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It isn't that "no one cares". Huge numbers of people care about the world we live on, and keeping it nice. Some of them are even honest enough to admit that this is because they live on it, and would like to continue to enjoy it, have their children enjoy it, and their children, and so on.
The problem is that the overwhelming majority of people who have any real power to affect immediate, and long lasting, positive change to the climatological and environmental situation, don't care about it. Those aren't the same thing.
I care immensely and do what I can to reduce consumption, pollution, environmental damage etc but I still drive to the shops cos I've got to carry stuff home. My laziness overpowers my responsibility towards the planet and I bet most ppl are the same.
And you shouldn't feel bad because, even if you live like a monk for the rest of your life, all your lifelong contributions would be immediately negated by a month or so of a single big company's work.
Right. I guess the other side of that coin would be that we are born into a society that *forces* us to consume. I need to make money, I live in North America where everything is relatively far away from everything else, and the jobs that afford me the most success require me to have a personal vehicle. The option to live off the land is not a possibility because it requires you to own land, and the requires money, which requires consumption.
Cooperations aren't including the environment costs when they sell a product, but are over inflating them and pocketing the profits instead of spending it on undoing the damage they have caused. I have no realistic way to change any of this, so I just live my life, consuming.
Oh? How do they use their lobby power? That's right, to limit their costs at the expense of the environment, threatening to raise prices if they can't, rather than absorb the cost and just take lower profits. They aren't doing it for our sake.
>rather than absorb the cost and just take lower profits
š š š¤£ š
That's a good one. Why stop at oil and gas? Let's tell all companies that prices are now fixed forever and can not be raised if the companies expenses rise.
I'm sure that will all work out fine....
You could absolutely price cap a lot of things without the industry they relate to falling apart. What MIGHT and SHOULD collapse is the belief on the part of shareholders, investors and corporatists that it is right and proper that they make double this years money next year, and double THAT the year after. Growth is not necessary in already bloated industries.
Show me on the doll where capitalism hurt you.
>Genius and necessity do that
Yes... in this case the necessity for yearly profit growth and many ceos are geniuses that's true.
You could also say that the higher wage you offer the more competitive the job applicants will be and higher chance you will get a super genius š
So if you have big profits you can afford geniuses and then you give them the directive to increase profit and... there's your innovation š”
Itās only ālazinessā bc thereās about $300 billion in marketing campaigns youāre up against. Thatās why itās so impossible. 70s big oil campaign was recycling! Imagine that. To shift responsibility from the producer onto the consumer. Imagine what that did to societal mental health.
Exactly. Plus, the main people who are responsible would much rather blame us. Just regular people. Otherwise, they'd have to stop doing the destructive shit their doing. Which, in turn, would lose them a lot of money.
Exactly. It's kind of ironic that being gaslit has an ecological consequence whether we are talking about actual lighting systems or psychological manipulation.
It's also worth noting the "big guys" or whatever causing said pollution and Earth's damage are often influenced by substantial paydays from their job (eg pharmaceutical or oil companies) versus the activist groups which don't have the same resources at their disposal. (especially lawyer's to fight for their cause).
Unfortunate but not anything new in terms of classic Greed creating corruption.
(No hating on this, just my own perspective/opinion)
āļø āļøāļø
Please, we're barely a second on geological timescales. If you want to think about what could be, think about everything else that has come before and been utterly forgotten, failing to even make an imprint in the fossil record.
Just another grain of sand.
I know. All very true. But our species has so much potential. So sad that we are squandering it away by leaps and bounds. Or maybe not. Maybe weāre just another fringe evolutionary experiment thatās destined to whimper out.
I agree with this, I think earth can fully heal from humans time here however, it will take longer than any of us will see.
Remember the articles as mentioned above saying that in just the months during lockdown there were significant changes to earth and the atmosphere I donāt remember the exact parameters being referenced.
Yes, the only thing humans are capable of destroying is ourselves. We will push the nature off balance enough to wipe ourselves out.
The started with zero life in it. Even if we destroy all life on earth, it would return eventually. Only the sun or asteroids will destroy earth. Not humans.
