3 ms·

What are the alternatives people rather avoid considering?

by mc32 4mo ago

deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
rob74 4mo ago
Not the OP, and this is probably not what they were thinking of, but from the point of view of the planet's ecosystem, eliminating the humans that keep introducing species where they don't belong (or at least drastically reducing their population) would be the most effective measure.
- hagbard_c 4mo ago
  You first? Also, what is that babble about "the planet's ecosystem" being better off by eliminating humans? If you really want to see it as a whole - the Gaia hypothesis - then humans are part of it just like flies and ticks and mosquitos and birds and whales. All play a role, some spread diseases to others while they feed yet again others. Removing humans from the equation is just like Mao's decision to get rid of the sparrows which ate some of the harvest in that the balance will shift until a new equilibrium has been reached. In Mao's case it killed tens of millions of humans, removing humans will result in the death of hundreds of millions of other species.
  - rob74 4mo ago
    Sorry if that wasn't obvious, I wasn't proposing it, I just wanted to come up with an example of a solution that "no one would seriously consider".
  - symian 4mo ago
    We are in the midst of a great extinction event. It’s the only extinction event caused by one species. We are quite bad for the planet’s ecosystem and things like factory farming of cows and pigs cause great suffering. Having far fewer humans on the planet would be a great benefit to other species and to humanity.
    - N_Lens 4mo ago
      Dont worry! With AI powered robotics it’ll only take a tiny fraction of humans to create many times more ‘impact’!
    - hagbard_c 4mo ago
      We're not in the midst of a great extinction event and even if we were it would not be the first one caused by a single species. Probably the first one was caused by the appearance of Cyanobacteria some 2.7 billion years ago which started to make use of sunlight through photosynthesis. A few hundred million years later the produced oxygen started seeping into the atmosphere and boom, nearly all anaerobic life on the planet was wiped out. We are part of the ecosystem no matter how much you try to deny it. The planet will abide, humans most likely as well. If you want to call for fewer humans on the planet - something which seems to be the future anyway since births are rapidly declining almost everywhere - that's fine but realise you're just following others like Malthus who did so before. Malthus was proven wrong many times over, you will be proven wrong as well since if there's one thing humans are good at it is adapting to a changing environment. If it gets colder humans adapt, that's how we made it through the series of glaciations. If it gets warmer humans adapt, that's how we made it through e.g. the Roman and Viking age warm periods.
      - symian 4mo ago
        Ok, it’s the first mass extinction event caused by a single species in the last 1.99 billion years. We are shitting all over the planet. It’s not a matter of warm or cold but of toxifying the entire planet. It’s a matter of what type of environment we want to live in. Merely existing is dehumanizing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
- elzbardico 4mo ago
  There's no such thing as introducing species where they don't belong. Ecosystem are dynamic, several other animals serve as vectors for transporting species from a place to another. There's no such thing as a long term static equilibria where godess gaia looks like a Jehova's witnesses book illustration. This is an incredibly cultish and misanthropic position.
  - soiltype 4mo ago
    This is absurd. Without human intervention, catastrophic boundary crossing by organisms is slow and rare. With humans, it happens at unsustainable scale. We all know what it looks like for an invasive species to dominate an ecosystem and crowd out existing niches, and that's what it means to introduce a species where it doesn't belong. Just because it can also happen without humans around doesn't mean what we're doing is no big deal.
    - elzbardico 4mo ago
      Natural boundary crossing isn't rare; it's the mechanism that built much of the biosphere. Every fucking oceanic island on Earth, Hawaii, the Galápagos, New Zealand, the Mascarenes, was stocked entirely by organisms that crossed open ocean or sky without any help from us. The entire South American primate and caviomorph rodent lineages (everything from capuchins to capybaras) descend from African ancestors that rafted across the Atlantic on vegetation mats roughly 40 million years ago. When the Isthmus of Panama closed (~3 million years ago), North American placental mammals poured south and drove a large fraction of South America's endemic fauna—native ungulates, many marsupial lineages—to extinction. Yeah. Some species get crowded out, maybe we should avoid that in a lot of cases, but is not the capital sin western people have been brainwashed to believe it when they replaced their christianism with new age Gaia worship. Species get extinct, eco-systems change, sometimes it is worth preventing that, in other, who fucking cares?
      - soiltype 4mo ago
        Rare is relative. Those changes all happened over much longer timescales and with far fewer species involved in a given ecosystem. It's not the same thing as what we're doing. You're making essentially the same argument as "Earth's climate has always been changing, what's the big deal?" The big deal is that when a species becomes invasive, the effects can cascade. You don't just lose their direct competitors and their prey, you can lose anything they pollinate, nest in, are nested in, etc. You can replace a diverse ecosystem with a near-monoculture. Of course, if you don't hold the fundamental belief that biodiversity is Good, and is Better than raw biomass increase, I see why this doesn't bother you, but I do hold that position.
rvba 4mo ago
Probably something about walls or methods used by political systems that built walls.

