vast tracts of lands are arid because beavers were hunted to extinction for example. Protecting the accident of the previous 100 years doesn't sound so compelling.
      - chewbacha 2y ago
        The west is not arid due to beaver hunting. It’s been arid for thousands of years due to tectonic plate activity and a cold deep ocean that flows clockwise bringing colder water down from the north. The cold water and tall mountains produce arid inland conditions. This happened so long ago that the ecology evolved to the arid land.
seadan83 2y ago
The Amazon is losing forested area, is nearly carbon positive, and was previously sparsely populated (it being a jungle and all). I have trouble squaring this understanding with the idea it was recently rewilded.
- VVertigo 2y ago
  It sounds like the parent comment was referring to geological timescales. In that case, the 16th century would count as recent.