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A good book about the related topic of novel urban ecosystems is "Darwin Comes to Town: How the Urban Jungle Drives Evolution" by Menno Schilthuizen. For urban
by faassen 2y ago
A good book about the related topic of novel urban ecosystems is "Darwin Comes to Town: How the Urban Jungle Drives Evolution" by Menno Schilthuizen. For urban ecosystems Schilthuizen argues we should accept it; cities are a new habitat anyway, and we should treasure the novel ecosystem that forms in them.
For non-urban places where thriving existing ecosystems get changed completely due to introductions the picture is more complicated; we should not ignore what has been gained by accident, but also mourn the loss.
- Biologist123 2y agoIf you set up (or more likely inherit) a story that change = loss, you will also onboard a needless eco-anxiety.
- 542354234235 2y agoIf your house burns down, your couch, photo albums, home server, and cats “change” into piles of ash. As amazing as piles of ash are, your previous belongings were unique and had value to you, and would be much more difficult to replace than the ash would be. Large mammals take 10s of millions of years to evolve. Their extinction due to “change” by humans is irreplaceable, for all intents and purposes. This idea that all changes are somehow neutral and so don’t matter is ridiculous.
- Biologist123 2y agoYou make the assumption that maintaining the status quo is the norm. In reality, change is the norm - sometimes slow, sometimes fast. I make this point because I strongly suspect humans become unhappy when their expectations divert from reality in a way that feels costly to them. If our expectation was environmental change, rather than equilibrium, this might change our opportunity set for managing, for example, environmental and climate change. And make us a lot less unhappy.