5 ms·

I want to ignore these articles as it is so painful to watch the beautiful clockwork of the natural world unravel. I hate facing the suffering, diminishment, an

I want to ignore these articles as it is so painful to watch the beautiful clockwork of the natural world unravel. I hate facing the suffering, diminishment, and extinction of so much in the name of profiteering and ever-increasing growth. But this is the world now, there will only be more stories like this, and so I'm not turning away from it any further. The world becomes less beautiful, less rich, less full every year. I do volunteer, donate, and advocate and I won't use my extreme pessimism as an excuse not to engage. But in private, I mourn what is coming with little hope for substantial reduction in harm. If anything, those with power seem upset that we're not doing more to fasttrack catastrophe - if it's going to happen, may as well be the one to profit from it as much as possible before you're dead, the thinking seems to go.

soco 6mo ago
Sometimes those stories try too much to impress. I recorded a documentary series "How to kill a puppy and get rich" about street dogs in Romania and the business around them, and I had to stop it after 10 seconds, not exaggerating. Folks, I want to know the mafia and story, but I can't stand to see and hear that torture...
roldie 6mo ago
You have articulated my feelings, behavior, and outlook almost exactly. I feel so hopeless every time I read an article like this. I've joined climate activist groups and meetups, and I've donated to orgs and political candidates. But I just feel like there's so much more damage to be done before we get to substantial improvements, it's so disheartening
qsera 6mo ago
>natural world unravel Natural world would be mostly fine one way or other, human beings might not survive though...
- Scarblac 6mo ago
  No, we're very resilient bastards, we're going to let the huge majority of species go extinct before we go ourselves. We're already in a mass extinction event and we're just getting started.
tencentshill 6mo ago
We've always consumed and extracted until we run out, but only very recently started actually tracking it and taking any preventative measures at all. Will take yet more time to gain momentum in that direction. The consequences will be too obvious and unavoidable for the next few generations to stagnate like we have.
everdrive 6mo ago
But on the plus side a few companies increased shareholder value. Can you imagine if we had fewer products, or didn't push the human population its theoretical maximum?
- ctoth 6mo ago
  Who is we? Which we opted to push the planet to carrying capacity? Is it? What is the capacity? Are the decreasing birthrates across the world really the Earth's theoretical maximum? What does it mean to have fewer products, which things precisely should we not have? Who should be in charge of setting this?
- ghurtado 6mo ago
  What the hell does "fewer products" even mean?
concinds 6mo ago
Blaming "profiteering and ever-increasing growth" is way too easy. Can any legislature get away with dramatically increasing taxes on meat, fish, gas, and plane tickets, just at a level high enough to account for environmental externalities? Even dictatorships couldn't get away with it because it would cause too much unrest.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- alluro2 6mo ago
  Why do you think that is? Hint: taxing people buying food, which is getting worse and worse, while the top 0.01% gets more and more rich and keeps making it worse, is maybe not the solution people should embrace that you think it is...
  - tracker1 6mo ago
    An easier path would be to stop subsidizing the core of what is making junk foods to begin with. For that matter, at least in the US, having individual states require limitations of importing pre-processed goods could help too. I've thought that it might be an idea for more states to require at least half of all beef and chicken to be imported into the state in at least half-carcass form. This would incentivize local farming, and local processing, reducing the more centralized processing and the environmental impacts could be further reduced in a lot of ways. That's just for meat. Forcing insurance company accounting to average to single-payer modals and limit coverage combinations to no more than 3 choices across the nation could help with another part. Refactoring all federally funded insurance (medicare/medicaid/va/federal-employees) into a non-profit insurance corp that does likewise and any private company can also buy policies from would help to. Finally, establish "part time" work as no more than 10 hours a week averaged per 4 week window. Then require all employers to provide medical insurance for all workers that meets what the npo insurance provides. The recent changes to USDA food guidelines are a step in the right direction, mostly... but there's still room to improve. Education in and of itself should improve dramatically. For that matter, actually having schools "make" most of their food instead of relying on premade/packaged goods would be a massive step in a right direction. Have every student participate in meal preparation at least a few hours a week as part of school work would help a lot. I'd like to see some incentivization for more companies returning to a dividends model that includes employee profit sharing as part of said formula. I think this would do a LOT to shore up the middle class again. Sorry, just went off on a total tangent... hitting reply anyway, but don't take anything too serious/deep... these thoughts are kind of always lingering in the back of my mind... I've just never been in a position to actually act on any of them politically.
