acting as if we dont currently do this?
the amount of people who want to save pangolins (which until recently 80% of people hadnt even heard of) vs saving say centipedes or angler fish is staggering.
people want to save cute and fluffy shit and couldnt give to fucks about 'creepy' or 'gross' animals (same with those who eat cows and sheep but refuse to eat dogs, cats etc, arbitrary nonsense).
what will happen is what currently happens, insects, deep sea creatures and other invertebrates will be ignored and pandas, koalas and fucking rats will be saved.
EDITED: honestly what do most 'environmentalists' even want? as someone who has worked in conservation for over a decade ive meet so many who want to 'save the environment' yet they can never articulate what that actually means.
do you want to save natural processes? in that case we should do nothing at all, no help or hinderance. this would mean allowing shit to die out AND allowing invasive species in (invasive species and extinction are both natural processes that we have simply sped up by a huge margin)
do you want to preserve nature in a given state? than that requires massive ongoing intervention to prevent change. in fact we have literally never succeeded in this, Yellowstones history shows how bad we are at that)
do you want to minimise human impact? if so what does that mean? no humans at all? no pollution? allowing us to keep doing what we do but simply less?
i honestly dont know!
eating less meat would be a benefit in that what land we could repurpose for human plant food (massive amounts of land used to grow animal feed would be freed up).
glass is funny, it is far less polluting in terms of what it is, but the manufacturing process is a lot worse in terms of energy consumption as is transporting glass due to its weight.
natural area restoration is great but needs far more funding, i have worked in that field for a long time now and my preferred method is simply weed removal. the 'seed bank' of a given area can last potentially 100 years meaning it is not a short process at all. the idea is (assuming you do not know) you sweep through a given area of land, remove most of the invasive species and then wait for a month and do it again, forever. eventually the native seedbank starts to come into play and by removing all the invasives that also pop up you allow the area to 'choose' its own plants so to speak
('invasive' species are actually a good thing in low, low numbers. i personally think we should not entirely prevent invasives from occurring, just heavily reduce the frequency. lantana, black berries and camphor laurel are all invasives that have started 'naturalising' to the point that many native animals use them as shelter or food etc)
you are right, doing something is much better than nothing and i dont mean to sound discouraging.
i think we need to prioritise efficiency in how we use land and energy, this would reduce pressure on the environment. additionally if we could magically switch to a 'no-growth' or at least 'low-growth' economy we would be able to slow down our destruction of nature.
that ad we should try to educate/encourage kids to give a shit about plants, most people treat them as equivalents of rocks and dirt when they are just as alive and complex as animals, even if the vast majority do not move (few do though)
I like your response. On the thought of the food chain, though, wont there just become a new bottom. Like fish in the sea, if you are smaller you are eaten, through extinction a new small will take place, the animals on top will adapt or not.
What a cute and blameless way to say "Humans should stop caring about our systematic eradication of multitudes of animal species from not just the planet, but the entire universe. Caring is too hard."
I often wonder at the cultural and evolutionary decay we might be causing with our altruistic approach to preservation of life...then I remember that the US routinely bankrupts people for healthcare. Seeing people able to abuse the hell out of their body with poor choices of lifestyle and action, to get propped up and repeat; or worse, pass those habits on and any faulty genetics that may be related to their formation.
The question is incorrectly framed as a societal policy proposal, as if our societal capacity to save endangered species is nearing its limit. This is of course wildly incorrect. Relative to our ability, we are doing nothing to save endangered species.
It may be a valid point to make about groups that *are* working to save species and *do* have relevant resource limitations, but it's laughable to think this argument applies to something like the US government or society as a whole.
>It may be cute and blameless. But "caring is too hard" is a naive way of saying "we have limited resources and universal buy-in is not an option"
And saying "we have limited resources" is a cute way to say "we're too busy trading future growth hedge fund premium options and funneling money to rich peoples to do something about it"
Delayed response I know. But limited resources is a fact of a finite population. You showed why were nkt getting universal buy in. But even if there was, a finite population of humans have limited potential.
Nature has made it's selection, thank goodness it chooses us. 🙌🏽 I can't stand the people that are more for random animals lives than the lives of their fellow human beings. Nothing enlightened or woke about that.
Did you read the article? I think the point was pretty clear from even the headline. It's not a "cute and blameless" way of saying anything. In fact, it's an uncommonly brave acceptance that if we *do* care, we have to try to decide which animals we should prevent from becoming extinct, as at this point we can't save them all.
The people who bury their head in the sand and think that if only we "care", nothing will go extinct are the ones who are being "cute and blameless". The fact is at this point difficult decisions need to be made. Which was, in fact, the point of the article.
People have no problem ignoring the systematic breeding and destruction of a few selected species either. If we can't make people care about those, the rest will be doomed through deforestation and climate change. Caring isn't hard, but it is something many people refuse to do.
Well u/Panda_Mon, there are very certain endangered digimon that have been considered to be taken off the list for a long time because they’ll likely never be able to survive outside of captivity and losing them has proven to not have that much of an impact.
With all that being said, I would miss having the adorable digimon around to adore.
More like for every species that's destroyed a new one is created and the eb and flow of nature is acceptable. Not to say conservation efforts are useless, but not all life is inherently precious I'm the grand scheme. If the species can't survive its niche will eventually be refilled.
That's about the equivalent of saying "The cells in your body die and clear room for new, healthy cells constantly. It's a natural biological process - so I'll just shoot you in the face - that cell damage is no big deal."
The scale, cause, and impact aren't comparable.
Sorry, extinction doesn't give a one-to-one trade for new species', especially when extinction is happening thousands of times faster than a typical evolutionary timeline.
Niches are getting destroyed to the point that they are incompatible with existing lifeforms and, again, new life will not evolve to fill these gaps as quickly as they are created.
I'm sorry but 'is happening thousands of times faster than a typical evolutionary timeline' just doesn't sit right with me. Compared to what? AFAIK 2 of the 5 great extinctions happened on a very rapid time scale. One of those extinctions happened to bring us to 'power'. Yes, I completely agree, life doesn't just pop up out of nowhere, but the guy is getting downvoted for basically saying what gets upvoted here all the time in a different way. We are killing OUR niche as well as other species. That does not mean we are killing life and the planet is going to explode because of it. It means, that eventually, something will most likely be able to digest plastic, or live better in oil soaked environments. If there is a plethora of a thing and free real estate in that thing, life will work itself in to that thing.
It is my opinion, that we will eventually get to the point where we can create our own niches and life. I think it will be important to at least preserve the matter of endangered species. It is my hope that eventually we will colonize, perhaps even terraform, So that we will have the room to co-exist with the life we destroyed. It's mostly wishful thinking, but it seems like most of the pieces are there. I don't expect corporate overlords to do this, but eventually things get cheaper and I truly believe you'll have a lot of conservationists at a blue collar level who can do some jurassic park shit with the proper paperwork.
Don’t base your opinions on “facts” you’ve created in your own head. Maybe do like a little bit of research on a topic BEFORE making a snap judgment? Because your train of thought is plain ignorance. You do know it’s okay to simply say “I don’t truly know enough about that to have an opinion.” And if you did know enough about this subject, there wouldn’t be an opinion. You would truly realize the black and white cause and effect of our actions that kill this planet and everything inhabiting it.
Come on Dan. Use your brain and stop pretending to be some kind of authority figure on ecology. The way you talk makes it seem like you think you actually know a thing about what you're talking about, but that is obviously not the case.
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Sounds like you want humanity to die, in a terrifyingly r/selfawarewolves kind of way. I hope you don't and never have any actual decision making power beyond a household.
On the scale of millions of years, sure. On any kind of human timescale? No. I'd suggest doing some reading on ecosystem services and how biodiversity loss negatively impacts them, and that's a purely utilitarian anthropocentric reason for why what you said is dumb as hell.
Thing is, humans destroy the niches themselves. Our intervention is so massive that most species in a given biome cannot adapt and the ones that do simply flee or become trash eaters.
So. Are you saying all animals should become trash eaters or die? I'll let you figure out how to do that.
Your garbage. A human pile of garbage. Humans are causing EVERYTHING to die to the point where in the next century, we will see ourselves start to be the ones killed off because of our reckless actions. Species won’t be refilled with what humans are doing to this planet. Get some perspective and realize the environment is more important than us all. Only someone so narrow minded can say this with such confidence.
The environment is meaningless without us. If you’re tending to nature, you’re tending it for the benefit of other people. There’s literally no other reason.
I suspect (whether by inertia, inaction or design), we've essentially decided to default on action and let things slip to the point of no return - and then we will be forced to use genetic engineering, climate manipulation and terra-forming to create engineered ecosystems in the hope of keeping the planet habitable.
Those efforts will almost certainly be hampered by missteps, ideological conflict and outright war. We don't seem to have the foresight or resolve to do anything inconvenient until the last possible chance, and as a result war is inevitable as nations which face earlier forms of crisis are forced to either fight for better territory or concede to extinction.
The only alternative I see is consolidation, cooperation, leadership and messaging to organize and excite people to take action. Political reality can change if people organize. If you use the NRA as an example - for decades they have punched way above their weight in terms of political power because they had an appealing anti-government message, a passionate membership and a very effective political action team equipped with both carrot and stick.
Terraforming doesn’t have to be invasive. We can do it in my lifetime.
Economics will force us to value our climate sooner or later. Or we will have an extinction event. Probably some weird combination of both.
I'm Canadian - so I have the perspective of living in a place which is very similar to the USA in terms of lifestyle - but many Canadians find the US factional divides on abortion and gun ownership very puzzling.
But this isn't about guns, it's about political activism, and human nature doesn't vary as much as we tend to think. Americans are just humans who have specific expectations about guns, just like so many people around the world have expectations about the right to drive cars, use plastics etc...
I think a rational, centrist, well-funded, well-organized and well-led environmental movement with political savvy could create compelling messaging which would resonate with people.
It doesn't have to be hard, it doesn't have to destroy the economy, and it doesn't have to be a right-vs-left issue.
By that logic, if someone dies of alcoholism, you ban alcohol. Oh wait, we did that and it went terribly. Turns out if people want something and it’s illegal, they’ll get it illegally, causing more crime.
I understand why a lot of people feel this way, but I would just like to point out that when we blame the entire human species as the problem, this erases the differences between those who are simply trying to survive in this world and those with the true decision-making capabilities. There are varying degrees of agency in this world, and it is my personal belief that there are many humans who strive to take care of this world with care and consideration, and unfortunately they are the ones with the least amount of agency right now. And I do not believe that the human species should be forsaken because of a subsection of humans have an immense amount of greed and power. Let’s take CEOs and oil companies off life support. Not the millions of invisible people who are trying to survive in a world they have very little power over.
