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Birds Are Vanishing from North America

nytimes.com

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Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#101

Post by everdrive »

jandrese wrote: post #6
spodek wrote: post #5

We're swimming in environmental problems. We can come up with makeshift solutions to many, but for solving them all, and not to suggest it's the only solution, but a part of anything comprehensive, is there any environmental problem that a smaller human population doesn't alleviate?

I prefer to keep "kill all humans" lower down on the list of possible solutions to environmental problems. Lets try some alternatives first.

No is suggesting this. Population control via less breeding is always an alternative.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#102

Post by anigbrowl »

ff317 wrote: post #70
technothrasher wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or we die out and the planet recovers on its own. That makes it sound like there's some kind of natural 'ideal state' for the planet to recover to. Without us, the planet would just go on changing, without anything to judge the current environment at any point as good or bad to any particular standard. Saving the environment is simply saving ourselves. Nothing more, nothing less.

+1 - I think the kind of marketing and messaging that makes environmentalism all about saving "the planet" and "the animals" and "the natural environment" really doesn't serve us well. A better strategic approach would be to highlight (with the right crafty messaging) that a very tiny statistical slice of earth's historical states and potential future states are any good at supporting large human populations comforta…

Your approach will fail for the same reason than an ethical environmental appeal does.

Enough humans who feel and fear their impending mortality are selfish and vindictive enough to obstruct change because they want to conserve whatever material comforts they have now and do not care about what happens to other people after they're dead. I would go so far as to say that some of them take a perverse pleasure in the idea of everyone else being worse off, going by the number of facially specious arguments and overtly sadistic rhetoric deployed by many self-styled 'skeptics'.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#103

Post by tgarv »

amatecha wrote: post #48
technothrasher wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or we die out and the planet recovers on its own. That makes it sound like there's some kind of natural 'ideal state' for the planet to recover to. Without us, the planet would just go on changing, without anything to judge the current environment at any point as good or bad to any particular standard. Saving the environment is simply saving ourselves. Nothing more, nothing less.

I would never use the phrase "ideal state", but rather "natural state". Though, even that is not quite accurate as humans are naturally-occurring too, but the things we do (and do to the planet) are not quite so "natural". While thinking that "the planet is worse off because of humans" is a judgement, I think it's not unreasonable to assert that innocent life forms all over the world suffer by our actions (more than…

I was actually wondering recently if there has ever been a huge spike in, say, a new species of algae or something, that caused a large change in the atmosphere. I know that what we're doing as a species isn't "natural", and we know better and could avoid it if we really wanted to, but it still had me thinking about what kinds of things the planet has gone through before that would have been alarming at the time if someone had been around to monitor it.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#104

Post by abootstrapper »

point78 wrote: post #10
tylerpachal wrote: post #7

(serious) Is there any hope? Its just one problem after another (probably because everything is linked). What are the chances that we will get our act together or be able to engineer ourselves out of all of these problems?

Trim the world population

There are better solutions to climate change. But access to solid sex education, free birth control, and legal and safe abortions would go far to aid in a lot of issues, over population included. It wouldn’t even require any draconian measures, just give people the tools for proper family planning.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#105

Post by jmcqk6 »

monktastic1 wrote: post #36

This apparently isn't a popular opinion, but: this world is precious. I would even go so far as to say miraculous . Until we wake up to this fact, we will continue to ennui ourselves and this world into oblivion. It's hard to prove (or even study), but I believe this is the root cause of all the other tragedies. It is not something we will merely engineer our way out of. We don't like religion (or in many cases, even…

>modern scientific metaphysics has no space for "miracles," so we don't have a coherent framework in which to talk about or even remind ourselves of this profound truth.

I'm not sure that this is true. As my understanding of the world has increased, my appreciation of it has also increased, as has my sense of wonder. The term 'miracle' implies some supernatural cause, but I don't need something supernatural to understand the preciousness of the world I find myself in. Nor do I struggle finding a way to talk about this.

My own hypothesis is that the world is simply too complicated for any one person to comprehend on large scales any more, and when it comes to environmental concerns, the problem of the commons completely kicks our ass.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#106

Post by coliveira »

Feuilles_Mortes wrote: post #100
RoutinePlayer wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I fully know your stances on all of this, but Religion is not really a prerequisite for fully appreciating how beautiful yet precarious our biosphere truly is. Engineering solutions to combat or circumvent Climate Change is our ONLY way forward. But first we need to get a critical mass of our American citizenry to be convinced we have an actual problem. Especially, in fact, a large segment of the elector…

> Engineering solutions to combat or circumvent Climate Change is our ONLY way forward. I think that this perspective ignores the environmental problems inherent in a capitalist mode of production, and in fact plays into them. I think that a political revolution could be imminent, and I would urge those concerned about the future of life on this planet to consider alternative modes of economics.

Capitalism is based on infinite growth (economists even laugh at people like Malthus who proposed otherwise) and on fungibility of values (money is green no matter where from). This basically leads to a necessity of destroying nature for the sake of realizing economic growth. We need at least start to take seriously the fact that, the way capitalist economy is conducted, there is no way forward to save the environment.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#107

Post by guerrilla »

monktastic1 wrote: post #77
guerrilla wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure from what you wrote that we have the same definition of metaphysics. I'm referring to a specific branch of mainstream academic philosophy. [1] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics

I think we do. "Metaphysics" refers to both the branch of philosophy as well as any particular system of metaphysical beliefs. We all subconsciously (and sometimes consciously) carry around a metaphysics in the latter sense.

Precisely :)

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#108

Post by anigbrowl »

tylerpachal wrote: post #7

(serious) Is there any hope? Its just one problem after another (probably because everything is linked). What are the chances that we will get our act together or be able to engineer ourselves out of all of these problems?

Don't wait on a consensus solution because it's difficult and slow to establish consensus and it's easy for malicious actors to frustrate. Get together with like-minded friends and engage in direct action against environmental criminals that will draw public attention to their malfeasance.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#110

Post by the_af »

monktastic1 wrote: post #36

This apparently isn't a popular opinion, but: this world is precious. I would even go so far as to say miraculous . Until we wake up to this fact, we will continue to ennui ourselves and this world into oblivion. It's hard to prove (or even study), but I believe this is the root cause of all the other tragedies. It is not something we will merely engineer our way out of. We don't like religion (or in many cases, even…

I agree with you that the world is precious. I also agree with someone else in this comments section that quotes someone saying the world and the life within is precious regardless of what we can extract from it.

However, this puzzles me:

> Psychedelics seem like one promising avenue. Perhaps they will help give us the inspiration to fill in this tragic blindspot.

Why? What do psychedelics have to do with anything? I'm not religious and I'm not about to try psychedelics either, and still I'm filled with awe at the world and want nature to continue existing. I find a lot of natural places breathtaking. I stare at a starry night's sky -- something increasingly difficult because of light pollution -- and I'm awed at the vastness and beauty of the cosmos. It's hard to describe the feeling, but anyone who's felt it knows what I'm talking about.

I still don't believe in any gods or need any kind of psychedelics.

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