MisterTea 6mo ago
It's hard when your job and even hobbies are intertwined with this destruction. I enjoy working with computers and industrial machinery - two giant sources of pollution and social disruption. I sometimes feel this existential crisis where I am part of the problem yet I have no way to escape and become filled with guilt. Yet without this technology our lives would be more difficult. I sometimes think about a post-industrial fantasy world where technology still exists, though minimally, and carefully applied to solve real problems humanity faces instead of selling FOMO or millions of "shiny things" that wind up in land fills so you can sell the new FOMO/shinything so some numbers on a spread sheet goes up.
- dd8601fn 6mo ago
  This may upset some people, but I think you have to come up with mental demarcation for responsibility, or you’ll go nuts. I simply cannot decide to avoid all the technology of my field because whoever designed the electrical infrastructure didn’t do it responsibly. Or because the handling of ewaste hasn’t been dealt with. Or because everyone sourced materials in unethical ways. My responsibility for most of that kinda ends at my voting behavior or trying to make reasonable personal decisions that are well within my small sphere of influence. A problem domain that I can handle. Anyone who watched The Good Place knows what I mean. It’s not absolution for my own behavior, it’s just not holding myself accountable for everything that everyone else does… badly. Otherwise there’s just no sword to fall on that’s big enough to feel at peace with the world. (Think of the snails!)
  - throwanem 6mo ago
    You are responsible for the reasonably foreseeable consequences of your own actions. I'm not going to point to a TV show about alcoholism to substantiate that. You don't need me to. It is also why manslaughter, though a lesser crime than murder, remains a crime.
    - dd8601fn 6mo ago
      You seem to have reduced the very thesis of what I was saying to the point where you excised it entirely. “Don’t get shitty drunk and then drive” fits just fine. “Be a technology person who doesn’t use technology because our power isn’t green.” potentially falls on the far side of that line of personal responsibility.
tapoxi 6mo ago
I wonder how much Claude Code were cost if we were to take the cost of environmental destruction from its energy consumption into account.
beepbopboopp 6mo ago
Serious questions, how is this destruction and not just "change?" It seems throughout time the world has experienced acute shifts, dying offs and other events. In those transition periods many animals that you know and love today finally got a shot at main character roles. Heck the reduction of o2 in the air that killed/shrunk a lot of dinosaurs is basically the opening slave for you to be able to write this Hacker News comment. None of this is to say don't mourn or long for any of this, but the show doesnt end, the charecters just change.
- HelloMcFly 6mo ago
  Well, it is change, but that doesn't mean it's not destruction. While the world has experienced mass die-offs before, the hallmark of the planet's current situation is distinguished by its unprecedented speed and the fact that it is being driven by a single species' behavior rather than geological cycles or cosmic externalities. To repeat myself in another comment: I have tried to really focus on and take comfort in the idea "deep time", and the sincere belief that for as much destruction as we create, there will be more and different beauty in the far, far future. Yet where the Louvre to burn, how much comfort would it be to me that over the next 1000 years other artists will create yet more great works? In the same way, how long will it take the earth to return to such complexity and diversity of life? Many, many millenia.
Insanity 6mo ago
First off, I'm vegetarian and generally climate-conscious. I think we humans should do what we can in order to protect our planet. I think we can do a lot to keep the planet a good place for all living beings. But to also say something unpopular, humans are part of the natural world. So these human driven changes to nature are just 'nature changing nature'. I understand that we are potentially causing mass extinctions, but this needs to be seen as natural unless you take for granted that humans are inherently 'special' which leads to speciesism. So, this might just be the way planets with intelligent species evolve, they outcompete the others and exploit natural resources to their benefit. It might just be a biological/evolutionary law. Also, to be fair, _most_ of life on earth will survive this. Bacteria outnumber all other class of organisms IIRC, and they are shown to survive in truly challenging conditions.