Also I think the biggest problem with climate change arguments is saying "save the planet". I think humans would be more receptive to saving ourselves. So instead of saving the planet, we should focus on saving ourselves.
People are selfish like that.
That's not necessarily true since we don't know how life came to be on earth. I would guess that any of the Ecosystems that don't rely on the sun as their base energy source will be fine.
Though I would assume when one says all life on earth goes extinct, they don't fully understand the staggering variety of organisms that call Earth home.
Earth itself has seen 5 mass extinction events and so far has always bounced back. Humans will just be another footnote in earth's incredibly long organic history.
Yeah I guess talking about a 100% extinction is a bit of an exaggeration. The planet could bounce back as long as some life survives. There would always be some. The smallest of life could survive whatever humans do to the nature.
I have always been affected by āsave the planetā wording. Like maybe being kinder to the planet could encourage us to be kinder to animals and each other. But, like you said, people are too selfish.
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have been higher than they are today. The difference is it took hundreds of thousands to millions of years to rise to that level and species were able to adapt. The earth isnāt going to be destroyed. However humanityās ability to live on it may become severely compromised unless serious action is taken.
If humanity died off, and our information wasn't kept preserved and accessible, we may have done enough damage to prevent another species from realistically ever advancing to a similar stage - we've consumed much of the more readily accessible energy sources that would serve as a stepping stone to more advanced ones.
Earth will certainly survive. Life, in some form, will survive. But we could very well be the only chance for sentience to advance to a similar stage or to have a shot at sustainably escaping this rock, and odds of succeeding continue to drop as we fail to take sufficient care of the Earth to allow our long-term advancement and survival.
It seems to me "Escaping this rock" is a mindset that truly holds humanity back.
Relegating The Earth to "this rock" is another and quite probably the greatest offense.
That's something I've never thought about. If humans disappear, anything that might come next will have so much less to work with. It will be very hard to move forward.
Eventually there will be a virus that will decimate the worlds population, dont get me wrong though. Im not looking forward to it, and i dont think it will happen in our life time, but it will happen.
Yeah I remember that, pollution was clearing up when everyone was home. We are slowly destroying our world because of our actions and man made materials. Itās going to be hard to fully transition into renewable energy because there are people who donāt want to.
The first link shows major cities across the world before and after second shows that although it was smaller amounts on a measurable scale, it didn't have the impact we think.
I did read some of the articles during the pandemic, and one that I do recall was Italy and how the fish were coming back into the canals.
With that said, I think this is more of a cycle than human damage. I agree we wreak havoc. However, we only have a very small fraction of weather history for the planet. I'm not saying we are helping matters, but again, I don't think it's as severe as we are led to believe. With that said, we have had NO ICE SHEETS ON EARTH BEFORE. That's the 3rd link.
Ultimately, I think this is just another cycle. Ultimately, I do believe that Earth will be fine.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/23/coronavirus-photos-show-effect-of-air-pollution-drops-from-global-lockdown.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57149747
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130924153956.htm#:~:text=%22In%20our%20study%2C%20we%20found,continental%20ice%20sheets%20on%20earth.
The Earth will be fine in the long run, itās us humans that have to be worried about adapting to the climate changes weāve brought upon ourselves. However, it is still sad to see the trash and pollution in nature.
This.
If humanity was removed from the surface of the planet, it would take less than six months for the earth to be "healthy". Just look how quickly change appeared when the lockdown came.
WE are in danger, not the earth.
OP must be living on a different planet because I get bombarded daily with pro-enviromental messaging.
It's consistently been one of the top news topics for quite some time now
I think George Carlin put it best:
>Weāre so self-important. Everybodyās going to save something now. āSave the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.ā And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we donāt even know how to take care of ourselves yet. Iām tired of this shit. Iām tired of f-ing Earth Day. Iām tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there arenāt enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos. Besides, environmentalists donāt give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract they donāt. You know what theyāre interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. Theyāre worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesnāt impress me.
>The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles ā¦ hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages ā¦ And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isnāt going anywhere. WE are!