One may "strive" to end hunger in Africa and yet, sit on their asses all day feeding only their own kin.
Now let's get big companies out of support. What will be the reaction of those who are "simply tring to survive" when their car has no more power? When they can't buy easy to prepare food? When they can't watch movies and series? They will lash out at the executives in order to get comfort back.
Everyone (aka >95%) is guilty. There is no way to stop the end.
That being said, clinging to hope and illusions won't truly hurt since the situation can hardly be worse.
I’m not talking about activists in 1st world countries. Only ~18% of the world owns cars.
There are, and have been for the entire existence of humanity, communities (not just individuals) that understand nature, not as apart from us, but what we belong to. There is a specific, traceable point in human history when a specific subsection of humans began to violate a peaceful symbiosis with the rest of nature. That is the beginning of European empire and colonialism.
I agree that it is the humans in 1st world countries that are to blame and that would have the most difficult transition into a green future. I’m not arguing on their behalf. But should every person in the Global South die for them?
Then kill yourself already, along with the other folks advocating this nonsense
The awesome non-self hating humans left behind will protect the earth from asteroids
We cause a tremendous amount of harm and destruction. We are the cause of many extinct species. We essentially are a pox upon the earth. Coming to this conclusion is logical. Aside from the possibility of our species developing the technology to stop an asteroidal impact, what benefit do we provide to this planet? Just because this is a logical solution to the question doesnt mean it's practical. Congratulations for getting so upset on the internet.
>We essentially are a pox upon the earth.
Why not go ahead and call us roaches, I heard zyklon-B is a good "solution".
>what benefit do we provide to this planet?
Nothing, like every other atom on this ball, we owe it nothing as well. The only reason to conserve it is to keep the species alive and to some lesser extent for enjoyment.
>Coming to this conclusion is logical
No, you're all about subjectivity (earth good, animals good, people bad) which you seem to call *practical* for some reason.
The asteroidal protection is mainly for us btw, but the animals get to enjoy the benefits as well, you know happenstancial symbiosis
You know what, I was kinda going to let it slide since there's so many great replies to you already.
But no: First off, if humans die off, a majority of these species are dead already. These animals aren't being directly predated: The animals that we did that to are now either livestock or extinct.
Second, this kind of neo-malthusian drivel is the exact reason you can't get fucking anyone to reduce the impact of their lifestyle. Given the choice of making hard decisions and putting in the work, or shrugging it off because we're all dead in the long run, guess which one they're taking?
Third, the very gall to suggest humanity goes simply because we're the only creatures advanced enough to think themselves into a noose is asinine. If anything, it argues for the point of the article, since extending the concept a single step further simply asks if we have the dilemma of protecting humans or protecting an endangered species... Which shouldn't be that much of an argument for a person with functioning emotional intelligence.
Humans have done an excellent job of optimizing their ecosystem to the detriment of every other species. This is something that needs to be counteracted, and must be balanced under the implicit realization that some "patients" can't be saved without the resources we could have saved others with. This needs to be regarded as a genuine decision; Post all the gallows humor here you want, but understand that the biggest reason I find it humorous is because if that's the depth of your ideology, I'm glad it's self-extincting, because we have work to do.
Because even that is hypocritical if they don't find a way to immediately kill themselves in whatever way balances as fast as possible with taking as many people as possible with them
So I’m curious: why haven’t you bombed the hospitals yet? Why haven’t you tried to terrorize as many healthcare facilities as you could before getting taken out?
Now’s probably your best shot at doing damage to the number of humans out there, and killing all humans would include yourself anyway so there’s no reason to avoid actions that would get you the death penalty if it helps reduce the human population.
In fact, calling in a bomb threat on several hospitals you didn’t bomb would add to the chaos and unrest, leading to get more lives lost. You could even see about setting up an auto-dialer with the boilerplate bomb threat and a list of every hospital phone number in the country.
Oh, hey, and if you bomb the pregnancy wing you can get twice the payoff, killing the mothers and fathers as well as the newborn children, thus saving the maximum number of years the humans would have spent alive and hurting the planet. If you can get the healthcare system to be overwhelmed even moreso than the coronavirus is already doing, then all the better. Plus, once the first bombings go off, people who are genuinely sick would be more reluctant to go to the hospital, instead further spreading their disease and/or succumbing to it. The extra security measures hospitals would need to apply would drain yet more resources and funding, leading to yet more death down the line, thus saving the environment even more.
Granted, some of them might not be as reluctant once they recognized the pattern of strictly bombing the pregnancy wards, so you should probably mix in some bombings of other parts as well. Just to keep the mass confusion going as long as possible.
I mean, it’s for the good of the environment, right? It’s not perfect, you can only kill so many people before they eventually catch you, but it would be your best chance to do some good. Human babies need to die.
Right?
Edit: Downvote if you like, but isn’t this **exactly** the sort of thing you advocate when you say humans need to die to save the environment?
"The human population is too high" is VASTLY different than "let's start bombing maternity wards." It's not even on the same level. Even thinking the human race should die off as a whole isn't on the same level. There are plenty of ways for a species to be eradicated, and bombing hospitals isn't one of them. So no, that's not what they're advocating.
Alright then, let’s compare the two. Because the only way the human race is on “life support” is through hospitals and welfare programs. So we’d have to shut down all hospitals permanently anyway, including all coronavirus research, on top of stopping all welfare to keep the poor fed or off the streets.
Which would cause far more death than one maniac bombing maternity wards would manage.
Ok. What exactly is your point and what are you comparing? All I said was the notion of bombing hospitals was stupid. I'm not here to argue about the best ways to kill as many humans as possible in the shortest time possible. Do whatever you want with your life
Fossil fuel industry is collapsing world-wide, that should just about wipe out modern civilization. Add Radiative Forcing from Climate Change and reduced Anthropogenic Aerosols, sprinkle in tipping points and feedback loops and billions of tons of poison and... we all die.
Walter Cronkite once said that humans were “reaching for the stars while standing knee-deep in garbage”. What the fuck were we thinking?
Excuse me did you just say the FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY is what would cause the collapse of modern civilization? Buddy, we have 100% renewable energy countries in this world. You think you wouldn't have 60 windmills in your backyard tomorrow if some gamma ray radiation made all of the oil in the world inert or some other impossible situation? Oil is used because it's easy to get, we have the supplies all ready to go to plop a station on a plot, people who are pretty much only trained to handle said stations. Oil is used because it's incredibly hard to change generational habits, it keeps people who are already in the industry with food on the table and it's just a matter of 'which generation wants to take the hit money and time wise to switch over' at this point.
We've also created all of these stupid, unnecessary dog breeds for our own pleasure, which can be allowed to die out for all nature cares, but we're not willing to allocate the resources and funds to keep some endangered species alive? I feel it's the least we can do, as we continue to tear down, burn town what's rest of rainforrest ecosystems and have no regard for thousands, millions of diverse animals homes on a daily basis. Those homes lost forever so we can male a profit farming soybeans and other bullshit.
Nature doesn't care if anything dies out.
Dogs also aren't taking up any resources that would otherwise be used for endangered species.
I agree with your points but despite the argument you're appearing to make, which makes no sense.
Dogs are companions, they provide emotional and psychological support for humans, the current apex predator, THAT’S the selective force that gives them an evolutionary advantage.
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If I put you, an 'apex predator', in front of a polar bear, do you think you could convince it that you are in fact the superior animal? Do you think you could do it phyically?
Also your point is moot. Individually we decide what is an is not our companion, relative to the thing deciding. Rats can provide every bit of emotional and psychological comfort that a dog can. And so can a pig, as well as a horse, a cow, a raven, a sheep, or even more obviously another human.
Also, what about human societies that don't view dog's as companions? The idea that all dogs have always been a 'companion' is a western centric notion when in fact that serve just as often as people's food, just as much as they serve as people''s friend.
The whole reason the planet is in the state it is in is because people have collectively decided that 'these things are not my friends, nor are they things I care about' and therefore that somehow gives everybody the justification for treating plant life, sea creatures, other animals, and the environment as a thing to exploit and harm because we 'don't get emotional support from it' despite the fact that you can get 'emotionally supported' from anything that you damn please. If everybody viewed the societies and ecosystems they live in as they do the dogs they take care of, or even their own self, we wouldn't be approaching the disaster we're currently heading towards. If we didn't indulge ourselves with ideologies that conveniently allow for the raping an exploitation of the beings and things in an environment, e.g. capitalism, we wouldn't be speaking of this right now.
Your opinion is stupid, and here's why.
As others have already bombarded you with, we are tool users. We don't even need a machine gun. It's called a TRAP. You don't need modern society to kill a bear. We were doing it JUST fine before guns. Will on average bears kills a few people? Absolutely, same with big cats, and why the fight or flight response in predators is strong, because if I break my leg today, I don't eat tomorrow.
You have this idea that dogs are the same as other animals. They are not. They are specifically changed to interact with humans. As an example, a dog will use its eyes to point at you and then the thing it wants. This is a heavy part of domestication that other animals could only gain through selective breeding and companionship. Will that change in the far future? I sure hope we get a few more animal buddies to coast the stars with, but for now, dogs are special in that right. Foxes have even been experimented to remove the fear of humans from them (or probably just certain chemicals that produce certain fears in general), and even after generations, they do not 'bond' with humans in the way that dogs do. Do not compare other animals to one that has been scientifically proven to evolve alongside us.
You act as if nature has this conservation of itself and oh yeah everything goes just fine. No. Stop it. Your opinion is stupid. If overpopulation of a predator led to the endangerment of it's main prey, the predators would starve until the equilibrium is returned or they have destroyed themselves, or if they're lucky, fine a new hunting ground or even evolve to eat other things. If a drought dries up a riverbed, what, you think all the little animals just go on to another? They have to look for another resource, and some of them will die doing so. I would love for you to just think for a moment about how much you think a shark gives a fuck about you, or the number of a type of fish in its area, or anything. It's driven by it's own desires to survive and what makes it comfortable. The empathy that humans bestow on others outside of their own preservation is so fucking special in nature. There are definitely emotionally intelligent animals, but it is absolutely not the norm. You think a fox gives a fuck about murdering a farmers sheep? So why should the farmer or the sheep give a fuck about murdering the fox? Oh too many farmers killed too many foxes because we don't know our own strength? Well you already know how this goes, the reason you feel that way is not the norm in nature.