- forlorn_mammoth 6mo ago
  Yeah, but some of my favorite life forms are vertebrates. Would hate to see that branch go.
  - Insanity 6mo ago
    Haha, mine too, but I suppose we are biased!
- HelloMcFly 6mo ago
  > unless you take for granted that humans are inherently 'special' which leads to speciesism It is true humans are part of nature, but we are unique in our capacity for causal understanding and foresight. We are the only species that can understand the long-term consequences of our actions and actively choose to change course. If our ability to exploit is natural, our ability to act with foresight and restraint is equally natural. Framing the present-day destruction as a natural consequence of some "evolutionary law" to me is an "appeal to nature" fallacy that can be used to absolve both individual and collective responsibility. Yes, this is perhaps a way (it seems far too presumptive to say "the way") planets with intelligent species evolve. We are perhaps entering the Great Filter, or one of them. > Also, to be fair, _most_ of life on earth will survive this Literally true, but I'd argue a semantic deflection. It doesn't engage with the core idea of the destruction of complex ecosystems that we are witnessing and commenting on. That said and to the point: I have tried to really focus on and take comfort in the idea "deep time", and the sincere belief that for as much destruction as we create, there will be more and different beauty in the far, far future. Yet where the Louvre to burn, how much comfort would it be to me that over the next 1000 years other artists will create yet more great works?
keybored 6mo ago
There was a Norwegian TV series called Catastrophe or something to educate the whole family about how insecure and bad the future is. What to do if a Russian van keeps driving through your neighorhood. What to do in a natural catastrophe. How nice. Us adults who have ruined the planet[1][2] and now we are lecturing the youngins about how to deal with this suckage. With a bizarrely cherry narration. Did you know things are about to suck for you? Just your usual shameless state TV programming. But we, with our particular national programming, are just supposed to act like we were just spoiled brats that now have to live without dessert post-dinner. The “dessert generation” indeed. [1] Um akshually, we haven’t ruined the planet—the planet is just minerals! It doesn’t care. We are just ruining the foundation for our own comfortable exi— yeah no kidding. [2] Like with Norwegian oil/gas extraction
rigonkulous 6mo ago
Get out there now while it is all still alive and record it, in whatever means you can, for the future. There will be a shark in someones mind in a 100 years time - if its not a real one, let it be the one you shared with your mind, here and now.
throwaway27448 6mo ago
> I do volunteer, donate, and advocate and I won't use my extreme pessimism as an excuse not to engage. I think it is ok to not engage. The idea that you can impact the world is largely an artifact of modernity. In reality, capital is more than happy to let you take the blame for its own suicidal tendencies.
- HelloMcFly 6mo ago
  > I think it is ok to not engage. I understand what you're saying. I appreciate the thought behind it. But in the end, I do not agree. I cannot be certain where my actions will and won't ultimately help accrue to impact; the pebble knows not the impact that its ripples will have. If you care about something, I think you should be involved.
  - throwaway27448 6mo ago
    > If you care about something, I think you should be involved. You're free to overthrow your government and instate humanitarian policies, but a pebble is not inclined to roll uphill.
    - HelloMcFly 6mo ago
      Certainty that your involvement is inconsequential requires too much intellectual hubris, it precludes the possibility that you may be wrong in your forecasts so you can let yourself off the hook for any effort. I get it, I do, but I think that's mind poison. Surprises to happen, the world is chaotic, yesterday's longshot becomes tomorrow's surprise. And, if nothing else, many of the efforts you can contribute to can have a clear and demonstrable impact at a more local level, or for a more limited time, even if it doesn't solve or mitigate the larger issue in the long run. Is it a waste of time for me to get involved in river clean-ups, or to work with a crew to re-wild an abandoned golf course, or remove asur honeysuckle from nearby native forests? Maybe you'd say "yes" because we'll have to keep doing it again, but that's the work with most things that matter.
      - 6mo ago