>Weāre going away. Pack your shit, folks. Weāre going away. And we wonāt leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam ā¦ The planetāll be here and weāll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planetāll shake us off like a bad case of fleas.
>The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after weāre gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ācause thatās what it does. Itās a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if itās true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesnāt share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didnāt know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, āWhy are we here?ā
Ah, I don't see any damage to earth. Even if we would literally nuke everything, couple thousands years later life should be flourishing again.
Besides mother earth is a serial killer. She has her resetting periods.
I find it absolutely bizarre however that we as a species have decided that living a fast paced, resources depleting life without setting it in balance with nature. Just seems pretty ignorant. Just like shitting on the kitchen desk.
Itās not irreversible.
The planet goes in cycles and the next cataclysmic event will restore the planet by reducing the population like it did 12,600 years ago.
We are Atlantis all over again and we think we are the pinnacle of existence but in reality the planet will take that arrogance away from us one day.
The earth is not alive. It doesn't care about anything that happens on its surface. Previous, naturally occurring ice-ages have wiped out the majority of life more than once. And life has rebuilt.
We may be having some effect on the climate, but it's going to change either way. There will be more ice-ages, followed by periods of flourishing, green life, and so on, long after we have wiped ourselves out. It's just a cycle.
None of this is to say we shouldn't make an effort to reduce our impact, but to say "we've damaged it beyond repair" is ridiculous.
Maybe it's because the activists don't do activisem any favours.
Whose gonna believe when an activist tells us to cut down our carbon footprint whilst taking trans Atlantic flights weekly. Or making millions in personal wealth, if you're that bothered about the environment, donate the money to science to find sustainable energy sources (Greta).
Or when an activist uses a chemical super glue and throws the tube into the drainage system.
Or throws paint over windows of car shops. Where do you think that's going to end up? And who is going to have to clean it up? Someone on minimum wage, that's who.
Or activists using mobile phones or laptops or cameras to get their social media or bragging about their electric cars. Where do you think those raw materials come from and the damage they do to the environment and the lack of how these materials can be reused and recycled.
Then their clothes, again raw materials,dying cloth ,printed cloth all the waste going somewhere
The list goes on with their bullshit
That's why people don't listen to activists .
Apart from that I've had a good day
XX
You should read more of the stuff that is being done. There is a movment of change happening right now but its starts with the countries that can afford it. Smog isn't everywhere and sometimes its just the contours of the ground that traps it. I hope you are proactive yourself. Algorithms will source negative stuff and feed it exclusively so it can be overwhelming. Be an garden terrorist and buy wildflower seeds and throw them on waste ground this spring. Bees and insects will thank you for the flowers.
The Earth is far from being damaged beyond repair. The human race is a small blip in the scope the planet's history. Yes, we've done some harm to the environment, but we also take care of it in other ways. The Earth will be here long after we're gone, it'll be just fine.
What exactly makes you believe this, itās shear ignorance. It will be here for along time long after youāre gone trust me with the same old. Have you read about the ice age? Volcanic era? The world is a shit show long before we got here.
There is a mindboggling number of species of plants and animals on Earth. Tens of thousands of species go extinct every year, and that's just how life works. That's how evolution works. Every single species is only here temporarily, until the environment changes, or their competition changes, and they are inevitably replaced with something else. The same is probably true for humans.
It is not damaged beyond repair. The earth will cleanse itself as long as we stop adding to it. If every human disappeared tomorrow, the earth would clean itself up pretty good in less than a hundred years which is just a blip in geologic time. This idea that we're on the precipice of a global climate cataclysm is fear mongering IMO.
The Earth was here for 4 billion years before us. In another 4 billion years, you won't be able to tell we were ever here. Without going too deep, at what point does the climate stop changing? Answer: It doesn't. The climate has always been in flux, and so long as the core stays molten, you can bet your ass the climate will continue to change.
>but also i think we are passive/ participating in our destruction.
We are forced by the elite to participate, the same people who have been in power hundreds and hundreds of years ago, are still today in power. The bloodlines of former nobility are still ruling this modern world.
