Defeat against whom? Is human race at war with someone?

Earth overshoot day isn't about survival of human race, it's about human being in balance with Earth. Countless species are extinct because of us. Is this victory?

All the other animals want our food. Many of them want our flesh. Plant viruses destroy our crops. Locusts will starve human children to death. We are absolutely at war.

A trillion parasites want our blood: hookworms, ticks, mosquitoes, you name it.

We destroyed smallpox for ourselves, but we also eradicated rinderpest to the benefit of a great many large animals (deer, giraffes, goats, cows, etc). We never started a Save the Hookworm campaign for good reason. We will wipe those fuckers out eventually.

We don't even have to worry about our children being eaten by wolves in most forests now... because we killed most of the wolves. A fairy tale ending.

So yeah, we're at war and always will be. Let's kill HIV next.

Ecosystems are not "at war" with us. Parts of it are beneficial to us, parts of it are not. We cannot simply exterminate the parts we don't like because they are all intertwined. Of course, it doesn't mean that we should breed hookworms within us and spread HIV for the sake of it, but treating it as a war is a bit ignorant of how ecosystems work.

The ecosystem could support only a few of us, only so many food-plants could grow in such and such an area.

Then, we learned to grow crops.

Then, we learned to control and even eradicate pests to our crops.

We bred the plants and animals to suit our needs and wants, to make not just more food but tastier food.

We can, we have, and we will continue to transcend "the ecosystem" when it suits us. We will bend it not just to our needs, but to our desires. We will have dominion over it, and we will have delicious sweet corn on the cob instead of bitter grass seed, and we won't share it with the locusts and crop viruses.

> We were naked, starving hunter-gatherers once. Hyenas preyed on us. We struggled to find wild plants and animals to eat to survive.

Until we killed all mammoths and almost all of megafauna.

> The ecosystem could support only a few of us, only so many food-plants could grow in such and such an area. > Then, we learned to grow crops.

And burned out large swaths of land for grazing land, maybe created the deserts of today with fire, deforestation & overgrazing.

What happens when we cut down the last tree standing and plant the last piece of land with corn? We already have more land for meat/dairy production, than we have forests? [0]

> Then, we learned to control and even eradicate pests to our crops.

What happens when we kill the last 20% remaining bugs remaining in the world? How many more percent can we exterminate with our "control" of its population before some critical processes start failing? [1]

> we will continue to transcend "the ecosystem" when it suits us. We will bend it not just to our needs, but to our desires. We will have dominion over it, and we will have delicious sweet corn on the cob instead of bitter grass seed, and we won't share it with the locusts and crop viruses

What happens when we fish out beyond the critical mass of fish out of oceans, that only thing living there will be jellyfish (90% of sharks already gone because of by-kill and overfishing) [2]

How many wild animals can we replace with farm animals until we throw the nature out of balance too much (98% of biomass to 4% in biomass in last 100 years)? [3]

How many forests can we cut down until it rains only in coastal areas, thus turning the continents into deserts? [4]

Welcome to the anthropocene [5], current geological epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth's geology and ecosystems, including, but not limited to, anthropogenic climate change.

We already have our dominion over nature. But we don't handle that responsibility well.

And as you're the one talking about dominion, I have to point you to the [6]. Enjoy (engorge of) our superiority.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-g... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaspiracy [3] https://xkcd.com/1338/ [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKL40aBg-7E [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene [6] https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch

We won't pave all the forests. We won't kill all the bugs. We won't net all the fish. Partially because of hysterical people such as yourself, which is sometimes useful, and partially because of cold-thinking people such as myself, which is also sometimes useful.

For example, more than a few countries protect more than a quarter of their land. You've heard of national parks, I'm sure. Where I live, 32% of the country is protected, and of course, not all unprotected land has been paved.

The fisheries, too, are protected to varying extents, and so we farm fish in sea-pens and ponds inland. There's work still to do to rebuild the fisheries to their former glory, but it's not being ignored and pillaged as you imply. The fisheries are doing well and improving here and elsewhere, and fish is relatively affordable for hungry human beings.

What we did 100 years ago, we have learned from, and stopped, we won't clearcut the rest of the old-growth, in fact we have replanted, not just pine, but also hardwoods, even some very slow growing ones, and we hope that in a millenium (it takes a while to grow), we will have more of our old forests back.