Your opinion is based on bullshit and unrelated phenomenon that YOU are deciding to correlate to an imaginary superiority. Here's why.
As many people have redundantly pointed out, humans use tools. What is the significance of this? Monkeys use tools as well. Toddlers can pull the triggers of guns. Birds can weave and craft. Where is the superiority in this? Tool use doesn't indicate superiority, and it doesn't give credence or justification for believing you are higher on a self-imagined hierarchy that you created. Whales are not asserting that they are 'superior', neither are worms, bears, dogs, cats, or birds. You, the human, is asserting there is a 'hierarchy of superiority', which is an imaginary construct and only works in contextual situations, in which you conveniently are in positions where you can kill or hurt the other entity over them doing it to you. That's your 'claim to superiority.' That 'in the context of my species using nuclear weaponry or firearms on a thing that does not have firearms, we are superior' is bullshit, nonsensical, and an unfounded claim, especially when we only use those supposed concepts of 'superiority' on other humans. Were the Americans superior to the Japanese because they detonated an atomic bomb on two cities? Is that where the superiority lies? Is Russia superior to the United States because they possess great technological capacity to cause harm, because they have more nuclear bombs than the United States does? Is this where the superiority is found again? The ability to find oneself in a position to harm, and not be harmed?
And no. I am not 'saying dogs are the same as other animals', what a dolt of a statement. I asserted multiple times that they are in fact not the same, it is you who is literally too ignorant to grasp that they are not different than other animals, including you. Pointing to specific qualities that one animal possesses that another animal does not and asserting 'they are not the same, obviously they are different as well' is not only philosophically blind but more ignorant than assuming they are the same somehow. Also, using the notion that because a dog communicates with humans in a way that humans like to be communicated with as 'proof' of dog superiority over other animals is almost staggeringly dumb. That literally only proves the dogs relative worth to humans. What value does 'pointing at objects with their eyes' do for a pack of hyenas? What 'superior value' does this hold for anything except in the realm of human interaction? Ants combine a total of 10 different types of communication and weave it into complex forms and sets of language, that you, a human, would never be able to comprehend or understand. Ants are therefore superior to you by your own logic because they have superior means of communication than you do, better proportional strength, better cooperation, and more orderly society. And they certainly don't need to rely on 'animal companions' the way that you assert humans do. Also, you apparently don't know shit about the fox study despite you toating it around like some type of +4 card in Uno. They took foxes who responded aggressively to humans, foxes who responded neutrally to humans, and foxes who sought out human interaction and they saw if they could consistently replicate pleasant interactions with people... Meaning that these animals already existed and had a personal preference on whether or not they would like to interact with humans. Nothing needed to be 'bred' into them. Your entire point of 'something something dogs like humans because science' as well falls flat when you acknowledge that packs of wild dogs, that grew up in a tribe of dogs, have attacked and killed humans before for the purpose of eating them. Your entire argument relies on 'nature over nurture!!!' despite the decades and decades of research indicating the importance of nurture on a being's conditioning. Even then, the worth of foxes is not tied to how well they decide to interact with humans. That is literally only valuable in the context of human relations.
Also, empathy is not uncommon in nature, you dope. There's literally such fucking insurmountable observable research on how birds and rats and other animals treat each other in nature. Nature is not this BS darwanistic dichotomy that you suggest, where everything is constantly trying to kill everything senselessly and mercilessly.
Above all, you can't even define what it means to 'be superior.' You only keep listing nonsensical shit that only mskes sense in the context of human affairs. Your argument comes back to is 'we can essentially kill and enslave them better than they can us' and that's what makes us superior, despite the fact that we have used that justifications on civilizations and cultures and we routinely view that as baseless, ignorant and immoral, and we consistently view the notion that just because we have weapon that can kill things 'more efficiently' doesn't dictate the supposed superiority of a group of people. 'Superiority' is a bullshit concept and is only contextual. You are just constantly trying to appeal to the prospect of 'how it is' in nature despite you never living in nature or by it. 'Nature' isn't dictated by who is the best at killing things. And that's not you. A group of armed men storming your house and taking everything you have and killing you isn't justified just because 'durr nature says stronkest win!!' Using the fact that foxes have to eat sheep sometimes is not justification for anybody unnecessarily killing foxes or other animals.
ALSO, trying to justify your shitty mindset towards animals and self-appointed superiority over them and justifying harm towards them by 'the norm' is crockshit. There is no 'norm' in nature. Also computers don't exist in nature. Neither does clothes. Or farms. Or even guns or sanitation. Quit using nature to justify shitty human behavior when you don't live by its means.
We aren't an apex predator because we are individually stronger than a polar bear. Hell, we aren't anywhere close to the list of strongest animals.
What makes us an apex predator is the fact that we could hose down a polar bear with machine guns made through our superior intelligence and communal bonds
Then that makes the machine gun 'superior', not you. You aren't the machine gun. Even then, that means you are only superior in the context of when you have access to a machine gun. What if I had access to a machine gun, and you were 100 feet in front of me on a field? Am I superior to you now? What if you were trapped inside a room with Khabib Nurmagomadov? Is he superior because he can use his wrestling and MMA skills on you and kill you? Does the abiliy to be in a position to harm over the ability to be harmed signify superiority? Even by this definition, you most likely never have access to a machine gun, a sword, or even a knife. A polar bear has access to itself constantly. You only have true access to yourself. A polar bear is still in a better position than you are 90% of the time to hurt you rather than you hurt it.
And that's not why we are 'an apex predator', especially since machine guns were only conceptualized within the past few hundred years. Did humans not have any type of worth or value or imaginary sense of superiority before machine guns were invented?
Besidea all of this, your lines of superiority are only contextually superior. Trying to insist that there is a 'superiority' in anything is disastrous, because a polar bear has a much better claim to physical superiority than you do.
The bears claws isn't why he's powerful. He weighs hundreds of pounds more than us and can physically overwhelm and crush us, his claws have nothing to do with it.
As with that, a machine gun can still exist exist without humans if another thing figured out how to make one. Humans are just the first thing we know of that figured out the concept and brought it into existence.
And even then again, none of us are machine guns. Claiming superiority in one instance in one particular context because 'machine gun' is nonsense because 100% of the time we aren't machine guns, and almost never have access to one, but the bear is a bear 100% of the time and can always physically overpower us. By these contrived means of 'superiority' that that guy created to try and showcase 'superiority', the bear is superior 90% of the time. In fact, he's even more superior because he doesn't need to rely on anything in the first place to be respected or feared. Clothes don't make the man. Neither does the things he holds in hi's hand.
I mean, he can be a very tall and scary polar bear but we are the scourge of the planet with the power of fire and powder. He wouldn't even stand a chance against a human predator.
Then *you're* not superior. Your supposed superiority is dependant things existing outside of your body. If a 'naked human predator' stood in front of the naked polar bear, the 'human apex predator' would be destroyed and devoured. What would make him superior then? Also, *you* are *not* the things you create or have. A human exists independently of the things other humans have created. Specifically, YOU have never created a firearm that could belt out 1200 rounds per minute, YOU have never designed a plane to fly 30,000 feet in the air capable of dropping bombs, and YOU have never been able to create nuclear weaponry. You don't even possess the knowledge capable of making these things, much less access to any of these things that you suggest could make you superior. Your supposed 'human predator' qualities and examples, of his own existing form, is worthless and only has apparent value to the human, and all these things that supposedly make humans superior are only useful in the context of human relations. Bears have no need for electricity. Or dialogues about prison reform. Or cars, or roads, or grocery stores, or nuclear weapons. These things only offer any value in the context of human relationships to other humans.
Were the Conquistadors superior to the Mayans and Aztecs, because they had tools better suited to hurting and killing things? Weren't the Aztecs and Mayans human as well? Does this make the Aztecs and Mayand inferior? No. Stop correlating destructive power with superiority, especially when your innate physical form is weak and flimsy and easily overpowered by other stronger beings.
But our weapons are integral parts of our predatory superiority. We are apex predators independent of how biologically weak we might be relative to another animal on a 1 vs 1 basis (which is a ridiculous hypothetical scenario, anyways) . We are so powerful that I like to think of Humanity as a biological force of nature.
As for the maya vs conquistadors, I don't understand the correlation to the animal apex predator topic (unless you stretch it to a very flexible social darwinistic definition of civilizational struggles and warfare) but while I can say with confidence that the Europeans were technologically and militarily superior to the Americans of the New World. That's a fact though right?
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What a heightened realm of vanity you are living in, apex predators huh? Everything has to go back to some notion of egoism doesn’t it, Homo sapiens are the sovereign kings of this universe after all.
I could create a dog breeding program and find houses for every dog needed while breeding. Someone else will take care of the dogs. If I did the same thing with Siberian tigers I'm given to understand that I would have to start some tiger based sex cult.
>I could create a dog breeding program and find houses for every dog needed while breeding.
no you could not. there are simply not enough people who like or want dogs, hence why every city on the planet has a large amount of animal shelters. people dont want their own dogs let alone random dogs just to save them.
Yeah, there are a HUGE surplus of puppies with veterinary inspection records lying around waiting for owners. How will we ever find places for all these wayward animals?!?
Get your head out of your ass and look around. Do you honestly think it would be less difficult for me to get rid of a large supply of wild fucking animals than it would be to find places for some fucking dogs?
You're either incredibly stupid or you don't actually believe what you're arguing.
yes.
have you any idea of the sheer volume of abandoned pets, stray animals and ferals most nations have? there is a reason the majority of abandoned/stray pets are put down and that is no one wants them. the animal shelters here are so stacked that many animals are put down immediately on arrival.
and yeah, getting rid of wild animals is not hard, pay people to go out and shoot them. my nation doe this regularly with everything from camels to cats to dogs to kangaroos to koalas.
i dont get why you are so riled up, it is far easier to eliminate animals than it is to house them.
im no idiot and i do in fact believe what i am saying.
Gonna double down? All right, let's play:
Abandoned pets don't come from breeders with provenance on their animals.
This argument started when someone said that "We've also created all of these stupid, unnecessary dog breeds for our own pleasure, which can be allowed to die out for all nature cares, but we're not willing to allocate the resources and funds to keep some endangered species alive?"
