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Insect collapse

theguardian.com

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Re: Insect collapse

#241

Post by titzer »

vokep wrote: post #199
honkycat wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you vastly over-estimate our power. If the oceans die through acidification and pollution, and all of the insects die we will die as well.

Yes, we'll die, but only 99.99% dead. The remaining surviving will have learned the most costly lesson yet of humanity, and will continue on and rebuild. It sucks, but so did the millions of years of animals murdering each other just so that I could type this and you could read it.

> The remaining surviving will have learned the most costly lesson yet of humanity

I wish I could believe this, but I don't. The cycle will repeat as the collapse passes out of living memory. We will have lost civilization by then, the only records that remain will be the trash heaps that we leave behind.

Re: Insect collapse

#242

Post by voqv »

crispinb wrote: post #193
voqv wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason we as humanity have been living really well for the last 50 years and, without thought, we imagine it's just going to stay like that.

Even 'living well' isn't quite right. By and large, we have swapped out physical for psychological suffering.

What I meant is, for an unprecedented in human history amount of people life is not poverty, dirt, disease and death at 40.

But you're right, just like the observation below, we (this amount of people) also offload our suffering onto the environment and even onto some of those people living in poverty.

Re: Insect collapse

#244

Post by titzer »

sethammons wrote: post #179
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reaching out and talking to people will help. 1. If everyone has 1/2 surviving child then in 150 years, our population will become stable. 2. It’s not transferable because we still need species diversity 3. People will be incentivized with ubi and all their needs taken care of if they agree to #1. 4.stop animal based foods. 5. Return half planet back to nature to reforest and rewind. 6.reverse acidification of oceans…

Human populations grow slower the more advanced they are. Most of the first world, including the US, is below replacement fertility rate of 2.1. Without immigration and the like, the US would start contracting. Bringing the third world up to first world is what is needed. That and the other things you said. [EDIT] Links help: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility

The timescale for sub-replacement fertility to work its magic is too long--on the order of centuries. We are already in an overshoot scenario, and bringing the third world up to first world living standards will only consume more energy and produce more greenhouse gasses. We're in serious trouble and small tweak to birthrates isn't going to fix this.

Re: Insect collapse

#245

Post by Regardsyjc »

titzer wrote: post #74
Regardsyjc wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. I am somewhere along this path, trying to find a mindset to cope. Yet I have the feeling that even so, widespread, happiness all but ensures the collapse, as the emergent effect of everyone being happy and living their best life, no matter what they think as they d…

I am too optimistic about humanity. I think there are billions of humans on Earth and not all are as stupid as some people might presume. In fact I would say if there's any humans that survive, it will probably be the 1% that many people hate. I think even then being in the USA easily increases your survival chances.

At the same time, I have absolutely no doubts what is to come. If this is the end of humanity then so be it. It would be irrational to feel bad because I can't do much to stop a disaster like that. I accepted last year that I will die, everyone I love will die, and even potentially all of humanity will die perhaps in my lifetime, and I have made my peace with it.

I have spent a significant amount of time reading all the ways the dominoes will fall and how people will die. People are dying right now.

Happiness comes from within, not from outside. What happens outside should not affect what you feel inside. That's the mindset I learned from stoicism and reading Victor Frankl. "The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance."

If you are too emotional and depressed, you will be unproductive/not be able to do much to help, and do you also want to spend the little time you have like that? I choose to enjoy the little life I have with the people I love but not in ignorance. I will do everything I can but I will not let it darken my life and my disposition. I hope that makes sense.

Re: Insect collapse

#246

Post by Regardsyjc »

otikik wrote: post #93
Regardsyjc wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm still on the "affected by negativity" phase. May I ask what concrete actions are you taking (besides being optimistic). I spent one morning with a group which plants and looks after trees in a reserve near my place. We were putting protections around young saplings so cows wouldn't eat them. It took my team of three the whole morning to put protections around a single sapling. The whole thing made me sad. There i…

I'm doing the basic concrete actions of the eco-friendly conscious like consuming less, avoiding plastic, etc.

I don't think that will do much so I have a bigger dream of eliminating menstrual poverty. I read a book that said if we could educate more women, it could have a significant impact on climate change, and I think menstrual poverty is an easy way to access and help educate the women that probably need it the most. So I am working on creating free resources to help eliminate menstrual poverty in the USA to start with reusable products- and also building a company that sells reusable products but whose mission is to eliminate menstrual poverty. It's not much but it makes me feel better.

Drawdown is the book I read that lists 100 potential solutions to climate change to reverse whatever is happening now, if it's possible. Maybe you can check out the website and see if any of the solutions look interesting to you, and see if there's any way you could help people with them. Volunteering should make you feel happy like you're making a difference. Maybe you will feel a lot better when you can donate your skills to a cause that could move the needle. I am sure you have more skills than planting trees that any organization needs and could appreciate.

https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/women-and-girls/educating...

Re: Insect collapse

#247

Post by zoobab »

magduf wrote: post #149
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…

While I mostly agree, I would like to make one little point about "economic growth" not necessarily being worse for the planet: digital goods. People making money selling digital goods (e.g., downloadable songs/videos, subscriptions to internet content, etc.) doesn't have nearly the effect on the planet that making and shipping physical goods (VHS tapes, DVDs, CDs, magazines, etc.) does, especially as computing devic…

Not when you consider that the total ecological footprint of the internet and computers.

Not to mention the impact of online shopping, which is fed by the internet as an advertising/profiling/consuming state machine.

Re: Insect collapse

#249

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

ryanmercer wrote: post #226
CuriousSkeptic wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reallocating wealth to free up resources to focus on the challenges would be pretty straight forward. The IPCC report had a few figures on various techniques we could explore which to me looks “trivial” given the resources we have at our disposal. My point: it’s mostly a political issue.

>My point: it’s mostly a political issue. Both require technologies we do not have. The air and waters the world around are contaminated with microplastics, we're not fixing that. We just aren't, that's forever. It's done. All we can do is reduce how much we are adding. For the carbon sequestration, we don't even have any remotely viable methods for sequestering a gigaton annually. If you happen to know one, YC put a…

Nowhere did I imply current emissions could continue.

IPCC estimated up to 2Gt/y for afforestation alone. And their target was at 100Gt until 2100. Given emissions are cut abruptly.

My assumption for trivial was that this is the targets to be reached. That we cease all emissions not directly or indirectly contributing to reaching those targets and align our societies to prioritize this as the highest priority goal (as opposed to producing more worthless junk in order to keep people busy)

Re: Insect collapse

#250

Post by toasterlovin »

ForHackernews wrote: post #239
toasterlovin wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t get your position. You’re evidently not concerned with the greater good, only with what your own descendants will experience. But then you’re completely willing to ensure that you will leave no descendants.

I think you're poorly informed, or perhaps in denial about how far down the road we already are: [0] [1] [2] It's essentially too late for your or my hypothetical descendants to have any effect on "the greater good". The IPCC says either we cut _worldwide_ CO2 emissions by 50% in the next 11 years, or it's game over for +1.5C scenarios: all coral reefs die, along with most of the fish, crop yields down 40% in some pl…

I get the risks. I’m just not a quitter. Somebody has to show up and try and I’m willing to nominate my descendants for that. And I’m pretty sure they’ll be okay with my choice. Many people throughout history have been born into some pretty fucked up situations (slavery, etc.) and decided that life was worth living.
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