we need to stop fishing
When One Protected Species Kills Another
21–24 of 24 posts
Re: When One Protected Species Kills Another
#22So here's a radical idea that's fun to think about. Usually we think of nature as "conditions before humans came along." And we figure that if humans disrupted it, then humans should try to undo the disruption. But that's just fixing one intervention by means of another intervention, and the fix likely has just as many, if a different set, of poorly-understood and unintended consequences. So lately I've started to de…
"Nature" could also include humans. I haven't seen anything to suggest that the natural outcome of billions of years of evolution isn't some highly intelligent, dominant organism that ends up shaping its environment to an extreme degree.
That's exactly the idea - the environment does include humans. And if humans stopped intervening: that's "nature" (still adhering to the idea of nature as separate from humans, which I agree with other commenters, is problematic).
Re: When One Protected Species Kills Another
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Nature" could also include humans. I haven't seen anything to suggest that the natural outcome of billions of years of evolution isn't some highly intelligent, dominant organism that ends up shaping its environment to an extreme degree. I wonder if the narrative that humans are not of nature makes it easier for us to harm the environment, since we do not feel part of it (as evidenced by our use of the word nature…
I think this point has merit and it’s important for us to think of ourselves as part of the environment, but also, there are lots of other animals (like most of them?) that don’t care at all about the environment and the only reason they don’t destroy it in pursuit of their vital resources is that they can’t. There are endless stories of animals eating and breeding until their ecosystems are destroyed and they suffer…
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Re: When One Protected Species Kills Another
#24M'lord pseudolus