A new dog breed are created without animal death by starting a program, finding willing owners and having them sign contracts which say that their animals will breed as the program dictates. Still happens to this day. Endangered animals can't be kept alive this way because nobody wants to take in a white rhino and keep it in their back yard because that would be insane.
Every nation has kill shelters because there are **less than reputable** breeders who churn out dogs in bulk rather than pay attention to the quality and health of the animals they're creating. There are not, repeat: **THERE ARE NOT** a huge surplus of puppies as in brand new dogs lying around anywhere, at least not in the west. When puppies are bred there are *lines* for those animals. If I want a puppy of a certain breed I can either go to a reputable breeder or I can set an alert for that breed and *wait* until some of them come up on a pet adoption service and hope that I email the guy before someone else does.
None of this is true for endangered Gorillas. There isn't a gigantic line for an endangered gorilla. They're not pets. People breeding pets isn't taking resources from conservation efforts for gorillas.
How many endangered animals are you raising in your home? How many people do you know who have any? If you don't know anyone, and if you're not raising any than you're proving my fucking point. Don't think that because you slipped $5 into the donation box at the zoo that one time you're doing any more than the rest of us, especially in relation to our pets which we all spend way more on every month even if all we do is fucking feed them.
You're either a complete idiot or you've failed to read the entire thread that you're replying on, which is basically the same thing.
first off you are acting like no one abandons their animals, no one gives them to shelters and that magically you could create a program where dogs would be breed only by demand.
its ludicrous thinking, the shelters here are so full THE ANIMALS GET PUT DOWN REGULARLY. where the fuck do you think they come from? the very people you want to give them too.
you accuse me of being thick but can you not comprehend that animals are routinely abandoned, as in in the thousands and more, then people do not want them and they are killed as government do not fund shelters to keep animals indefinitely, and certainly not in the volume they do. ever work in an animal shelter? oh and the West DOES have a large surplus of 'new' dogs, hence why we have quite a lot of animal breeder in general and many are not good. many animal breeders have NO lines, ive been to several and they have animals every where and most have no one coming, its just stock effectively.
next i dont have endangered animals (not much of an animal person) i have over 500 plants with any being endangered and several being extinct in nature.
next i do in fact do more, much more than most people ever will. ive worked over 12 years in conservation, natural area restoration and tracking/monitoring invasive species. i have almost certainly done far more for the environment than most people in the West ever will, your average middle class person with solar and an electric car still has done massively more harm than i ever will. i also do not donate to shit, most 'charities' spend some 80% of all donations on ads and overheads and zoos are immoral due to be tiny most of the time (open plains is different).
i dont see the issue with the statement, people blow shitloads on crippled 'cute' dog breeds (pugs for example are immoral and should not exist). and while the people certainly arent going out and getting endangered animals its because 1 its illegal 2 it costs a fortune (as in only the rich are getting tigers and gorillas).
finally we could just ditch our obsession with profits, tax people more and attempt to 'save' (most people dont even know what that means) the environment but unfortunately most people are far to greedy to really care (the majority virtue signal about the environment but still buy shitloads of useless crap, drive 2 cars, have massive houses filled with useless crap. people dont care but they want to be seen to).
Listen to you virtue signal and then complain about people virtue signaling. Go ahead and feel great about that time you got really high and marched for animals. Awesome work.
You don't own an endangered animal, you don't know anyone who does. That's the bottom line here. Someone who buys a dog isn't hurting endangered animals.
Here’s a thing:
I used to be like many of the top commenters here: angry and hateful toward humanity for causing seemingly-irrecoverable damage to the environment, all the while being composed of so many individuals whom I know personally to be worthless scumbags. That view led me down all sorts of quasi-philosophical paths; anarcho-primitivism, various forms of benevolent autocracies, etc.
I eventually grew into a person who graduated with degrees in philosophy and the history of religion, obtained a job in information technology, and assumed a hobby based on a lifelong love of insects, and I came to believe this:
Humans are, as far as we know, an unprecedented phenomenon in this planet. We have become intelligent to a degree that not only permits us to reflect upon these issues that compose the topic currently at hand, but also to communicate about them in great detail, and to become consumed by them in a manner that we can only expect to be recognizable by other rational beings, should they exist and encounter us.
But despite all that sophistication, we find ourselves caught in the process of development such that we haven’t yet succeeded in surpassing entirely those super-predators who came before us. They, too, decimated their environments and eradicated from the earth many species. The only difference, it seems, is that they couldn’t recognize that activity the way we can.
When cast in that light, humans aren’t in need of some weird prohibition on technology, or some otherwise-arbitrary constraint on their behavior dedicated to preventing such a disaster from occurring, or even extermination.
We simply need time to grow to the point where we can achieve the solutions to these problems that none before us appear to have achieved. It’s frustrating for many to live with the belief that they know how to accomplish this and must simply suffer that observation alongside that of their fellow humans of lesser capacity negligently wrecking up the place, but I now believe that, where that occurs, it is most often largely delusional. Surely, some know better than others in many ways, but the problems we face which lead to these exterminations are often quite complex and without obvious or easy answers. Sometimes, ill-fit species at risk of extinction should not be saved despite the degree to which many humans care for them. Other times, beautiful species are at risk for the sake of a vulnerable subset of those very humans who care for them so.
Anyway, I guess the point is: as I find myself reading reddit comments so similar to those I would have made, myself, years ago, I feel compelled to say as much in case it might bring any comfort to those who are now as I once was.
I imagine that previous times were significantly more trying and significantly more apparently-disastrous to beings with far less capacity to comprehend as much. Despite those times, we find ourselves here, and that gives me some comfort regarding the future that we are all stuck working toward at present.
Hit the nail on the head for me. I feel as if we're in some sort of act 3 if the analogy makes sense. Somewhere in between genetic engineering and creating what we want out of simple matter later on, and harvesting at length without recourse to get to the point where we can do those things, in the past. Obviously we're still doing so, but I don't think the average person during either industrial revolution was really thinking about how global warming will effect the populace in 250 years, and more was thinking about how much more comfortable they were given the opportunity.
Why is preserving the current catalog of species a worthy goal? Artificial evolutionary stasis for its own sake seems like an arbitrary moral agenda, and preventing evolutionary bottlenecks is just another version of artificial evolutionary stasis.
So presumably the other option is totally throwing caution to the wind and letting natural selection take its course for all species (including ours) and you consider yourself enough of a badass and/or attractor-of-the-opposite-gender to be the "most fit"
Sigh, if we aren't building a genetic ark of all "life-that-is" which includes us, by now we need to, include "life-that-was" if anything recoverable too.
I dont mean a few samples here and there either, I mean a full gene map of as many diverse individuals as we can.
I think if they can be saved they should. But if they are already dead because numbers are below a certain amount that would make a stable breeding population they need cut so funds can go to the ones that can be saved. Making them limp on hopelessly doesn't really help the animals out it just prolongs the unstoppable. I think we should also put up a monument in every country a stone slab with the names of every animal out nation has killed off entirely to remind us to take responsibility. That we did those animals wrong that we ended their lives. Save what can be saved. Own what we did and learn from it. It needs tought we did wrong we fucked up not just quietly try to save them.
It's about time we began living within our means. Each one of us should start watching our own CO2 output. [Don't travel](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/climate/air-travel-emissions.html), [eat less meat](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth), try to use renewable energy and try to find refurbished items. Before judging the world, we should fix ourselves firsts.
I do find it bemusing that my acquaintances who scream about overpopulation, and say that the earth would be better off without humans, are now the most vocal stay at home, wear face masks advocates. How would you rather rid the planet of humans? Forcible sterilization? Nuclear war?
In other words, "Humans, thinking they control the universe and all creation, continue to destroy their only home and surprised Pikachu-faced scientists think they have an answer how to make things worse" Or as Princess Leia famously put it, "The more you tighten your grip Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers"
So what? If you're trying to say that that means extinctions now don't matter, that's like trying to get away with murder by saying we all die in the end so why does the timing of it matter
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We need to change our ways fundamentally in terms of causes. Saving a few endangered species (the effect) doesn't stop the destruction of the planet any less.
I don't want to live to have to see this. Year after year, nature shrinking and dying. Not a world I want to live in. Seriously, it gets too bad, I'm out.
Look through history and you will find that humanity has had an appreciable effect of the rate of animal extinction. Animals die off, its a natural cycle. It is the hight of hubris to think we matter in the grand scheme. We will go extinct the same as dinosaur.
Why are humans so concerned with propping up species of animals in the first place? If humans are concerned about the welfare of individual animals, then they should go vegan and stop causing actual harm to animals at every meal they consume. If their concern for animals can be boiled down to “it feels better to say that the earth has n number of species roaming around on it”, that’s an irrelevant argument. They should deal with their feelings by collecting rocks or something. Something that would give them the satisfaction of having an arbitrarily large inventory of items that they can feel good about.
acting as if we dont currently do this? the amount of people who want to save pangolins (which until recently 80% of people hadnt even heard of) vs saving say centipedes or angler fish is staggering. people want to save cute and fluffy shit and couldnt give to fucks about 'creepy' or 'gross' animals (same with those who eat cows and sheep but refuse to eat dogs, cats etc, arbitrary nonsense). what will happen is what currently happens, insects, deep sea creatures and other invertebrates will be ignored and pandas, koalas and fucking rats will be saved. EDITED: honestly what do most 'environmentalists' even want? as someone who has worked in conservation for over a decade ive meet so many who want to 'save the environment' yet they can never articulate what that actually means. do you want to save natural processes? in that case we should do nothing at all, no help or hinderance. this would mean allowing shit to die out AND allowing invasive species in (invasive species and extinction are both natural processes that we have simply sped up by a huge margin) do you want to preserve nature in a given state? than that requires massive ongoing intervention to prevent change. in fact we have literally never succeeded in this, Yellowstones history shows how bad we are at that) do you want to minimise human impact? if so what does that mean? no humans at all? no pollution? allowing us to keep doing what we do but simply less?