Not much furniture is made of hardwoods now, and not many farmers in the developed world slash and burn. We already have made great strides toward making our dominion stable; perhaps even a net benefit. Pine farms sequester a lot of carbon. Keep in mind that there is no such thing as the "undeveloped" world, only the "developing" world, so they'll get there eventually too. We can and should have it all.

I take it that you personally do not live in the wild forests alone and naked? You also partake of this glorious civilization we have built? Why? Because it's better. They cut down trees to build your house, and I think you'll agree that it was a good idea so that you don't have to live in the rain. We don't have to pave it all, but we do have to pave some of it.

I will not divest myself of sympathy for the hungry men, women, and children of the world because a sanctimonious actor who can spend $1000 on every meal insists that his ideology is superior to mine. Sanctimony is never convincing.

Nevertheless, all the meat here is grass-fed, and all the cows look happy. I see them when I'm driving around. They hang out in lush meadows and on hillsides. In fact, where I work, there are quite a few grassy hills that do nothing, so they graze cows on them part of the year. It's nice to see them trampling around and playing while I write machine control code. Those cows are going to die one day anyway, we may as well humanely make meat of them and stay strong and healthy so we can build a more beautiful, prosperous, peaceful world.

In closing, I will say that I know the above is a little optimistic, but a little optimism is called for to move us forward. We need not depress all of the kids who will build our glorious future with a gnashing of teeth about the wrongs of the past, with claims of defeat, but to motivate them with possibility. We can do better, sure, and we are trying. I believe we will succeed. We will have our beautiful, prosperous, peaceful world. We already have it on a good portion of this earth. I'm going to go outside and enjoy some of it now.

Optimism is a must, I agree. But it should not stop us from searching for ways forward, it should not make us complacent, it should not limit the actions we could take.

You want to believe. I get it. I was there myself. But then you'll open your eyes, see that all that progress is just words and smoke and you'll stand on the corner with the sign: "the end is nigh".

<https://www.chrismadden.co.uk/cartoon-gallery/the-end-is-nig...>

Some links for complementing your viewpoint.

Protected areas:

<https://www.ecowatch.com/earth-environmental-protection-area...> How Much of Earth Is Currently Protected? - 17% land, 6% sea, "many protected and conserved areas are not demonstrating effectiveness"

Fish farming:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_farming#Issues> Fish farming - issues <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaspiracy> Seaspiracy

Hardwood:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation#Present-day> - (... in 2019 ...) a third of that loss, 3.8 million hectares, occurred within humid tropical primary forests, areas of mature rainforest that are especially important for biodiversity and carbon storage. That's the equivalent of losing an area of primary forest the size of a football pitch every six seconds

There is no alternative. Defeat and death are not an alternative to working harder. It is infinitely better to fail while having tried to overcome than it is to concede defeat, give up, and lay down. The former is noble, and the latter cannot, and should not, be countenanced.

Join the fight. I am right now today building machines that grow more food on the same land. It's my day job. We don't have to work on adtech and digital casinos. We can win, we can have fun doing it, and we can be prosperous and happy.

You seem like you don't accept that nature is already critically depleted, that biodiversity is severely threatened (or you simply don't see its value), and that we're doing (as a species) too little too late too reluctantly to change the current "business as usual" approach to solving this problem.

I accept that I can't change your viewpoint here & now.

P.S. being alarmed is not hysteria, an opposite to optimism, or even defeatism.

Some definitely are, they are also an important source of biomass for extreme northern latitudes.

Anopheles is fucking useless.

The parent comment's claim that "life is a war against entropy" is completely in line with this model.

So do all the other people. It is a very dangerous ideology that is willing to justify any action on the notion of increased survival.

There is this nonsense idea that the earth would be fine if humans didn’t come along. It wouldn’t. This planet is in its death throes. Life has delicately established itself in a habitable zone that is coming to an end. The carbon cycle has a good 800M years left before photosynthesis starts grinding to a halt. That might seem like a long time, but life’s been here for a good 4B years - we are 75% through life on earth. It’s taken evolution 4B years to print its first ticket off this rock: humans. That it’ll print another in 800M years is a poor bet.

The idea of saving life on this planet by curbing human progress is a fools errand. You save life on this planet by bringing it with you when you leave this rock.

I have never meant anyone who's concerned about Earth's ability to perpetuate its ecosystems in 800 million years. People are concerned about its ability to (comfortably) support human life 20, 200, or (maybe) 2000 years from now.