soco 6mo ago

Sometimes those stories try too much to impress. I recorded a documentary series "How to kill a puppy and get rich" about street dogs in Romania and the business around them, and I had to stop it after 10 seconds, not exaggerating. Folks, I want to know the mafia and story, but I can't stand to see and hear that torture...

roldie 6mo ago

You have articulated my feelings, behavior, and outlook almost exactly. I feel so hopeless every time I read an article like this. I've joined climate activist groups and meetups, and I've donated to orgs and political candidates. But I just feel like there's so much more damage to be done before we get to substantial improvements, it's so disheartening

qsera 6mo ago

>natural world unravel Natural world would be mostly fine one way or other, human beings might not survive though...

Scarblac 6mo ago
No, we're very resilient bastards, we're going to let the huge majority of species go extinct before we go ourselves. We're already in a mass extinction event and we're just getting started.

tencentshill 6mo ago

We've always consumed and extracted until we run out, but only very recently started actually tracking it and taking any preventative measures at all. Will take yet more time to gain momentum in that direction. The consequences will be too obvious and unavoidable for the next few generations to stagnate like we have.

everdrive 6mo ago

But on the plus side a few companies increased shareholder value. Can you imagine if we had fewer products, or didn't push the human population its theoretical maximum?

ctoth 6mo ago
Who is we? Which we opted to push the planet to carrying capacity? Is it? What is the capacity? Are the decreasing birthrates across the world really the Earth's theoretical maximum? What does it mean to have fewer products, which things precisely should we not have? Who should be in charge of setting this?
ghurtado 6mo ago
What the hell does "fewer products" even mean?

concinds 6mo ago

Blaming "profiteering and ever-increasing growth" is way too easy. Can any legislature get away with dramatically increasing taxes on meat, fish, gas, and plane tickets, just at a level high enough to account for environmental externalities? Even dictatorships couldn't get away with it because it would cause too much unrest.

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
alluro2 6mo ago
Why do you think that is? Hint: taxing people buying food, which is getting worse and worse, while the top 0.01% gets more and more rich and keeps making it worse, is maybe not the solution people should embrace that you think it is...
- tracker1 6mo ago
  An easier path would be to stop subsidizing the core of what is making junk foods to begin with. For that matter, at least in the US, having individual states require limitations of importing pre-processed goods could help too. I've thought that it might be an idea for more states to require at least half of all beef and chicken to be imported into the state in at least half-carcass form. This would incentivize local farming, and local processing, reducing the more centralized processing and the environmental impacts could be further reduced in a lot of ways. That's just for meat. Forcing insurance company accounting to average to single-payer modals and limit coverage combinations to no more than 3 choices across the nation could help with another part. Refactoring all federally funded insurance (medicare/medicaid/va/federal-employees) into a non-profit insurance corp that does likewise and any private company can also buy policies from would help to. Finally, establish "part time" work as no more than 10 hours a week averaged per 4 week window. Then require all employers to provide medical insurance for all workers that meets what the npo insurance provides. The recent changes to USDA food guidelines are a step in the right direction, mostly... but there's still room to improve. Education in and of itself should improve dramatically. For that matter, actually having schools "make" most of their food instead of relying on premade/packaged goods would be a massive step in a right direction. Have every student participate in meal preparation at least a few hours a week as part of school work would help a lot. I'd like to see some incentivization for more companies returning to a dividends model that includes employee profit sharing as part of said formula. I think this would do a LOT to shore up the middle class again. Sorry, just went off on a total tangent... hitting reply anyway, but don't take anything too serious/deep... these thoughts are kind of always lingering in the back of my mind... I've just never been in a position to actually act on any of them politically.