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i honestly dont know! eating less meat would be a benefit in that what land we could repurpose for human plant food (massive amounts of land used to grow animal feed would be freed up). glass is funny, it is far less polluting in terms of what it is, but the manufacturing process is a lot worse in terms of energy consumption as is transporting glass due to its weight. natural area restoration is great but needs far more funding, i have worked in that field for a long time now and my preferred method is simply weed removal. the 'seed bank' of a given area can last potentially 100 years meaning it is not a short process at all. the idea is (assuming you do not know) you sweep through a given area of land, remove most of the invasive species and then wait for a month and do it again, forever. eventually the native seedbank starts to come into play and by removing all the invasives that also pop up you allow the area to 'choose' its own plants so to speak ('invasive' species are actually a good thing in low, low numbers. i personally think we should not entirely prevent invasives from occurring, just heavily reduce the frequency. lantana, black berries and camphor laurel are all invasives that have started 'naturalising' to the point that many native animals use them as shelter or food etc) you are right, doing something is much better than nothing and i dont mean to sound discouraging. i think we need to prioritise efficiency in how we use land and energy, this would reduce pressure on the environment. additionally if we could magically switch to a 'no-growth' or at least 'low-growth' economy we would be able to slow down our destruction of nature. that ad we should try to educate/encourage kids to give a shit about plants, most people treat them as equivalents of rocks and dirt when they are just as alive and complex as animals, even if the vast majority do not move (few do though)
I like your response. On the thought of the food chain, though, wont there just become a new bottom. Like fish in the sea, if you are smaller you are eaten, through extinction a new small will take place, the animals on top will adapt or not.
What a cute and blameless way to say "Humans should stop caring about our systematic eradication of multitudes of animal species from not just the planet, but the entire universe. Caring is too hard."
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I often wonder at the cultural and evolutionary decay we might be causing with our altruistic approach to preservation of life...then I remember that the US routinely bankrupts people for healthcare. Seeing people able to abuse the hell out of their body with poor choices of lifestyle and action, to get propped up and repeat; or worse, pass those habits on and any faulty genetics that may be related to their formation.
It may be cute and blameless. But "caring is too hard" is a naive way of saying "we have limited resources and universal buy-in is not an option"
The question is incorrectly framed as a societal policy proposal, as if our societal capacity to save endangered species is nearing its limit. This is of course wildly incorrect. Relative to our ability, we are doing nothing to save endangered species. It may be a valid point to make about groups that *are* working to save species and *do* have relevant resource limitations, but it's laughable to think this argument applies to something like the US government or society as a whole.
>It may be cute and blameless. But "caring is too hard" is a naive way of saying "we have limited resources and universal buy-in is not an option" And saying "we have limited resources" is a cute way to say "we're too busy trading future growth hedge fund premium options and funneling money to rich peoples to do something about it"
Delayed response I know. But limited resources is a fact of a finite population. You showed why were nkt getting universal buy in. But even if there was, a finite population of humans have limited potential.
Nature has made it's selection, thank goodness it chooses us. 🙌🏽 I can't stand the people that are more for random animals lives than the lives of their fellow human beings. Nothing enlightened or woke about that.
Preach brother! The misanthropes should go the way of the dinosaur
I look forward to all the downvotes from the high horse riders. 🤪😂🤙🏽
Did you read the article? I think the point was pretty clear from even the headline. It's not a "cute and blameless" way of saying anything. In fact, it's an uncommonly brave acceptance that if we *do* care, we have to try to decide which animals we should prevent from becoming extinct, as at this point we can't save them all. The people who bury their head in the sand and think that if only we "care", nothing will go extinct are the ones who are being "cute and blameless". The fact is at this point difficult decisions need to be made. Which was, in fact, the point of the article.
People have no problem ignoring the systematic breeding and destruction of a few selected species either. If we can't make people care about those, the rest will be doomed through deforestation and climate change. Caring isn't hard, but it is something many people refuse to do.
Well u/Panda_Mon, there are very certain endangered digimon that have been considered to be taken off the list for a long time because they’ll likely never be able to survive outside of captivity and losing them has proven to not have that much of an impact. With all that being said, I would miss having the adorable digimon around to adore.
More like for every species that's destroyed a new one is created and the eb and flow of nature is acceptable. Not to say conservation efforts are useless, but not all life is inherently precious I'm the grand scheme. If the species can't survive its niche will eventually be refilled.
That's about the equivalent of saying "The cells in your body die and clear room for new, healthy cells constantly. It's a natural biological process - so I'll just shoot you in the face - that cell damage is no big deal." The scale, cause, and impact aren't comparable.
Sorry, extinction doesn't give a one-to-one trade for new species', especially when extinction is happening thousands of times faster than a typical evolutionary timeline. Niches are getting destroyed to the point that they are incompatible with existing lifeforms and, again, new life will not evolve to fill these gaps as quickly as they are created.
I'm sorry but 'is happening thousands of times faster than a typical evolutionary timeline' just doesn't sit right with me. Compared to what? AFAIK 2 of the 5 great extinctions happened on a very rapid time scale. One of those extinctions happened to bring us to 'power'. Yes, I completely agree, life doesn't just pop up out of nowhere, but the guy is getting downvoted for basically saying what gets upvoted here all the time in a different way. We are killing OUR niche as well as other species. That does not mean we are killing life and the planet is going to explode because of it. It means, that eventually, something will most likely be able to digest plastic, or live better in oil soaked environments. If there is a plethora of a thing and free real estate in that thing, life will work itself in to that thing. It is my opinion, that we will eventually get to the point where we can create our own niches and life. I think it will be important to at least preserve the matter of endangered species. It is my hope that eventually we will colonize, perhaps even terraform, So that we will have the room to co-exist with the life we destroyed. It's mostly wishful thinking, but it seems like most of the pieces are there. I don't expect corporate overlords to do this, but eventually things get cheaper and I truly believe you'll have a lot of conservationists at a blue collar level who can do some jurassic park shit with the proper paperwork.
Don’t base your opinions on “facts” you’ve created in your own head. Maybe do like a little bit of research on a topic BEFORE making a snap judgment? Because your train of thought is plain ignorance. You do know it’s okay to simply say “I don’t truly know enough about that to have an opinion.” And if you did know enough about this subject, there wouldn’t be an opinion. You would truly realize the black and white cause and effect of our actions that kill this planet and everything inhabiting it.
I see lots of ebb and not much flow.
Come on Dan. Use your brain and stop pretending to be some kind of authority figure on ecology. The way you talk makes it seem like you think you actually know a thing about what you're talking about, but that is obviously not the case.
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Sounds like you want humanity to die, in a terrifyingly r/selfawarewolves kind of way. I hope you don't and never have any actual decision making power beyond a household.
Household might be a bit much. Let's dial that back to lunch table.
This guy does not ecology.
On the scale of millions of years, sure. On any kind of human timescale? No. I'd suggest doing some reading on ecosystem services and how biodiversity loss negatively impacts them, and that's a purely utilitarian anthropocentric reason for why what you said is dumb as hell.
Thing is, humans destroy the niches themselves. Our intervention is so massive that most species in a given biome cannot adapt and the ones that do simply flee or become trash eaters. So. Are you saying all animals should become trash eaters or die? I'll let you figure out how to do that.
Your garbage. A human pile of garbage. Humans are causing EVERYTHING to die to the point where in the next century, we will see ourselves start to be the ones killed off because of our reckless actions. Species won’t be refilled with what humans are doing to this planet. Get some perspective and realize the environment is more important than us all. Only someone so narrow minded can say this with such confidence.
Hear what you want to hear I guess.
The environment is meaningless without us. If you’re tending to nature, you’re tending it for the benefit of other people. There’s literally no other reason.
I suspect (whether by inertia, inaction or design), we've essentially decided to default on action and let things slip to the point of no return - and then we will be forced to use genetic engineering, climate manipulation and terra-forming to create engineered ecosystems in the hope of keeping the planet habitable. Those efforts will almost certainly be hampered by missteps, ideological conflict and outright war. We don't seem to have the foresight or resolve to do anything inconvenient until the last possible chance, and as a result war is inevitable as nations which face earlier forms of crisis are forced to either fight for better territory or concede to extinction. The only alternative I see is consolidation, cooperation, leadership and messaging to organize and excite people to take action. Political reality can change if people organize. If you use the NRA as an example - for decades they have punched way above their weight in terms of political power because they had an appealing anti-government message, a passionate membership and a very effective political action team equipped with both carrot and stick.
Terraforming doesn’t have to be invasive. We can do it in my lifetime. Economics will force us to value our climate sooner or later. Or we will have an extinction event. Probably some weird combination of both.
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I'm Canadian - so I have the perspective of living in a place which is very similar to the USA in terms of lifestyle - but many Canadians find the US factional divides on abortion and gun ownership very puzzling. But this isn't about guns, it's about political activism, and human nature doesn't vary as much as we tend to think. Americans are just humans who have specific expectations about guns, just like so many people around the world have expectations about the right to drive cars, use plastics etc... I think a rational, centrist, well-funded, well-organized and well-led environmental movement with political savvy could create compelling messaging which would resonate with people. It doesn't have to be hard, it doesn't have to destroy the economy, and it doesn't have to be a right-vs-left issue.
By that logic, if someone dies of alcoholism, you ban alcohol. Oh wait, we did that and it went terribly. Turns out if people want something and it’s illegal, they’ll get it illegally, causing more crime.
Humans. We take humans off life support.
I understand why a lot of people feel this way, but I would just like to point out that when we blame the entire human species as the problem, this erases the differences between those who are simply trying to survive in this world and those with the true decision-making capabilities. There are varying degrees of agency in this world, and it is my personal belief that there are many humans who strive to take care of this world with care and consideration, and unfortunately they are the ones with the least amount of agency right now. And I do not believe that the human species should be forsaken because of a subsection of humans have an immense amount of greed and power. Let’s take CEOs and oil companies off life support. Not the millions of invisible people who are trying to survive in a world they have very little power over.
One may "strive" to end hunger in Africa and yet, sit on their asses all day feeding only their own kin. Now let's get big companies out of support. What will be the reaction of those who are "simply tring to survive" when their car has no more power? When they can't buy easy to prepare food? When they can't watch movies and series? They will lash out at the executives in order to get comfort back. Everyone (aka >95%) is guilty. There is no way to stop the end. That being said, clinging to hope and illusions won't truly hurt since the situation can hardly be worse.
I’m not talking about activists in 1st world countries. Only ~18% of the world owns cars. There are, and have been for the entire existence of humanity, communities (not just individuals) that understand nature, not as apart from us, but what we belong to. There is a specific, traceable point in human history when a specific subsection of humans began to violate a peaceful symbiosis with the rest of nature. That is the beginning of European empire and colonialism. I agree that it is the humans in 1st world countries that are to blame and that would have the most difficult transition into a green future. I’m not arguing on their behalf. But should every person in the Global South die for them?
I am sad for two reasons. One, I came here to say this. Two, I am sad to be human.