It seems as if you're trying to imply that industrial humanity hasn't had a uniquely destructive impact on the natural environment over the past two centuries.

Everyone is obsessed with these short time scales. But I’ve yet to see someone propose a viable alternative to human civilization on a 800M year timescale.

Yes, I do believe humans are bringing about the end of the Holocene. But I’m fairly forgiving of the human race on multiple grounds:

1 - life on earth needs a ticket out or it dies in 800M years no matter what. That ticket requires escaping orbit and establishing itself on another rock. I have no reason to believe that any species that evolves to successfully do that would fair better than humanity. It doesn’t matter how far in the future this event is, it’s a critical path for at least one species to follow if life on earth is to end in any way other than complete extinction. If it has to happen - it has to happen. And so far, I haven’t seen many great arguments for viable alternative timelines of human (or non-human) progress that avoid complete extinction in 800M years.

2 - No other species on earth, that I know of, self identifies that it is past the ecosystem’s carrying capacity and attempts to self correct. For example, white tail deer in the Midwest will gladly keep having babies and eat all their food supply. The plants all die. Then the deer all starve. Then the wolves and coyotes all starve. And then the cycle repeats. The deer don’t call international food symposiums to talk about the sustainability of harvesting their food stock. This is a uniquely human trait. Humans are held to a different standard because we know better - which in and of itself is amazing and gives me significant hope.

TL;DR: there isn’t another species that I’d bet on to do a better job at saving all life on earth than what humans are already doing. Yes we have work to do, of course we have work to do, because we are literally life on earth’s only (risk adjusted) chance. If you’re not trying to sustainably save life on earth, what are you advocating for?

I don't feel completely safe in ruling out cephalopods in that regard. That said, life on dry land would seem to be a precursor to scientific advancement such as chemistry.

What?

Most of that is fairly bleak.

Unfortunately, the main one we can't outsmart is volcanic winter, which has produced planet-wide famines on several occasions, and is all but certain to happen again.

Geologically speaking, the 20th century was pretty quiet. In the 21st century we've already had two tsunamis (including the 2nd or 3rd biggest earthquake), and the Tonga volcanic eruption, which was fortunately below sea level, but still likely the second loudest noise in human history after Krakatoa, and Eyjafjallajökull which had the potential for volcanic smog but fortunately didn't happen.

We're overdue a Cascadia mega-thrust earthquake which would have "interesting" repercussions for the tech industry, given how much of it is based on the US west coast.

I agree with your point though, we've largely progressed through normal seasonal issues with crops, and dramatically improved yields via science.

And yet, here we are still.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315%E2%80%931...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter

What really causes starvation is a shortage of shipping. Shipping wheat from Thunder Bay to Egypt requires a lot more ships than shipping from Odessa to Egypt.

So: kill the cows and the pigs, eat the meat and the feed.

If both food production and oil production drop at the same time, then we're screwed.

(A volcanic winter would be quite bad for solar too. I don't know how fast we can scale fission in a disaster scenario, but I think it's our best hope. We should keep improving our fission tech too.)

I suspect you are right.

What is less clear is whether earth has the resources to sustain the standard of living rising in these developing nations.

There is currently 1.2 billion people living in developed countries and 5.4 billion in developing countries. Even if the developing populations stabilise, if their standard of living increases to match that of the 1.2 billion developed population, will our natural resources and environmental systems cope?

If not, we need to work on ways to maintain a developed world standard of living without using nearly as many natural resources.

We are sitting on a big ball of matter, so at long as we have the energy, we can make all the gadget we need. (You can even make food underground in multiple levels, if you have enough energy to burn on lighting.)

So the real problem is energy. Luckily, renewable are currently getting a lot cheaper. And we also still have nuclear, if we really want to go that route. Fission works, and fusion is in the works.

The land on the moon is worth very little as there is almost no water on it. If we could extract rocket fuels from there we would already be sending people to mars. People don't seem to understand how valuable our planet is.

For water, the moon mostly lacks hydrogen. There's lots of oxygen in the rocks up there.

In general, I have sympathy for your position.

I think the person you replied to meant that being on earth, all you need is electricity. The rest falls into place.

Yes, the earth is extremely convenient.

In simple terms, having electricity is great. In contrast, oceans full of water at a balmy 20C have lots of heat energy, but you can't really use it, if there's no gradient.

