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Re:Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters by ericdykstra on Monday January 21, 2019 @02:21AM (#18958377)
Sometimes I think our only options going forward are a world where all natural habitat has been completely decimated, or an eco-fascist regime enforces pollution (and thus effectively population) control on the whole planet.
Re:Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters by nnq on Monday January 21, 2019 @04:35AM (#18959019)
> a world where all natural habitat has been completely decimated

That's probably the way we'll have it, but there will be artificial-natural habitat, eg. "reservations", that could grow to even be country-sized or half-continent-sized if we manage resources right. (Though probably they'll be smaller since we're going to have to some pretty large scale heavily-engineered-and-very-unnatural-agriculture to prevent famine in the face of climate degradation.)

The second option sounds somewhat enticing... but it would likely severely diminish speed of technological progress, hence diminish our even-longer-term changes of survival (think encounter and warfare with alien civs etc. - the universe is huge and if we/our-mostly-artificial-descendants survive long enough we'll have to compete with strains of life much more virulent than ourselves today).

Re:Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters by eseehausen on Monday January 21, 2019 @01:47PM (#18962482)
If the only thing stopping the structural changes necessary to prevent ecological collapse was a fear of aliens, then I think we'd be doing better.

Also, the kind of technological delay you're talking about there would be a couple of decades at most, when it looks like you're talking about thinking in terms of centuries. If anything, we're slowing down necessary technological advances to maintain the status quo long past the point where it's tenable.

Re:Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters by makerofspoons on Monday January 21, 2019 @09:03AM (#18960406)
There is reason to believe we may have already hit peak farmland or may in the near future: http://freakonomics.com/2012/12/21/why-peak-farmland-is-good... https://www.forbes.com/sites/billconerly/2015/05/26/peak-far...
Re:Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters by ForHackernews on Monday January 21, 2019 @11:07AM (#18961236)
Lots of current farmland is due to become unproductive with climate change, so we'd better hope we don't need as much.
Re:Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters by ams6110 on Monday January 21, 2019 @01:39PM (#18962405)
Those are ridiculously extreme alternatives.
Re:Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters by ericdykstra on Monday January 21, 2019 @10:23PM (#18965763)
We're currently well on our way to the first alternative, and I don't know if we can find a way out of it without the second

"Climate change" is a red herring; we can "fix" the increasing temperature problem and yet deforestation, pollution, and overpopulation will still destroy every natural ecosystem on the planet.

Re:Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters by Nasrudith on Monday January 21, 2019 @08:53AM (#18960353)
Really totallitaranism for "a good cause" is an incredibly dangerous fiction. Communism was essentially that fiction "for the workers" all they got out of that was torture and death.

The object of power is power and any claims of a cause are illusions and deceptions. React accordingly.

Re:Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters by ericdykstra on Monday January 21, 2019 @09:23AM (#18960517)
I used "eco-fascism" just because it's really the only somewhat mainstream movement that argues for ecological diversity preservation at all.

There are potential forms of alternative or third position government structures that allow for just as much or more personal freedom than current democracies, and yet can preserve our natural ecology. It just requires an accounting of destruction of commons, where untouched biodiversity is valued by the people of the state.

If we have the power to absolutely destroy the natural environment, we also have the power to protect its beauty for future generations rather than selfishly destroy the earth.

Re:Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters by noir_lord on Monday January 21, 2019 @07:40AM (#18959951)
I’ve seen that called the Garden Earth.
Re:Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters by kakaorka on Monday January 21, 2019 @03:04AM (#18958593)
I think you should watch the Handmaid’s Tale; it will make you never suggest your latter suggestion again :)
Re:Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters by benj111 on Monday January 21, 2019 @03:17AM (#18958668)
It was a book originally.

Plus that's kind of the opposite of what you're talking about, as most of the women are infertile.

Re:Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters by Ntrails on Monday January 21, 2019 @08:42AM (#18960298)
The point of the book isn't the fertility, it's the fascism. When you're doing something abhorrent that is, of course, supposed to save the world/species - that doesn't actually make it ok