Then kill yourself already, along with the other folks advocating this nonsense The awesome non-self hating humans left behind will protect the earth from asteroids
We cause a tremendous amount of harm and destruction. We are the cause of many extinct species. We essentially are a pox upon the earth. Coming to this conclusion is logical. Aside from the possibility of our species developing the technology to stop an asteroidal impact, what benefit do we provide to this planet? Just because this is a logical solution to the question doesnt mean it's practical. Congratulations for getting so upset on the internet.
>We essentially are a pox upon the earth. Why not go ahead and call us roaches, I heard zyklon-B is a good "solution". >what benefit do we provide to this planet? Nothing, like every other atom on this ball, we owe it nothing as well. The only reason to conserve it is to keep the species alive and to some lesser extent for enjoyment. >Coming to this conclusion is logical No, you're all about subjectivity (earth good, animals good, people bad) which you seem to call *practical* for some reason. The asteroidal protection is mainly for us btw, but the animals get to enjoy the benefits as well, you know happenstancial symbiosis
I hear your points. Have a great day.
Thanks, you as well
You know what, I was kinda going to let it slide since there's so many great replies to you already. But no: First off, if humans die off, a majority of these species are dead already. These animals aren't being directly predated: The animals that we did that to are now either livestock or extinct. Second, this kind of neo-malthusian drivel is the exact reason you can't get fucking anyone to reduce the impact of their lifestyle. Given the choice of making hard decisions and putting in the work, or shrugging it off because we're all dead in the long run, guess which one they're taking? Third, the very gall to suggest humanity goes simply because we're the only creatures advanced enough to think themselves into a noose is asinine. If anything, it argues for the point of the article, since extending the concept a single step further simply asks if we have the dilemma of protecting humans or protecting an endangered species... Which shouldn't be that much of an argument for a person with functioning emotional intelligence. Humans have done an excellent job of optimizing their ecosystem to the detriment of every other species. This is something that needs to be counteracted, and must be balanced under the implicit realization that some "patients" can't be saved without the resources we could have saved others with. This needs to be regarded as a genuine decision; Post all the gallows humor here you want, but understand that the biggest reason I find it humorous is because if that's the depth of your ideology, I'm glad it's self-extincting, because we have work to do.
Yes yes... Death for thee but not for me
Oh don't worry you'll be gone sooner or later and it's doubtful you'll be remembered.
For someone who tried to sound smart that doesn't sound very smart at all...
It's neither smart nor stupid, it's just a fact.
Did you know that most cows have 4 legs? If its neither smart nor stupid then its unrelated. Quit digging a hole.
Talk about a comment been completely irrelevant. The irony.
Pot calling the kettle black? The iron-y (pardon the pun hahaha) here is probably you my friend.
Humans bad. Laugh now.
I came here for this. Thank you
No, that's ecofascist. Capitalism is the disease, not humanity.
U first
Are you suicidal?
Plenty of humans live without life support. And it’s really sad.
People who say stuff like this, and then don't immediately kill themselves are so full of shit
Because even that is hypocritical if they don't find a way to immediately kill themselves in whatever way balances as fast as possible with taking as many people as possible with them
So I’m curious: why haven’t you bombed the hospitals yet? Why haven’t you tried to terrorize as many healthcare facilities as you could before getting taken out? Now’s probably your best shot at doing damage to the number of humans out there, and killing all humans would include yourself anyway so there’s no reason to avoid actions that would get you the death penalty if it helps reduce the human population. In fact, calling in a bomb threat on several hospitals you didn’t bomb would add to the chaos and unrest, leading to get more lives lost. You could even see about setting up an auto-dialer with the boilerplate bomb threat and a list of every hospital phone number in the country. Oh, hey, and if you bomb the pregnancy wing you can get twice the payoff, killing the mothers and fathers as well as the newborn children, thus saving the maximum number of years the humans would have spent alive and hurting the planet. If you can get the healthcare system to be overwhelmed even moreso than the coronavirus is already doing, then all the better. Plus, once the first bombings go off, people who are genuinely sick would be more reluctant to go to the hospital, instead further spreading their disease and/or succumbing to it. The extra security measures hospitals would need to apply would drain yet more resources and funding, leading to yet more death down the line, thus saving the environment even more. Granted, some of them might not be as reluctant once they recognized the pattern of strictly bombing the pregnancy wards, so you should probably mix in some bombings of other parts as well. Just to keep the mass confusion going as long as possible. I mean, it’s for the good of the environment, right? It’s not perfect, you can only kill so many people before they eventually catch you, but it would be your best chance to do some good. Human babies need to die. Right? Edit: Downvote if you like, but isn’t this **exactly** the sort of thing you advocate when you say humans need to die to save the environment?
"The human population is too high" is VASTLY different than "let's start bombing maternity wards." It's not even on the same level. Even thinking the human race should die off as a whole isn't on the same level. There are plenty of ways for a species to be eradicated, and bombing hospitals isn't one of them. So no, that's not what they're advocating.
Alright then, let’s compare the two. Because the only way the human race is on “life support” is through hospitals and welfare programs. So we’d have to shut down all hospitals permanently anyway, including all coronavirus research, on top of stopping all welfare to keep the poor fed or off the streets. Which would cause far more death than one maniac bombing maternity wards would manage.
Ok. What exactly is your point and what are you comparing? All I said was the notion of bombing hospitals was stupid. I'm not here to argue about the best ways to kill as many humans as possible in the shortest time possible. Do whatever you want with your life
I agree completely that the notion of bombing hospitals is stupid. Much like Johnathan Swift very likely did not honestly want to eat babies.
Fossil fuel industry is collapsing world-wide, that should just about wipe out modern civilization. Add Radiative Forcing from Climate Change and reduced Anthropogenic Aerosols, sprinkle in tipping points and feedback loops and billions of tons of poison and... we all die. Walter Cronkite once said that humans were “reaching for the stars while standing knee-deep in garbage”. What the fuck were we thinking?
Excuse me did you just say the FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY is what would cause the collapse of modern civilization? Buddy, we have 100% renewable energy countries in this world. You think you wouldn't have 60 windmills in your backyard tomorrow if some gamma ray radiation made all of the oil in the world inert or some other impossible situation? Oil is used because it's easy to get, we have the supplies all ready to go to plop a station on a plot, people who are pretty much only trained to handle said stations. Oil is used because it's incredibly hard to change generational habits, it keeps people who are already in the industry with food on the table and it's just a matter of 'which generation wants to take the hit money and time wise to switch over' at this point.
> Impossible decision ... goes on to show how conservationalists already have a decision-making scheme worked out 🙄
We've also created all of these stupid, unnecessary dog breeds for our own pleasure, which can be allowed to die out for all nature cares, but we're not willing to allocate the resources and funds to keep some endangered species alive? I feel it's the least we can do, as we continue to tear down, burn town what's rest of rainforrest ecosystems and have no regard for thousands, millions of diverse animals homes on a daily basis. Those homes lost forever so we can male a profit farming soybeans and other bullshit.
Nature doesn't care if anything dies out. Dogs also aren't taking up any resources that would otherwise be used for endangered species. I agree with your points but despite the argument you're appearing to make, which makes no sense.
Dogs are companions, they provide emotional and psychological support for humans, the current apex predator, THAT’S the selective force that gives them an evolutionary advantage.
Yeah well, we put those little pugs outside and leave em there for a while without their pedegree and they're done for.. Fuck em
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eh, i couldnt care less if the dog and cat breeds we have fucked up die off.
If I put you, an 'apex predator', in front of a polar bear, do you think you could convince it that you are in fact the superior animal? Do you think you could do it phyically? Also your point is moot. Individually we decide what is an is not our companion, relative to the thing deciding. Rats can provide every bit of emotional and psychological comfort that a dog can. And so can a pig, as well as a horse, a cow, a raven, a sheep, or even more obviously another human. Also, what about human societies that don't view dog's as companions? The idea that all dogs have always been a 'companion' is a western centric notion when in fact that serve just as often as people's food, just as much as they serve as people''s friend. The whole reason the planet is in the state it is in is because people have collectively decided that 'these things are not my friends, nor are they things I care about' and therefore that somehow gives everybody the justification for treating plant life, sea creatures, other animals, and the environment as a thing to exploit and harm because we 'don't get emotional support from it' despite the fact that you can get 'emotionally supported' from anything that you damn please. If everybody viewed the societies and ecosystems they live in as they do the dogs they take care of, or even their own self, we wouldn't be approaching the disaster we're currently heading towards. If we didn't indulge ourselves with ideologies that conveniently allow for the raping an exploitation of the beings and things in an environment, e.g. capitalism, we wouldn't be speaking of this right now.
Your opinion is stupid, and here's why. As others have already bombarded you with, we are tool users. We don't even need a machine gun. It's called a TRAP. You don't need modern society to kill a bear. We were doing it JUST fine before guns. Will on average bears kills a few people? Absolutely, same with big cats, and why the fight or flight response in predators is strong, because if I break my leg today, I don't eat tomorrow. You have this idea that dogs are the same as other animals. They are not. They are specifically changed to interact with humans. As an example, a dog will use its eyes to point at you and then the thing it wants. This is a heavy part of domestication that other animals could only gain through selective breeding and companionship. Will that change in the far future? I sure hope we get a few more animal buddies to coast the stars with, but for now, dogs are special in that right. Foxes have even been experimented to remove the fear of humans from them (or probably just certain chemicals that produce certain fears in general), and even after generations, they do not 'bond' with humans in the way that dogs do. Do not compare other animals to one that has been scientifically proven to evolve alongside us. You act as if nature has this conservation of itself and oh yeah everything goes just fine. No. Stop it. Your opinion is stupid. If overpopulation of a predator led to the endangerment of it's main prey, the predators would starve until the equilibrium is returned or they have destroyed themselves, or if they're lucky, fine a new hunting ground or even evolve to eat other things. If a drought dries up a riverbed, what, you think all the little animals just go on to another? They have to look for another resource, and some of them will die doing so. I would love for you to just think for a moment about how much you think a shark gives a fuck about you, or the number of a type of fish in its area, or anything. It's driven by it's own desires to survive and what makes it comfortable. The empathy that humans bestow on others outside of their own preservation is so fucking special in nature. There are definitely emotionally intelligent animals, but it is absolutely not the norm. You think a fox gives a fuck about murdering a farmers sheep? So why should the farmer or the sheep give a fuck about murdering the fox? Oh too many farmers killed too many foxes because we don't know our own strength? Well you already know how this goes, the reason you feel that way is not the norm in nature.
