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Insect collapse

theguardian.com

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Re: Insect collapse

#41

Post by nobodyandproud »

pfisch wrote: post #27
11235813213455 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but I believe we can act about it. My environmental fingerprint is probably At a single person level, these actions looks insignificant, but if everyone does it, it won't be since the major source of pollution is residential pollution, i.e. people, and the other sources of pollution (industry, large-scale transports...) are also driven by consumption. So if people stop over-consuming, this saves dramatically…

[flagged]

It doesn't have to be this way. We utilize automation and slave-like labor to produce disposal junk.

It would be much better if via policy we encourage repairs, and levy a cost on packaging of any kind.

Then the market will sort itself out and there will be work in form of a robust secondary market.

Re: Insect collapse

#42

Post by jyounker »

xupybd wrote: post #28
titzer wrote: post #14

This planet will not support 7 billion humans. Certainly not 7 billion stupid-ass humans who swing massive sledgehammers into the pillars of the biosphere that support them in their hedonistic blunder in search of more "wealth". When I hear the words "economic growth", and then weigh it against the destruction of this magnitude, I often want to vomit. And how do I square the fact that I work on flipping bits in compu…

The only way we’re going to get better at managing our environmental impact is going to be through technological improvement. As you say we are too many now. The only way that technology will improve is under good economic conditions. We have to weigh economic growth against its impact else we will only speed up the destruction. When people become poor environmental concerns come second place to the basics of life.

We have the technologies now. We're just failing at the political and societal organization.

Re: Insect collapse

#43

Post by Regardsyjc »

titzer wrote: post #14

This planet will not support 7 billion humans. Certainly not 7 billion stupid-ass humans who swing massive sledgehammers into the pillars of the biosphere that support them in their hedonistic blunder in search of more "wealth". When I hear the words "economic growth", and then weigh it against the destruction of this magnitude, I often want to vomit. And how do I square the fact that I work on flipping bits in compu…

I used to feel this way and I found that it wasn't productive. What can you do? If you can do something, do it. If you think you can't change the future possible destruction of our ecosystem or millions of people, then you also need to make peace with it.

I think you can either do or not do things without the negativity. I found that the negativity made me think emotionally and not rationally or productively, and also sometimes came off in my conversations with people which was also not helpful-because I was clearly very emotional about the issue.

My thought process is whatever happens, happens. I can't do much to prevent whatever systemic collapse that might happen or not happen. But whatever I can do, I will. When I first learned about this, I thought it meant the future that I took for granted could be nonexistent - the dying happily carefree of systemic collapse part after having a family and growing old. It made me bitter and resentful. What's the point of doing anything if the world's going to go to shit by 2030? I decided to be more optimistic or maybe stoic. Make sure I can do what I can or all I can and not let some potential apocalyptic future darken my life. Sorry if this is a trash comment.

Re: Insect collapse

#44

Post by honestoHeminway »

Regardsyjc wrote: post #43
titzer wrote: post #14

This planet will not support 7 billion humans. Certainly not 7 billion stupid-ass humans who swing massive sledgehammers into the pillars of the biosphere that support them in their hedonistic blunder in search of more "wealth". When I hear the words "economic growth", and then weigh it against the destruction of this magnitude, I often want to vomit. And how do I square the fact that I work on flipping bits in compu…

I used to feel this way and I found that it wasn't productive. What can you do? If you can do something, do it. If you think you can't change the future possible destruction of our ecosystem or millions of people, then you also need to make peace with it. I think you can either do or not do things without the negativity. I found that the negativity made me think emotionally and not rationally or productively, and als…

You can sabotage, initiate preemptive collapse

Re: Insect collapse

#45

Post by latch »

xupybd wrote: post #28
titzer wrote: post #14

This planet will not support 7 billion humans. Certainly not 7 billion stupid-ass humans who swing massive sledgehammers into the pillars of the biosphere that support them in their hedonistic blunder in search of more "wealth". When I hear the words "economic growth", and then weigh it against the destruction of this magnitude, I often want to vomit. And how do I square the fact that I work on flipping bits in compu…

The only way we’re going to get better at managing our environmental impact is going to be through technological improvement. As you say we are too many now. The only way that technology will improve is under good economic conditions. We have to weigh economic growth against its impact else we will only speed up the destruction. When people become poor environmental concerns come second place to the basics of life.