What are the alternatives people rather avoid considering?

by mc32 4mo ago

What are the alternatives people rather avoid considering?

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

rob74 4mo ago

Not the OP, and this is probably not what they were thinking of, but from the point of view of the planet's ecosystem, eliminating the humans that keep introducing species where they don't belong (or at least drastically reducing their population) would be the most effective measure.

hagbard_c 4mo ago
You first? Also, what is that babble about "the planet's ecosystem" being better off by eliminating humans? If you really want to see it as a whole - the Gaia hypothesis - then humans are part of it just like flies and ticks and mosquitos and birds and whales. All play a role, some spread diseases to others while they feed yet again others. Removing humans from the equation is just like Mao's decision to get rid of the sparrows which ate some of the harvest in that the balance will shift until a new equilibrium has been reached. In Mao's case it killed tens of millions of humans, removing humans will result in the death of hundreds of millions of other species.
- rob74 4mo ago
  Sorry if that wasn't obvious, I wasn't proposing it, I just wanted to come up with an example of a solution that "no one would seriously consider".
- symian 4mo ago
  We are in the midst of a great extinction event. It’s the only extinction event caused by one species. We are quite bad for the planet’s ecosystem and things like factory farming of cows and pigs cause great suffering. Having far fewer humans on the planet would be a great benefit to other species and to humanity.
  - N_Lens 4mo ago
    Dont worry! With AI powered robotics it’ll only take a tiny fraction of humans to create many times more ‘impact’!
  - hagbard_c 4mo ago
    We're not in the midst of a great extinction event and even if we were it would not be the first one caused by a single species. Probably the first one was caused by the appearance of Cyanobacteria some 2.7 billion years ago which started to make use of sunlight through photosynthesis. A few hundred million years later the produced oxygen started seeping into the atmosphere and boom, nearly all anaerobic life on the planet was wiped out. We are part of the ecosystem no matter how much you try to deny it. The planet will abide, humans most likely as well. If you want to call for fewer humans on the planet - something which seems to be the future anyway since births are rapidly declining almost everywhere - that's fine but realise you're just following others like Malthus who did so before. Malthus was proven wrong many times over, you will be proven wrong as well since if there's one thing humans are good at it is adapting to a changing environment. If it gets colder humans adapt, that's how we made it through the series of glaciations. If it gets warmer humans adapt, that's how we made it through e.g. the Roman and Viking age warm periods.
    - symian 4mo ago
      Ok, it’s the first mass extinction event caused by a single species in the last 1.99 billion years. We are shitting all over the planet. It’s not a matter of warm or cold but of toxifying the entire planet. It’s a matter of what type of environment we want to live in. Merely existing is dehumanizing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
elzbardico 4mo ago
There's no such thing as introducing species where they don't belong. Ecosystem are dynamic, several other animals serve as vectors for transporting species from a place to another. There's no such thing as a long term static equilibria where godess gaia looks like a Jehova's witnesses book illustration. This is an incredibly cultish and misanthropic position.
- soiltype 4mo ago
  This is absurd. Without human intervention, catastrophic boundary crossing by organisms is slow and rare. With humans, it happens at unsustainable scale. We all know what it looks like for an invasive species to dominate an ecosystem and crowd out existing niches, and that's what it means to introduce a species where it doesn't belong. Just because it can also happen without humans around doesn't mean what we're doing is no big deal.
  - elzbardico 4mo ago
    Natural boundary crossing isn't rare; it's the mechanism that built much of the biosphere. Every fucking oceanic island on Earth, Hawaii, the Galápagos, New Zealand, the Mascarenes, was stocked entirely by organisms that crossed open ocean or sky without any help from us. The entire South American primate and caviomorph rodent lineages (everything from capuchins to capybaras) descend from African ancestors that rafted across the Atlantic on vegetation mats roughly 40 million years ago. When the Isthmus of Panama closed (~3 million years ago), North American placental mammals poured south and drove a large fraction of South America's endemic fauna—native ungulates, many marsupial lineages—to extinction. Yeah. Some species get crowded out, maybe we should avoid that in a lot of cases, but is not the capital sin western people have been brainwashed to believe it when they replaced their christianism with new age Gaia worship. Species get extinct, eco-systems change, sometimes it is worth preventing that, in other, who fucking cares?
    - soiltype 4mo ago
      Rare is relative. Those changes all happened over much longer timescales and with far fewer species involved in a given ecosystem. It's not the same thing as what we're doing. You're making essentially the same argument as "Earth's climate has always been changing, what's the big deal?" The big deal is that when a species becomes invasive, the effects can cascade. You don't just lose their direct competitors and their prey, you can lose anything they pollinate, nest in, are nested in, etc. You can replace a diverse ecosystem with a near-monoculture. Of course, if you don't hold the fundamental belief that biodiversity is Good, and is Better than raw biomass increase, I see why this doesn't bother you, but I do hold that position.

rvba 4mo ago

Probably something about walls or methods used by political systems that built walls.