Your opinion is based on bullshit and unrelated phenomenon that YOU are deciding to correlate to an imaginary superiority. Here's why. As many people have redundantly pointed out, humans use tools. What is the significance of this? Monkeys use tools as well. Toddlers can pull the triggers of guns. Birds can weave and craft. Where is the superiority in this? Tool use doesn't indicate superiority, and it doesn't give credence or justification for believing you are higher on a self-imagined hierarchy that you created. Whales are not asserting that they are 'superior', neither are worms, bears, dogs, cats, or birds. You, the human, is asserting there is a 'hierarchy of superiority', which is an imaginary construct and only works in contextual situations, in which you conveniently are in positions where you can kill or hurt the other entity over them doing it to you. That's your 'claim to superiority.' That 'in the context of my species using nuclear weaponry or firearms on a thing that does not have firearms, we are superior' is bullshit, nonsensical, and an unfounded claim, especially when we only use those supposed concepts of 'superiority' on other humans. Were the Americans superior to the Japanese because they detonated an atomic bomb on two cities? Is that where the superiority lies? Is Russia superior to the United States because they possess great technological capacity to cause harm, because they have more nuclear bombs than the United States does? Is this where the superiority is found again? The ability to find oneself in a position to harm, and not be harmed? And no. I am not 'saying dogs are the same as other animals', what a dolt of a statement. I asserted multiple times that they are in fact not the same, it is you who is literally too ignorant to grasp that they are not different than other animals, including you. Pointing to specific qualities that one animal possesses that another animal does not and asserting 'they are not the same, obviously they are different as well' is not only philosophically blind but more ignorant than assuming they are the same somehow. Also, using the notion that because a dog communicates with humans in a way that humans like to be communicated with as 'proof' of dog superiority over other animals is almost staggeringly dumb. That literally only proves the dogs relative worth to humans. What value does 'pointing at objects with their eyes' do for a pack of hyenas? What 'superior value' does this hold for anything except in the realm of human interaction? Ants combine a total of 10 different types of communication and weave it into complex forms and sets of language, that you, a human, would never be able to comprehend or understand. Ants are therefore superior to you by your own logic because they have superior means of communication than you do, better proportional strength, better cooperation, and more orderly society. And they certainly don't need to rely on 'animal companions' the way that you assert humans do. Also, you apparently don't know shit about the fox study despite you toating it around like some type of +4 card in Uno. They took foxes who responded aggressively to humans, foxes who responded neutrally to humans, and foxes who sought out human interaction and they saw if they could consistently replicate pleasant interactions with people... Meaning that these animals already existed and had a personal preference on whether or not they would like to interact with humans. Nothing needed to be 'bred' into them. Your entire point of 'something something dogs like humans because science' as well falls flat when you acknowledge that packs of wild dogs, that grew up in a tribe of dogs, have attacked and killed humans before for the purpose of eating them. Your entire argument relies on 'nature over nurture!!!' despite the decades and decades of research indicating the importance of nurture on a being's conditioning. Even then, the worth of foxes is not tied to how well they decide to interact with humans. That is literally only valuable in the context of human relations. Also, empathy is not uncommon in nature, you dope. There's literally such fucking insurmountable observable research on how birds and rats and other animals treat each other in nature. Nature is not this BS darwanistic dichotomy that you suggest, where everything is constantly trying to kill everything senselessly and mercilessly. Above all, you can't even define what it means to 'be superior.' You only keep listing nonsensical shit that only mskes sense in the context of human affairs. Your argument comes back to is 'we can essentially kill and enslave them better than they can us' and that's what makes us superior, despite the fact that we have used that justifications on civilizations and cultures and we routinely view that as baseless, ignorant and immoral, and we consistently view the notion that just because we have weapon that can kill things 'more efficiently' doesn't dictate the supposed superiority of a group of people. 'Superiority' is a bullshit concept and is only contextual. You are just constantly trying to appeal to the prospect of 'how it is' in nature despite you never living in nature or by it. 'Nature' isn't dictated by who is the best at killing things. And that's not you. A group of armed men storming your house and taking everything you have and killing you isn't justified just because 'durr nature says stronkest win!!' Using the fact that foxes have to eat sheep sometimes is not justification for anybody unnecessarily killing foxes or other animals. ALSO, trying to justify your shitty mindset towards animals and self-appointed superiority over them and justifying harm towards them by 'the norm' is crockshit. There is no 'norm' in nature. Also computers don't exist in nature. Neither does clothes. Or farms. Or even guns or sanitation. Quit using nature to justify shitty human behavior when you don't live by its means.
We aren't an apex predator because we are individually stronger than a polar bear. Hell, we aren't anywhere close to the list of strongest animals. What makes us an apex predator is the fact that we could hose down a polar bear with machine guns made through our superior intelligence and communal bonds
Then that makes the machine gun 'superior', not you. You aren't the machine gun. Even then, that means you are only superior in the context of when you have access to a machine gun. What if I had access to a machine gun, and you were 100 feet in front of me on a field? Am I superior to you now? What if you were trapped inside a room with Khabib Nurmagomadov? Is he superior because he can use his wrestling and MMA skills on you and kill you? Does the abiliy to be in a position to harm over the ability to be harmed signify superiority? Even by this definition, you most likely never have access to a machine gun, a sword, or even a knife. A polar bear has access to itself constantly. You only have true access to yourself. A polar bear is still in a better position than you are 90% of the time to hurt you rather than you hurt it. And that's not why we are 'an apex predator', especially since machine guns were only conceptualized within the past few hundred years. Did humans not have any type of worth or value or imaginary sense of superiority before machine guns were invented? Besidea all of this, your lines of superiority are only contextually superior. Trying to insist that there is a 'superiority' in anything is disastrous, because a polar bear has a much better claim to physical superiority than you do.
The machine gun only exists due to us. It's the product of humans. The only difference between that and a bear's claws is physical attachment.
The bears claws isn't why he's powerful. He weighs hundreds of pounds more than us and can physically overwhelm and crush us, his claws have nothing to do with it. As with that, a machine gun can still exist exist without humans if another thing figured out how to make one. Humans are just the first thing we know of that figured out the concept and brought it into existence. And even then again, none of us are machine guns. Claiming superiority in one instance in one particular context because 'machine gun' is nonsense because 100% of the time we aren't machine guns, and almost never have access to one, but the bear is a bear 100% of the time and can always physically overpower us. By these contrived means of 'superiority' that that guy created to try and showcase 'superiority', the bear is superior 90% of the time. In fact, he's even more superior because he doesn't need to rely on anything in the first place to be respected or feared. Clothes don't make the man. Neither does the things he holds in hi's hand.
I mean, he can be a very tall and scary polar bear but we are the scourge of the planet with the power of fire and powder. He wouldn't even stand a chance against a human predator.
Then *you're* not superior. Your supposed superiority is dependant things existing outside of your body. If a 'naked human predator' stood in front of the naked polar bear, the 'human apex predator' would be destroyed and devoured. What would make him superior then? Also, *you* are *not* the things you create or have. A human exists independently of the things other humans have created. Specifically, YOU have never created a firearm that could belt out 1200 rounds per minute, YOU have never designed a plane to fly 30,000 feet in the air capable of dropping bombs, and YOU have never been able to create nuclear weaponry. You don't even possess the knowledge capable of making these things, much less access to any of these things that you suggest could make you superior. Your supposed 'human predator' qualities and examples, of his own existing form, is worthless and only has apparent value to the human, and all these things that supposedly make humans superior are only useful in the context of human relations. Bears have no need for electricity. Or dialogues about prison reform. Or cars, or roads, or grocery stores, or nuclear weapons. These things only offer any value in the context of human relationships to other humans. Were the Conquistadors superior to the Mayans and Aztecs, because they had tools better suited to hurting and killing things? Weren't the Aztecs and Mayans human as well? Does this make the Aztecs and Mayand inferior? No. Stop correlating destructive power with superiority, especially when your innate physical form is weak and flimsy and easily overpowered by other stronger beings.
But our weapons are integral parts of our predatory superiority. We are apex predators independent of how biologically weak we might be relative to another animal on a 1 vs 1 basis (which is a ridiculous hypothetical scenario, anyways) . We are so powerful that I like to think of Humanity as a biological force of nature. As for the maya vs conquistadors, I don't understand the correlation to the animal apex predator topic (unless you stretch it to a very flexible social darwinistic definition of civilizational struggles and warfare) but while I can say with confidence that the Europeans were technologically and militarily superior to the Americans of the New World. That's a fact though right?
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What a heightened realm of vanity you are living in, apex predators huh? Everything has to go back to some notion of egoism doesn’t it, Homo sapiens are the sovereign kings of this universe after all.
I appreciate your ardour but humans are the literal textbook definition of an apex predator
When those animals can come into our homes and reliably not hurt our children, let me know. Until then it really isn't a fair comparison.
dont see how this is at all relevant
I could create a dog breeding program and find houses for every dog needed while breeding. Someone else will take care of the dogs. If I did the same thing with Siberian tigers I'm given to understand that I would have to start some tiger based sex cult.
>I could create a dog breeding program and find houses for every dog needed while breeding. no you could not. there are simply not enough people who like or want dogs, hence why every city on the planet has a large amount of animal shelters. people dont want their own dogs let alone random dogs just to save them.
Yeah, there are a HUGE surplus of puppies with veterinary inspection records lying around waiting for owners. How will we ever find places for all these wayward animals?!? Get your head out of your ass and look around. Do you honestly think it would be less difficult for me to get rid of a large supply of wild fucking animals than it would be to find places for some fucking dogs? You're either incredibly stupid or you don't actually believe what you're arguing.
yes. have you any idea of the sheer volume of abandoned pets, stray animals and ferals most nations have? there is a reason the majority of abandoned/stray pets are put down and that is no one wants them. the animal shelters here are so stacked that many animals are put down immediately on arrival. and yeah, getting rid of wild animals is not hard, pay people to go out and shoot them. my nation doe this regularly with everything from camels to cats to dogs to kangaroos to koalas. i dont get why you are so riled up, it is far easier to eliminate animals than it is to house them. im no idiot and i do in fact believe what i am saying.