This is silly. The economy has been booming for a while now and technology is more advanced that it's ever been. The situation is accelerating the wrong way. More of the same won't help.

Plant trees and revive massive amount of land loss that most countries have caused due to poor stewardship (overgrazing).

Better capture negative externalities. Or at the very least, stop subsidizing them. (aka, tax beef production, water consumption and plastic use).

This is a social, not technology problem.

Re: Insect collapse

#46

Post by wmeredith »

pfisch wrote: post #27
11235813213455 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but I believe we can act about it. My environmental fingerprint is probably At a single person level, these actions looks insignificant, but if everyone does it, it won't be since the major source of pollution is residential pollution, i.e. people, and the other sources of pollution (industry, large-scale transports...) are also driven by consumption. So if people stop over-consuming, this saves dramatically…

[flagged]

In the most practical terms, wouldn’t a first-world genocide be good* for the environment? I mean, the problem is us, right?

*I am not personally endorsing genocide.

Re: Insect collapse

#47

Post by shusson »

stouset wrote: post #4
King-Aaron wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world isn't, but the ecosystem that allows us to be alive appears to be.

To me, that’s the “our” in “our world”.

If life started on the Earth, then we are just part of a process of a particular rock floating in space. There is no 'our' world and it is not dying.

Re: Insect collapse

#48

Post by tejohnso »

11235813213455 wrote: post #17
titzer wrote: post #14

This planet will not support 7 billion humans. Certainly not 7 billion stupid-ass humans who swing massive sledgehammers into the pillars of the biosphere that support them in their hedonistic blunder in search of more "wealth". When I hear the words "economic growth", and then weigh it against the destruction of this magnitude, I often want to vomit. And how do I square the fact that I work on flipping bits in compu…

Agreed, but I believe we can act about it. My environmental fingerprint is probably At a single person level, these actions looks insignificant, but if everyone does it, it won't be since the major source of pollution is residential pollution, i.e. people, and the other sources of pollution (industry, large-scale transports...) are also driven by consumption. So if people stop over-consuming, this saves dramatically…

> My environmental fingerprint is probably You forgot to mention the #1 (by far) contributor that is 20 to 50 times more significant than everything else you mentioned.

> We recommend four widely applicable high-impact (i.e. low emissions) actions with the potential to contribute to systemic change and substantially reduce annual personal emissions: having one fewer child (an average for developed countries of 58.6 tonnes CO2-equivalent (tCO2e) emission reductions per year), living car-free (2.4 tCO2e saved per year), avoiding airplane travel (1.6 tCO2e saved per roundtrip transatlantic flight) and eating a plant-based diet (0.8 tCO2e saved per year).

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541

Re: Insect collapse

#49

Post by ryanmercer »

Somewhat related...

The other day I was annoyed at my allergies, in winter, with snow coming down and reflecting on how I never had allergies until around 30 a few years back. Bees. Bees dying. Bees eat pollen. It seems many of my friends have far worse allergies than previously...

What if we are already seeing consequences of insects dying off, like bees for example. I need to find time to try and see if there is good data on allergies, if there has been a general increase, and how it matches up with bee die off and pollen count. Is it possible that bees not being around to use pollen, has caused pollen count to go up on average, which is causing more allergy issues with humans?

And what happens if mosquitoes start dying off, we have chocolate because mosquitoes are one of the few pollinators that can pollinate the cacao tree due to the small size.

sigh

Re: Insect collapse

#50

Post by chakalakasp »

lixtra wrote: post #33
mikeash wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That term is a quote from one of the scientists. It also seems quite appropriate. What would you use to describe this event?

Anthropocene extinction. I'm sure the ecosystem will finally stabilize with a fraction of current amount of species. It so far always did in the past. EDIT: I did not make up the term. The term Holocene seems to be more current (but also more obscure). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

Right, but having your species single-handedly cause a mass extinction event on a scale not seen in 250 million years and having it happen in the span of a couple centuries (which is like a millisecond in geological time) seems like a pretty big deal to me. Like the biggest of big deals that we’ve ever lived through. This is a “there is a three mile wide asteroid inbound that will hit the earth in 80 years” kind of big deal.
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