this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
418 points (97.7% liked)

World News

38832 readers
3065 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Earth isn’t screwed. Humanity is.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Is it supposed to be comforting knowing that a mostly lifeless husk of a planet will exist after we kill off basically every known species? There's such a thing as too much optimism you know. It's OK to let the unnecessary death of everything you've ever seen be the point of the conversation.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I disagree with your prognosis. The earth has been hit by massive meteors, or huge volcanoes erupted - plenty of species survived. Your ancestors, in fact. There’s radiotrophic fungus growing in the Chernobyl reactor. The earth will be fine, as will many of the lower species.

We’re fucked if we don’t change our ways, though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Again, "the Earth will be fine" is not a comforting statement when it is immediately followed by "but anyone and everything you know will die". I don't know why someone always insists on making that distinction. It's not meaningful to anyone reading it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

It's not meant to be comforting, it's supposed to be tongue in cheek.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The idea that humanity could kill everything on earth forever is laughable. Sure, we can fuck up the earth, but a million years from now it will be full of life. A million years is nothing for a planet.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You're still not getting the point. In what way is that a comforting thought to you? In more simple terms, why does it make a damn bit of difference to you what happens in a million years?

In this potential future you, your family, all your friends, and everyone you've ever met are dead for no better reason than unchecked human greed and when confronting that possibility all you want to talk about is hypothetical flora and fauna. You're disassociating from the actual problem to the point that I don't think you're truly processing what it means for you.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I believe humanity is a disease on this planet. We have never done anything good for it. Our existence will be a minor blip in its history and completely unnoticed in the universe.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Ok, well maybe you should lead with that next time so people will know you're coming at it from a wildly different angle than most.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I wouldn’t say most. I think most people understand humanity, like all life, is a temporary species. I’m not really sure what issue you have with that fact.

Humanity is bad. Maybe not you specifically. Not me. But as a species, a group, we have been destroying the only home we will ever have since we picked up tools ~50,000 years ago. Think of all the extinct species that are our fault.

This point you think I’m trying to get at is simple, you think earth will be some kind of lifeless husk. And that’s not remotely possible. New life will emerge that can adapt to the damage we have done and thrive while we slowly fade away. This won’t be in our lifetime, but… a few hundred? A thousand? Totally extinct.

So yes, that’s comforting. All our hate, our greed, our destruction… gone. And the planet returns to normal after having a virus (humanity) for approximately 0.00125% of the ~4 billion years since it had life.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Nothing has ever done anything good if you view things like that, what good has an ant or a flower done?

The universe doesn't mind us modifying this rock to our needs, it doesn't even really mind our pollution either really it's only us that have that romantic desire for certain types of beauty - the universe churns up and burns down anything it feels like on its ballet, the moments of novelty and beauty are magnificent and destructive.

We are a part of nature, just as volcano and tree take over and change the landscape so do ant and human. It is all beautiful and all filled with wonder.

It took great upheavals and vast destruction to ready the world for us, endless apocalypse such as the replacing of the atmosphere with oxygen or invasive species colonising every last inch of soil and sea. It would be a tragedy if we were extinct, one we must fight to avoid just as trees fought to survive and ants. That is what this world is and what all worlds are.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Our extinction is no more tragic than the extinction of a volcano.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Maybe, we are a lot rarer though and much more complex. The universe has to work much harder to create a thing such as us

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That’s only relative to our current understanding of the universe. We think we are complex because we don’t know anything more complex. I’d say we aren’t that far away from most creatures on earth.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

True but we're by far the most complex and unique thing around here, every flower is beautiful and every being is a new type of fascination to the universe.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Viruses don’t know they’re viruses. We aren’t unique. We are just like every other thing. An animal who is concerned with preservation who hasn’t evolved very far beyond the greedy hunter-gatherer.

And the universe, btw, doesn’t know we exist.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's where you're wrong, part of the universe knows you exist, loves you, and is very amused by your opinions - I know because I am that bit of the universe.

By stating that we're like every animal you prove that we are not, do you think a snail pities it's existence or has that intellectual curiosity to question it's worth and insult the value of its being?

Humans are fascinating and adorable, especially the grumpy emo ones who use the magnificence of their intellect to construct vast and woeful towers of logic from which to decry their own being.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Some flowers smell like smell like condescending shit. 

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I mean, the species on the planet, and the climate kind of is, so yeah, it kind of is. What's your definition of screwed that says the planet itself will be just fine?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The carbon sequestered in the earth in the form of coal, oil and gas hasn't always been in the earth. After all, hydro carbons are in fact hundreds of millions of years of dead trees buried under mud sequestering atmospheric CO2. Which implies there was a time with all that CO2 in the air yet still trees to capture it. By releasing it all, we reset the biosphere's clock to about a time when earth supported a different kind of life (one without us in it), but life nonetheless.

Frankly, the comparisons to Mars and Venus seem a bit overblown.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago

Maybe, maybe not. We're dealing with extremes that are accelerated here that have never been seen before in earths history, except when the dinosaurs went extinct, and I think 4 other very sudden climate changing events. But this one being human driven is unique, bcz all other events were naturally occurring (except the meteor impact of course). Species don't have time to adapt to sudden changes in climate like this. We are very likely killing all life on earth right now, and it's possible it will never recover.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 10 months ago

Life will adapt and rebuild.