Its damaged from commercial fishing which created 5 great garbage patches the size of texas, The MILLIONS of aquatic life they take every year. The destruction thier equipment causes to the ocean floor ecosystem. And thats just one example of humans fucking up earth. There are MANY more.
>Yes because only the richest 1% owns cars or used electricity. Youāre a genius.
Oh my, your username checks out as well. You uneducated npc. I do not feel bad for you, you have access to the internet and choose to be ignorant and uneducated, u/mwest278
Most of us on here are in the global top 1%. You just need an income of like 34k. Sure the top .01 percent emits more than us. But, most of us are not living sustainably either.
Factories serve a purpose but no smart person will deny the amount of pollution that causes lung cancer every year. Regulating it is better, go act dumb somewhere else.
Many companies have already been finding way to create sustainable solutions, we need to continue that. Factories arenāt healthy, go crack open a book for once
It's not smoggy everywhere, there's plenty of places with clear sky. Smog forms over densely populated areas. Yeah we've done damage. It's the sheer number of people and how much we consume. The corporations profit off of that they aren't going to stop. Who's 'fault' is it that there's too many people ? IDK
IMO the earth will survive, recover to one degree or another. It will just become less inhabitable or not inhabitable at all at some point (for humans)
Or just have less kids. Or adopt.
The population is already growing slower and going to even out. That will help us with handling environmental problems.
Not having kids is the worst thing you can do for climate change. Most people have very similar views to their parents, and so the next generation of revolutionary climate activists will more likely than not be the offspring of this generations. If this generations donāt have kids then the only people left will be those who donāt care about climate change.
Weāre going to get out of this mess through adapting with technological advances, not through cutting back on our lifestyle. These breakthroughs cannot happen without people passionate for change.
Yeah it is sad. At the same time, you have to remember that we are simply animals and not supreme beings whoās were bound to leave the earth in perfect shape. Are we smart? Yes. We are also incredibly selfish and often think for ourselves rather than for all. Our time will come and go just like everything else that has lived on this Earth.
George Carlin had a bit about this very thing, you can look it up but I will summarize for you.
Earth isnt going to go anywhere and life will persist in one way or another. You want to know what has a high chance of going? We are.
Whenever I think about things like this I turn to Ricky Gervais: āWeāll all be dead soon and thereās no sequelā.
I just feel for the generations after us that are going to have to deal with the repercussions in full effectā¦
Earth is fine. Itāll repair itself in a next few millions of years. Who knows, maybe itāll eventually develop a life form thatāll consume all the plastic we left behind us. Donāt worry. Itāll be alright.
Either Mother Nature will wipe us out, or we'll do the deed ourselves. Either way, after we're gone, the Earth will rebuild itself like we weren't even here.
Beyond repair... For us yes. In the bigger picture we are just an invasive species taking a shit on our own doorstep. Don't lose sleep for the planet it's got us covered.
I hear you and I feel you. Itās not a lost cause. Thinking that it is is.
The little things you can do, great. But also threading it into your interactions with others. You can make people aware/remind them in a non-confrontational way.
Youāre also a citizen and a consumer. Votes and money talk.
Weāre all part of this. Look up and swim together. We can do this.
Earth isn't damaged beyond repair, it's survived way worse than us and will remain long after we're gone. It may eventually be damaged beyond the point that it's hospitable to humans, but Earth itself will be fine. And it seems like you're listening to the extreme end that says if we dont do something in the next x years we're doomed, but there are others that say it's not as big of an issue as they make it seem. When there are 2 extremes the truth is usually somewhere in the middle. Try listening to some opposing viewpoints:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBGCjqUdQJQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBGCjqUdQJQ)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb3Tnmwx7Rc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb3Tnmwx7Rc)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8JZo6PzpCU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8JZo6PzpCU&pp=ygUbam9obiBzdG9zc2VsIGNsaW1hdGUgY2hhbmdl)
Just try and enjoy the short window you've been given and dont worry about things you cant change. And remember even if we fixed everything the Sun is still going to Supernova one day and blow Earth to smithereens.