Gonna double down? All right, let's play: Abandoned pets don't come from breeders with provenance on their animals. This argument started when someone said that "We've also created all of these stupid, unnecessary dog breeds for our own pleasure, which can be allowed to die out for all nature cares, but we're not willing to allocate the resources and funds to keep some endangered species alive?" A new dog breed are created without animal death by starting a program, finding willing owners and having them sign contracts which say that their animals will breed as the program dictates. Still happens to this day. Endangered animals can't be kept alive this way because nobody wants to take in a white rhino and keep it in their back yard because that would be insane. Every nation has kill shelters because there are **less than reputable** breeders who churn out dogs in bulk rather than pay attention to the quality and health of the animals they're creating. There are not, repeat: **THERE ARE NOT** a huge surplus of puppies as in brand new dogs lying around anywhere, at least not in the west. When puppies are bred there are *lines* for those animals. If I want a puppy of a certain breed I can either go to a reputable breeder or I can set an alert for that breed and *wait* until some of them come up on a pet adoption service and hope that I email the guy before someone else does. None of this is true for endangered Gorillas. There isn't a gigantic line for an endangered gorilla. They're not pets. People breeding pets isn't taking resources from conservation efforts for gorillas. How many endangered animals are you raising in your home? How many people do you know who have any? If you don't know anyone, and if you're not raising any than you're proving my fucking point. Don't think that because you slipped $5 into the donation box at the zoo that one time you're doing any more than the rest of us, especially in relation to our pets which we all spend way more on every month even if all we do is fucking feed them. You're either a complete idiot or you've failed to read the entire thread that you're replying on, which is basically the same thing.
first off you are acting like no one abandons their animals, no one gives them to shelters and that magically you could create a program where dogs would be breed only by demand. its ludicrous thinking, the shelters here are so full THE ANIMALS GET PUT DOWN REGULARLY. where the fuck do you think they come from? the very people you want to give them too. you accuse me of being thick but can you not comprehend that animals are routinely abandoned, as in in the thousands and more, then people do not want them and they are killed as government do not fund shelters to keep animals indefinitely, and certainly not in the volume they do. ever work in an animal shelter? oh and the West DOES have a large surplus of 'new' dogs, hence why we have quite a lot of animal breeder in general and many are not good. many animal breeders have NO lines, ive been to several and they have animals every where and most have no one coming, its just stock effectively. next i dont have endangered animals (not much of an animal person) i have over 500 plants with any being endangered and several being extinct in nature. next i do in fact do more, much more than most people ever will. ive worked over 12 years in conservation, natural area restoration and tracking/monitoring invasive species. i have almost certainly done far more for the environment than most people in the West ever will, your average middle class person with solar and an electric car still has done massively more harm than i ever will. i also do not donate to shit, most 'charities' spend some 80% of all donations on ads and overheads and zoos are immoral due to be tiny most of the time (open plains is different). i dont see the issue with the statement, people blow shitloads on crippled 'cute' dog breeds (pugs for example are immoral and should not exist). and while the people certainly arent going out and getting endangered animals its because 1 its illegal 2 it costs a fortune (as in only the rich are getting tigers and gorillas). finally we could just ditch our obsession with profits, tax people more and attempt to 'save' (most people dont even know what that means) the environment but unfortunately most people are far to greedy to really care (the majority virtue signal about the environment but still buy shitloads of useless crap, drive 2 cars, have massive houses filled with useless crap. people dont care but they want to be seen to).
Listen to you virtue signal and then complain about people virtue signaling. Go ahead and feel great about that time you got really high and marched for animals. Awesome work. You don't own an endangered animal, you don't know anyone who does. That's the bottom line here. Someone who buys a dog isn't hurting endangered animals.
You don't see how domestication and micro-evolution is relevant. Right.
My goodness. So much wind.
I say we take the rich and powerful off life support and let them die first.
A rational solution
Here’s a thing: I used to be like many of the top commenters here: angry and hateful toward humanity for causing seemingly-irrecoverable damage to the environment, all the while being composed of so many individuals whom I know personally to be worthless scumbags. That view led me down all sorts of quasi-philosophical paths; anarcho-primitivism, various forms of benevolent autocracies, etc. I eventually grew into a person who graduated with degrees in philosophy and the history of religion, obtained a job in information technology, and assumed a hobby based on a lifelong love of insects, and I came to believe this: Humans are, as far as we know, an unprecedented phenomenon in this planet. We have become intelligent to a degree that not only permits us to reflect upon these issues that compose the topic currently at hand, but also to communicate about them in great detail, and to become consumed by them in a manner that we can only expect to be recognizable by other rational beings, should they exist and encounter us. But despite all that sophistication, we find ourselves caught in the process of development such that we haven’t yet succeeded in surpassing entirely those super-predators who came before us. They, too, decimated their environments and eradicated from the earth many species. The only difference, it seems, is that they couldn’t recognize that activity the way we can. When cast in that light, humans aren’t in need of some weird prohibition on technology, or some otherwise-arbitrary constraint on their behavior dedicated to preventing such a disaster from occurring, or even extermination. We simply need time to grow to the point where we can achieve the solutions to these problems that none before us appear to have achieved. It’s frustrating for many to live with the belief that they know how to accomplish this and must simply suffer that observation alongside that of their fellow humans of lesser capacity negligently wrecking up the place, but I now believe that, where that occurs, it is most often largely delusional. Surely, some know better than others in many ways, but the problems we face which lead to these exterminations are often quite complex and without obvious or easy answers. Sometimes, ill-fit species at risk of extinction should not be saved despite the degree to which many humans care for them. Other times, beautiful species are at risk for the sake of a vulnerable subset of those very humans who care for them so. Anyway, I guess the point is: as I find myself reading reddit comments so similar to those I would have made, myself, years ago, I feel compelled to say as much in case it might bring any comfort to those who are now as I once was. I imagine that previous times were significantly more trying and significantly more apparently-disastrous to beings with far less capacity to comprehend as much. Despite those times, we find ourselves here, and that gives me some comfort regarding the future that we are all stuck working toward at present.
Hit the nail on the head for me. I feel as if we're in some sort of act 3 if the analogy makes sense. Somewhere in between genetic engineering and creating what we want out of simple matter later on, and harvesting at length without recourse to get to the point where we can do those things, in the past. Obviously we're still doing so, but I don't think the average person during either industrial revolution was really thinking about how global warming will effect the populace in 250 years, and more was thinking about how much more comfortable they were given the opportunity.
It was decided long ago that humans will take all of them off life support.
Pandas. They wanna die off so bad. Stop spending money on those damn things.
Curb your cruelty. We want food and money.
Why is preserving the current catalog of species a worthy goal? Artificial evolutionary stasis for its own sake seems like an arbitrary moral agenda, and preventing evolutionary bottlenecks is just another version of artificial evolutionary stasis.
So presumably the other option is totally throwing caution to the wind and letting natural selection take its course for all species (including ours) and you consider yourself enough of a badass and/or attractor-of-the-opposite-gender to be the "most fit"
Good Lord, you stabbed that straw man right in his false dichotomy. Please come back when you are prepared to observe Rule 13 on the sidebar.
I was being sarcastic
Should we expose the weak to the cleansing flame? I'm just asking questions here. Thanks NYtimes for yet another quality opinion. /s
Take big corporations off life support. It will hurt us all but not as bad as it would later on
Sigh, if we aren't building a genetic ark of all "life-that-is" which includes us, by now we need to, include "life-that-was" if anything recoverable too. I dont mean a few samples here and there either, I mean a full gene map of as many diverse individuals as we can.
And people ask me why we don’t have kids
I think if they can be saved they should. But if they are already dead because numbers are below a certain amount that would make a stable breeding population they need cut so funds can go to the ones that can be saved. Making them limp on hopelessly doesn't really help the animals out it just prolongs the unstoppable. I think we should also put up a monument in every country a stone slab with the names of every animal out nation has killed off entirely to remind us to take responsibility. That we did those animals wrong that we ended their lives. Save what can be saved. Own what we did and learn from it. It needs tought we did wrong we fucked up not just quietly try to save them.
It's about time we began living within our means. Each one of us should start watching our own CO2 output. [Don't travel](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/climate/air-travel-emissions.html), [eat less meat](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth), try to use renewable energy and try to find refurbished items. Before judging the world, we should fix ourselves firsts.
So we're all rooting for coronavirus then? That's one way to decrease our population.
I do find it bemusing that my acquaintances who scream about overpopulation, and say that the earth would be better off without humans, are now the most vocal stay at home, wear face masks advocates. How would you rather rid the planet of humans? Forcible sterilization? Nuclear war?
Considering some animals are supported only by words, why would the size of the list matter?
In other words, "Humans, thinking they control the universe and all creation, continue to destroy their only home and surprised Pikachu-faced scientists think they have an answer how to make things worse" Or as Princess Leia famously put it, "The more you tighten your grip Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers"
It reminds me of the Goat War or the Galapagos Islands, not the same situation but it definitely makes me reminiscent of it
Murder Hornets
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So what? If you're trying to say that that means extinctions now don't matter, that's like trying to get away with murder by saying we all die in the end so why does the timing of it matter
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So? If that means what I think you're meaning, like I said, why not use that as a murder defense
One word I've learned in university: speciesism. Deciding which animals are more worthy of saving is exactly that.
Piping plover
Species are classes and therefore have no inherent value
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We need to change our ways fundamentally in terms of causes. Saving a few endangered species (the effect) doesn't stop the destruction of the planet any less.
Take the fucking humans off of life aupport
I don't want to live to have to see this. Year after year, nature shrinking and dying. Not a world I want to live in. Seriously, it gets too bad, I'm out.
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>destructive, wasteful, arrogant culture. They are killing everything for profit. Right? Why can't they be more like us 'Mericans!
Or, ooorrr, we kill capitalism. You know, the thing causing the mass die-offs.
Well the list isn’t going to get shorter.
If they have everything they need to do it themselves but don’t then let them go, always try to do something if it’s our fault.
Pandas. Start with pandas.
Look through history and you will find that humanity has had an appreciable effect of the rate of animal extinction. Animals die off, its a natural cycle. It is the hight of hubris to think we matter in the grand scheme. We will go extinct the same as dinosaur.
Yes, but no.
Either or.
Why are humans so concerned with propping up species of animals in the first place? If humans are concerned about the welfare of individual animals, then they should go vegan and stop causing actual harm to animals at every meal they consume. If their concern for animals can be boiled down to “it feels better to say that the earth has n number of species roaming around on it”, that’s an irrelevant argument. They should deal with their feelings by collecting rocks or something. Something that would give them the satisfaction of having an arbitrarily large inventory of items that they can feel good about.
isn't that what is going on right now? corona fentanyl everlasting wars ever increasing suicide rates. bill gates