MisterTea 6mo ago

It's hard when your job and even hobbies are intertwined with this destruction. I enjoy working with computers and industrial machinery - two giant sources of pollution and social disruption. I sometimes feel this existential crisis where I am part of the problem yet I have no way to escape and become filled with guilt. Yet without this technology our lives would be more difficult. I sometimes think about a post-industrial fantasy world where technology still exists, though minimally, and carefully applied to solve real problems humanity faces instead of selling FOMO or millions of "shiny things" that wind up in land fills so you can sell the new FOMO/shinything so some numbers on a spread sheet goes up.

dd8601fn 6mo ago
This may upset some people, but I think you have to come up with mental demarcation for responsibility, or you’ll go nuts. I simply cannot decide to avoid all the technology of my field because whoever designed the electrical infrastructure didn’t do it responsibly. Or because the handling of ewaste hasn’t been dealt with. Or because everyone sourced materials in unethical ways. My responsibility for most of that kinda ends at my voting behavior or trying to make reasonable personal decisions that are well within my small sphere of influence. A problem domain that I can handle. Anyone who watched The Good Place knows what I mean. It’s not absolution for my own behavior, it’s just not holding myself accountable for everything that everyone else does… badly. Otherwise there’s just no sword to fall on that’s big enough to feel at peace with the world. (Think of the snails!)
- throwanem 6mo ago
  You are responsible for the reasonably foreseeable consequences of your own actions. I'm not going to point to a TV show about alcoholism to substantiate that. You don't need me to. It is also why manslaughter, though a lesser crime than murder, remains a crime.
  - dd8601fn 6mo ago
    You seem to have reduced the very thesis of what I was saying to the point where you excised it entirely. “Don’t get shitty drunk and then drive” fits just fine. “Be a technology person who doesn’t use technology because our power isn’t green.” potentially falls on the far side of that line of personal responsibility.

tapoxi 6mo ago

I wonder how much Claude Code were cost if we were to take the cost of environmental destruction from its energy consumption into account.

beepbopboopp 6mo ago

Serious questions, how is this destruction and not just "change?" It seems throughout time the world has experienced acute shifts, dying offs and other events. In those transition periods many animals that you know and love today finally got a shot at main character roles. Heck the reduction of o2 in the air that killed/shrunk a lot of dinosaurs is basically the opening slave for you to be able to write this Hacker News comment. None of this is to say don't mourn or long for any of this, but the show doesnt end, the charecters just change.

HelloMcFly 6mo ago
Well, it is change, but that doesn't mean it's not destruction. While the world has experienced mass die-offs before, the hallmark of the planet's current situation is distinguished by its unprecedented speed and the fact that it is being driven by a single species' behavior rather than geological cycles or cosmic externalities. To repeat myself in another comment: I have tried to really focus on and take comfort in the idea "deep time", and the sincere belief that for as much destruction as we create, there will be more and different beauty in the far, far future. Yet where the Louvre to burn, how much comfort would it be to me that over the next 1000 years other artists will create yet more great works? In the same way, how long will it take the earth to return to such complexity and diversity of life? Many, many millenia.

Insanity 6mo ago

First off, I'm vegetarian and generally climate-conscious. I think we humans should do what we can in order to protect our planet. I think we can do a lot to keep the planet a good place for all living beings. But to also say something unpopular, humans are part of the natural world. So these human driven changes to nature are just 'nature changing nature'. I understand that we are potentially causing mass extinctions, but this needs to be seen as natural unless you take for granted that humans are inherently 'special' which leads to speciesism. So, this might just be the way planets with intelligent species evolve, they outcompete the others and exploit natural resources to their benefit. It might just be a biological/evolutionary law. Also, to be fair, _most_ of life on earth will survive this. Bacteria outnumber all other class of organisms IIRC, and they are shown to survive in truly challenging conditions.