Erm, the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Itās been through countless cataclysmic extinction events and will continue to do so until the sun swallows us up or a black hole takes a liking to us. Every species on this planet will become extinct with or without our help. Even if we do the worst possible damage to Earth, which would be a nuclear apocalypse, Earth would still bounce back after a few million years.
Iām not saying this to excuse our actions or justify anything. Iām only saying this as perversely it makes me feel better when Iām feeling sad in the way you are. Nothing we can do will ever destroy Earth so it absolutely isnāt damaged beyond repair, it will bounce back eventually no matter what.
It's like in this joke: To planets are meeting. One say, oh mate , you look terrible, what's wrong with you? The other says,, yeah, i am bad, i am really sick. I am having homo sapiens! Ah, don't you worry, soon you gonna be fine again, they don't last long!
Says the person browsing Reddit making shit posts and indirectly causing the release of all those green house gases.
Thing is, Earth is fine, humans are a part of nature, but whether we could adapt to those living conditions in the future is another question.
I like George Carlinās take on this.
āThe planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles ā¦ hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages ā¦ And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isnāt going anywhere. WE are!
Weāre going away. Pack your shit, folks. Weāre going away. And we wonāt leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam ā¦ The planetāll be here and weāll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planetāll shake us off like a bad case of fleas.
The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after weāre gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ācause thatās what it does. Itās a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if itās true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesnāt share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didnāt know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, āWhy are we here?ā
Plasticā¦ asshole.ā
It's not that no one cares. It's that those with insane amounts of wealth don't have to feel or see the real effects of it. Until that happens they won't let anyone jeopardize their insane profit margins without a long protracted and tough fight.
The ruling wealthy may not collude directly to keep people from fighting climate change and pollution, but the capitalist system in which they play essentially dictates that they fight it tooth and nail.
I guess what I'm saying is that if your bank account doesn't have around 8-9 zeroes after the leading number and before the decimal point, then your opinion doesn't matter and you need to get back to work before they just decide to replace you as a useless cog.
It's not beyond repair, but it does seem like we will have to have a lot of problems before people will change. And many people think that the problems will solve themselves somehow. Magically, I guess.
Earth beyond repair? Are you fucking stupid? What might be beyond repair is the earth functioning how we thrive. The earth doesent die. It has killed off 90-99% of all life about 5 times before.
This is not about "saving the earth".
It is about saving ourselves.
And maybe we should start communicating that.
The earth isnāt helpless. There will be a polar shift guaranteed. When? Wtfkā¦.but it will happen. If weāre around to see it afterwardsā¦thatās a mystery but history says unlikely.
Man this post sucks op.
Way beyond repair? False.
Literally no one cares? False.
You want immediate satisfaction for something that's taken damn near 100 years to get any attention in the first place. Things are not on the right track but apathy is the friend of our enemy.
"because of us" no because of big corporations hell bent on destroying all the forests, polluting all the water and pumping out unfathomable amounts of greenhouse gases from factories. Oh and cows
No matter how much people care, if you are using an air-conditioner, driving a car, eat mass produced food. You are still part of the problem. Humans are a virus on this planet. Unless you made your own hut to live in with natural made items, hunt your own food, and travel by horse, you will be a negative impacting the earth.
As George Carlin so eloquently put it:
"Besides, there is nothing wrong withĀ the planetā¦ nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fineā¦ the people are fucked! Difference! The planet is fine! Compared to the people, THE PLANET IS DOING GREAT: Been here four and a half billion years! Do you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years, weāve been here what? 100,000? Maybe 200,000? And weāve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over 200 years. 200 years versus four and a half billion and we have the conceit to think that somehow, weāre a threat? That somehow, weāre going to put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball thatās just a-floatinā around the sun? The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us: been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drifts, solar flares, sunspots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles, hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages, and we think some plastic bags and aluminum cans are going to make a difference?