See the second law of thermodynamics.

Or in other terms: you want electricity and a way to get rid of waste heat, like being able to radiate into outer space.

Hum... It's the only one we have to consume. But we still need the others, even if on fixed amounts.

I mean there was already alarm bells from UNESCO today or yesterday that the food program is at risk due to rising food costs due to the conflict in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia, which in turn puts a lot of people that depend on that food program at risk.

And it's closer to home as well; the amount of people that start to rely on food banks has gone up sharply with the high inflation.

I mean it's dumb IMO; while all companies are eager to raise prices with inflation as soon as it happens, wages lag behind.

It could also translate into an increased rate of extraction/depletion of natural resources, as the economic incentive grows stronger.

It ultimately needs to reach an equilibrium where a developed nation lifestyle for the entire world population would only consume natural resources at the rate that they can be replenished.

This certainly isn't impossible! You could construct scenarios where exactly that happens. But in real life, developed nations have an absolute advantage in producing just about everything. Some things are cheaper in developing nations, but only because of the opportunity costs (as in, steel would be cheaper in America, but the difference is even bigger in planes or whatever so that's what gets made there). If tomorrow the entire world was developed there would obviously be huge issues, but a continuous change would work out just fine.

Now that's not to say that there wouldn't be a higher fraction of people working in jobs which today in developed nations are seen as lesser. Some tasks are simply most efficient with a human at the helm. But if you wander around the rust belt, you'll find plenty of people that wish it made economic sense to employ them in manufacturing or mining. The shift wouldn't be a bad one.

> It could also translate into an increased rate of extraction/depletion of natural resources, as the economic incentive grows stronger.

That is absolutely true, but people overestimate the effect of resource use compared to pollution and the like. We will probably never run out of oil, metal, or any other nonrenewable resource. There's plenty there, and productivity growth will likely ensure that it is cost effective to extract pretty much indefinitely. Land is another story, as we're using a greater fraction of it than most other resources, but it's not by enough to make a huge difference.

The issue is pollution and other public bads. We can feed the world on very little land, but all the nitrogen runoff could cause other issues. We could go centuries without ever hitting peak oil, but dumping that much carbon into the atmosphere is problematic for obvious reasons. But that's no reason to fear production specifically! With greater productivity, we'd find it far easier to roll out nuclear worldwide. And while wasteful food production wouldn't go away without government regulation (or worldwide shifts in consumer preferences I won't hold my breath for), we can make those regulations and it's a small price to pay to increase the global standard of living.

Sometimes it was just mankind surviving as a species though. Humans as a whole are probably hard to kill. But that says nothing about one of the defining traits of mankind: Their ability to form advanced cultures and civilizations. The survival rate of these cultures is abysmal and there is no reason to be believe, the current culture with its incredible high standard of living for as many people as ever before, will not fail. I blame Hollywood and their stories about the eternally advancing human race for this fallacy.

Sure humans will likely survive a great many catastrophes but they might find themselves again in an agrarian society and in far fewer numbers.

> We can't ignore our problems, but neither have we met with any sort of defeat.

Yet.

The problem is that the developed world needs too many resources per capita. The developing world will have similar issues when it reaches a standard of living where they start declining. Also this decline is too slow and too far out to matter. We need to effectively at least halve global resource usage in the next 1 or 2 decades. Waiting until the developing world stops growing in 30 years is not a solution.

While this is my general take on these kinds of things as well, it's good to keep in mind that it takes just one outlier disaster to never be able to outsmart anything ever again, and perhaps it's just dumb luck that we're in a timeline where that didn't happen so far.

Apparently the volcanic winter of 536 lowered global temperatures by around 2.5C, which puts global warming in a worrying light, though.

It's not obvious to me so I'll ask: why does the volcanic winter of 536 lowering global temps by 2.5C put global warming in a worrying light?

When does it become advisable to start ignoring the people saying "don't worry, it's not too late, we'll figure it out"? While this may still be true, it's a great way to rationalize putting off the massive social, psychological, legal and technical changes we desperately need.

We are so smart it took us two hundred years to realise we are creating a disaster ourselves, and we still can't figure out how to stop it. Because we are so smart we keep outsmarting ourselves. Or our greed does, I'm not sure.

(with tongue very slightly in cheek)

If we continue down this path, were going to run against a wall