forlorn_mammoth 6mo ago
Yeah, but some of my favorite life forms are vertebrates. Would hate to see that branch go.
- Insanity 6mo ago
  Haha, mine too, but I suppose we are biased!
HelloMcFly 6mo ago
> unless you take for granted that humans are inherently 'special' which leads to speciesism It is true humans are part of nature, but we are unique in our capacity for causal understanding and foresight. We are the only species that can understand the long-term consequences of our actions and actively choose to change course. If our ability to exploit is natural, our ability to act with foresight and restraint is equally natural. Framing the present-day destruction as a natural consequence of some "evolutionary law" to me is an "appeal to nature" fallacy that can be used to absolve both individual and collective responsibility. Yes, this is perhaps a way (it seems far too presumptive to say "the way") planets with intelligent species evolve. We are perhaps entering the Great Filter, or one of them. > Also, to be fair, _most_ of life on earth will survive this Literally true, but I'd argue a semantic deflection. It doesn't engage with the core idea of the destruction of complex ecosystems that we are witnessing and commenting on. That said and to the point: I have tried to really focus on and take comfort in the idea "deep time", and the sincere belief that for as much destruction as we create, there will be more and different beauty in the far, far future. Yet where the Louvre to burn, how much comfort would it be to me that over the next 1000 years other artists will create yet more great works?

keybored 6mo ago

There was a Norwegian TV series called Catastrophe or something to educate the whole family about how insecure and bad the future is. What to do if a Russian van keeps driving through your neighorhood. What to do in a natural catastrophe. How nice. Us adults who have ruined the planet[1][2] and now we are lecturing the youngins about how to deal with this suckage. With a bizarrely cherry narration. Did you know things are about to suck for you? Just your usual shameless state TV programming. But we, with our particular national programming, are just supposed to act like we were just spoiled brats that now have to live without dessert post-dinner. The “dessert generation” indeed. [1] Um akshually, we haven’t ruined the planet—the planet is just minerals! It doesn’t care. We are just ruining the foundation for our own comfortable exi— yeah no kidding. [2] Like with Norwegian oil/gas extraction

rigonkulous 6mo ago

Get out there now while it is all still alive and record it, in whatever means you can, for the future. There will be a shark in someones mind in a 100 years time - if its not a real one, let it be the one you shared with your mind, here and now.

throwaway27448 6mo ago

> I do volunteer, donate, and advocate and I won't use my extreme pessimism as an excuse not to engage. I think it is ok to not engage. The idea that you can impact the world is largely an artifact of modernity. In reality, capital is more than happy to let you take the blame for its own suicidal tendencies.

HelloMcFly 6mo ago
> I think it is ok to not engage. I understand what you're saying. I appreciate the thought behind it. But in the end, I do not agree. I cannot be certain where my actions will and won't ultimately help accrue to impact; the pebble knows not the impact that its ripples will have. If you care about something, I think you should be involved.
- throwaway27448 6mo ago
  > If you care about something, I think you should be involved. You're free to overthrow your government and instate humanitarian policies, but a pebble is not inclined to roll uphill.
  - HelloMcFly 6mo ago
    Certainty that your involvement is inconsequential requires too much intellectual hubris, it precludes the possibility that you may be wrong in your forecasts so you can let yourself off the hook for any effort. I get it, I do, but I think that's mind poison. Surprises to happen, the world is chaotic, yesterday's longshot becomes tomorrow's surprise. And, if nothing else, many of the efforts you can contribute to can have a clear and demonstrable impact at a more local level, or for a more limited time, even if it doesn't solve or mitigate the larger issue in the long run. Is it a waste of time for me to get involved in river clean-ups, or to work with a crew to re-wild an abandoned golf course, or remove asur honeysuckle from nearby native forests? Maybe you'd say "yes" because we'll have to keep doing it again, but that's the work with most things that matter.
    - 6mo ago