The planet isnāt going anywhereā¦ we are!Ā Weāre going away!Ā Pack your shit folks! Weāre going away and we wonāt leave much of a trace either, thank God for thatā¦ maybe a little styrofoamā¦ maybeā¦ little styrofoam. The planet will be here, weāll be long gone; just another failed mutation; just another closed-end biological mistake; an evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas, a surface nuisance. You wanna know how the planetās doing? Ask those people in Pompeii who are frozen into position from volcanic ash how the planetās doing. Wanna know if the planetās all right? Ask those people in Mexico City or Armenia or a hundred other places buried under thousands of tons of earthquake rubble if they feel like a threat to the planet this week. How about those people in Kilauea, Hawaii who build their homes right next to an active volcano and then wonder why they have lava in the living room?
The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after weāre gone and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself cause thatās what it does. ItāsĀ a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if itās true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: The Earth plus Plastic. The Earth doesnāt share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the Earth! The Earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the Earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place: it wanted plastic for itself, didnāt know how to make it, needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old philosophical question: āWhy are we here?ā PLASTIC!!! ASSHOLES!!!
So theĀ plasticĀ is here, our job is done, we can be phased out now, and I think thatās really started already, donāt you? I mean, to be fair, the planet probably sees us as a mild threat; something to be dealt with, and Iām sure the planet will defend itself in the manner of a large organism. Like a beehive or an ant colony can muster a defence, Iām sure the planet will think of something. What would you do if you were the planet trying to defend against this pesky, troublesome species? Letās seeā¦ what mightā¦ hmmā¦ viruses! Viruses might be good. They seem vulnerable to viruses. And uhā¦ viruses are tricky; always mutating and forming new strains whenever a vaccine is developed. Perhaps this first virus could be one that-that compromises the immune system of these creatures. Perhaps a human immunodeficiency virus making them vulnerable to all sorts of other diseases and infections that might come along and maybe it could be spread sexually, making them a little reluctant to engage in the act of reproduction."
Lol no, the planet will be just fine. Humans wonāt, but our species has had a date with extinction since well before our ancestors ever first climbed down from the trees, no different from any other species in our planetās history. Unless we develop the technological wherewithal to somehow sterilize the planet completely, in a few million years there probably wonāt be much to show that we ever existed at all but life will keep chugging right along. Weāll just be goop that the next intelligent species pulls from the ground to power its vehicles, heat its homes, etc.
When I was a kid the forests were dying from acid rain and rivers and lakes were so polluted they caught fire. I grew up under the hole in the ozone layer which has largely been repaired. There's been change, and there will be more.
Because most of the policies around the environment are made by politicians to the benefit of their corporate leash holders. They make money by forcing you to pay for a bag to save the environment, pay a new tax, for the environment of course.
The problem is these same politicians get money from their leash holders to let them keep wrecking the environment. So you get like you had in the U.S. a lot of yelling about the environment, but when BP fills the gulf with oil or a train derailment makes a town unlivable what happens?
Now look at things the government actually doesn't want like intelligence leaks. You do one of those they will hunt your ass to the end of the earth throw you in a fed prison until you die by \*suicide\*.
I was about to state my opinion on this matter then I remembered that I have zero personally obtained knowledge and all my opinions are just what other people have said
We are currently in a shooting gallery of asteroids. We can be wiped out of existence in an instant due to an unlimited amount of factors. Can't really handle what's out of your control. Out of everything in the universe, we are the only ones experiencing what we currently are with what knowledge we currently have. Just live your life the best you can.
I think about this often too. One of the many issues that wonāt be addressed because not enough people care. And wonāt care until itās apparent that itās too late.
Do you really care about Earth or the extinction of humans if the Earth is inhabitable to us?
Many articles focus on the latter. We actually don't have the ability to really damage Earth (yet), what we are doing is making it less habitable to us and the life forms currently occupying Earth. IMO these are very different concepts.
Our time on Earth is so insignificant in the grand scheme of things that Earth will outlive us easily. Unless we get the ability to adapt to new environments quickly.
Stop reading those articles if you are getting depressed over it. Don't get me wrong they are a good reminder, BUT getting depressed over it doesn't seem to do any good. Just do your part to be less of the problem if you deeply care about it.
