This is literally a conversation about a non-human species: birds. There’s habitability for humans, but we’re not separate from the ecosystem, we’re a part of it.
In some broad, abstract way of looking at things people can say, “well it’s all just star dust and will burn out in a billion years.” But we’re not just destroying our own habitat — we’re destroying countless other species. An entire web of life.
If Earth winds up a giant ocean of jellyfish, then, well - great for the jellyfish. Still a tragedy as far as I’m concerned.
I find it astonishing that so many people can be cavalier about the deaths of millions of people when it comes to environmental destruction in a way that would be totally socially unacceptable if you were talking about targeted killings or genocide.
> about the deaths of millions of people when it comes to environmental destruction
You're not getting it. With global environmental catastrophe the concern is not about the deaths of millions of people. It is about the deaths of all people everywhere. A symptom of the problem of environmental catastrophe is those that are cavalier about the deaths of entire species of wildlife. The planet will be fine, the plant and wildlife will recover... though it may not be the same plant or wildlife. But once humans are gone, there is very little change we are coming back. So, to be clear, though humans have and are making he planet uninhabitable for myriad of species, reducing the available variety of species, which we, in fact, depend on... it is a web... but we are also making the planet uninhabitable for people.
Serious and monumental efforts in conservation of plant and wildlife and habitat is a damn good place to start. The more natural habitat there is, the more plant and wildlife there is, the better it will be for us. First thing is first... the oil industry and the chemical industry needs to go away within the next 10 years. Government, which people control, needs to make all that crap unprofitable. All pollution must cease, and we need to figure out how to clean up what has been done. Let's not bitch about energy, nor evangelize nuclear power. Let's just bite the bullet for a few generations and force everything and everyone to generate their own energy, and require that it be clean.
No, I think I am. Your comment actually misses my entire point and instead just explains climate change?
My point is that a common sentiment I see articulated in response to someone saying that the biosphere soon might not be able to support humanity is "Good, humanity is a cancer on this planet and we've shown we don't deserve it."
I think that statements like that should get a comparable amount of social ire to someone blithely stating that the Holocaust was good population control. It is unacceptable to view the death of millions or billions (after a long period of extremely impoverished living) as a good thing to me.
Fair enough. May I suggest that it is the depreciation of the family unit that may be causing this. Generally, in my experience, jerks had crummy parents. I don't know the solution, but maybe instead of treating young pregnant couples as sacred, we should make having children a privilege, not a right, and make them work for it. But I wouldn't know how to do that.
> in a way that would be totally socially unacceptable if you were talking about targeted killings or genocide
It is neither "cavalier" nor incompassionate to refer to the age of the planet and the history of life (e.g. humans). It's a scientific fact that we haven't existed for very long in geological time and that we could become extinct by our own doing... or by a suitably large cosmic impactor (among other causes, cosmic or terrestrial).
Real cavalier talk might be about the tobacco industry, the war industry, or the tens of thousands of people who die in motor-vehicle accidents every year in the US alone.
> Our society is so odd.
Indeed. Squeamish about the truth, comfortable in delusion.
You're being uncharitable with your interpretation of my comment.
> Indeed. Squeamish about the truth, comfortable in delusion.
I'm taking issue with the extinction of humanity being framed as a good thing or a solution to the problem.
> we could become extinct by our own doing
Yes, and that would be horrible! That would be more horrible than any action taken by the tobacco industry, the war industry, or the inevitable drunk driving.
Let me say that I have thought about your position.
It is not a "solution" for humanity to exterminate itself through its own idiocy. But you can see that it is a hard problem that might well "solve itself", as the thread-OP said. As a humanist, I prefer to make an effort.
Although extinction through our own idiocy would be horrible, it would be of a piece with the other plagues that I mentioned. Albeit on a different scale.
Extinction because of a major catastrophic event not of our causing would be tragic because there isn't much intelligent life in the neighbourhood, much less under our "own roof".
It's not cavalier as much as it is factual. Of course I would lament the loss of our entire species, but the _planet_ will go on just fine without us. We (humans) are hardly the worst thing to happen to life on the planet. If we're incapable of being good stewards of it, really we're only hastening our own demise.
Except human population levels are at all time highs. There is no evidence of human population suffering on account of technology. The exact opposite is true: people are living longer, have access to more food and more material goods than any time in history. Stop reading fear porn, it's bad for your mental health.
My point is simple: rooting for the extinction of humanity is bad.
I'm not commenting on the veracity of claims about the extinction of humanity, although I do think that present trends do not always explain or predict future ones.
Our only outlet to fix this problem in our society hinges on mutual knowledge of the causes reaching unquestionable levels. Until then, it's like watching half our population play out like an "Always Sunny" episode.
china is in the middle of a genocide right now and nobody cares
and really, even in cases that don't involve a superpower like china, I think if there was a random genocide in some random developing country, the world wouldn't do anything about it at this moment in time, the west is just too busy with its own internal problems at the moment.
