Thread

1. HelloUsername · 1790689443 · focus · HN ↗

   Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet, the planet is fine… the people are fucked! Compared to the people, the planet is doing great: been here four and a half billion years, we’ve been here what? 100,000? Maybe 200,000? And we’ve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over 200 years, and we have the conceit to think that somehow, we’re a threat? That we’re going to put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that’s just a-floatin’ around the sun? The planet has been through a lot worse than us: been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drifts, solar flares, sunspots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles, hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages, and we think some plastic bags and aluminum cans are going to make a difference?

   The planet isn’t going anywhere… we are! We’re going away!

   1. altmanaltman · 1790689807 · focus · HN ↗

      The planet has not been through anything, it doesn't experience things or has memories. It literally cannot care if we survive or go extinct. This is why environmentalism focusig on "mother earth" or "the earth is suffering" is so annoying. Focus on humans and what we will face in the future, what our kids will face. Environmentalism should be a humanism and focus on them instead of having broad goals like fixing the whole planet.

      1. ygjb · 1790690468 · focus · HN ↗

         That argument can lead to the assumption that it's ok if we completely wiped out life on earth as long as humanity survives by leaving for the stars.

         The earth is the only place in the universe right now where humans can survive at our current technology level, and we are destroying that ecosystem at an alarming rate. We depend on the entire planets ecosystem for our survival, and even if technology somehow could let us survive ecological collapse, a humanist approach to the environment is tantamount to burning the boat we are sailing on to keep warm.

         1. keyringlight · 1790692277 · focus · HN ↗

            The aspect that's depressing to me is that we've shown many times that we can throw huge amounts of resources at various projects, numbers quantifying them so large most people don't have the context for the scale, but not for projects that preserve our environment. If anything it seems like doing so would give us a greater time span to do things like colonize the nearest chunk of rock in space (which is a figurative paddle off the coast compared to reaching other habitats) and terraforming our own world first might teach us things we need to know for greater projects.

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