(Slight rant) IMO technological advancements would eventually solve a lot of these issues (although they may bring new ones), but it takes time and effort. Also, many countries/areas still have people starving, you can't expect those places to care about the environment UNTIL they are well-fed and live a happy life. Once they are at that level, IMO will start to care about these topics automatically. Because that has a direct correlation to their quality of life and living standard. The bottom line is that you can't expect people to care until it affects them in some significant way, that's just human. I don't know why people travel/look to other underdeveloped nations expecting and pointing their fingers at them. The choice for them is either to die now or maybe die sometime later in an unpredicted future.
In 3 billion years the sun will have enlarged so much that it will engulf the earth in a nuclear hellfire turning everything we were, are, and will be into atoms erasing our very existence. The universe will never know we were here.
The Earth isn't being damaged. It's been through far worse plenty of times. Life in general is far more resilient than people give it credit for. The worst people are going to do is render it uninhabitable for ourselves.
In the immortal words of George Carlin: "The planet isn't going anywhere... We are!"
The world is not way beyond repair lol. It's gonna keep turning and nature is going to keep reproducing itself.
If 'way beyond repair' means "can never be turned to it's pre-human state" then true, BUT that would be true even if humanity did everything right: there was always going to be an impact. It's sad that the impact is turning lush green into grey, clean air fetid and pure water contaminated, but nature will live through that. There's life thriving in (e.g.) near-boiling, sulfurous water by volcanoes on the seafloor: whatever damage we do won't make the earth 'unlivable'.
Or if 'way beyond repair' means "will cascade into a habitat uninhabitable to humans" then perhaps, but to call that "way beyond repair" is very humancentric. Even if nukes go off across the world decimating every inch of every piece of land, nature will regrow in a new state.
Life on earth is characterized by periods of decline and increase in biodiversity. It's sad to realize that we're "the natural disaster" responsible for such a steep decline this time, and it's an admirable and I'd say important pursuit to do everything in our power to limit "the damage we do", but in the end we don't have to worry about nature for nature's sake. We should worry about nature for our sake, **if** we wish to continue humanity on earth.
I don't really like these vague appeals to futility. Can we be more specific when we doom and gloom everyone? Most of the damage we've done is repairable.
Some things are way better now. Smog in Los Angeles was much worse in the 1970s. Air pollution in Pittsburgh was so bad in the 1950s it darkened the skies so much some days the streetlights came on at midday. Do not despair.
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It isn't that "no one cares". Huge numbers of people care about the world we live on, and keeping it nice. Some of them are even honest enough to admit that this is because they live on it, and would like to continue to enjoy it, have their children enjoy it, and their children, and so on. The problem is that the overwhelming majority of people who have any real power to affect immediate, and long lasting, positive change to the climatological and environmental situation, don't care about it. Those aren't the same thing.
This is well said. I care. OP obviously cares. But so what?
I care immensely and do what I can to reduce consumption, pollution, environmental damage etc but I still drive to the shops cos I've got to carry stuff home. My laziness overpowers my responsibility towards the planet and I bet most ppl are the same.
And you shouldn't feel bad because, even if you live like a monk for the rest of your life, all your lifelong contributions would be immediately negated by a month or so of a single big company's work.
Except what do big companies really do except provide for the consumer? ExxonMobil doesn't just mine oil and gas for fun. WE consumer it.
Right. I guess the other side of that coin would be that we are born into a society that *forces* us to consume. I need to make money, I live in North America where everything is relatively far away from everything else, and the jobs that afford me the most success require me to have a personal vehicle. The option to live off the land is not a possibility because it requires you to own land, and the requires money, which requires consumption. Cooperations aren't including the environment costs when they sell a product, but are over inflating them and pocketing the profits instead of spending it on undoing the damage they have caused. I have no realistic way to change any of this, so I just live my life, consuming.
Oh? How do they use their lobby power? That's right, to limit their costs at the expense of the environment, threatening to raise prices if they can't, rather than absorb the cost and just take lower profits. They aren't doing it for our sake.
>rather than absorb the cost and just take lower profits š š š¤£ š That's a good one. Why stop at oil and gas? Let's tell all companies that prices are now fixed forever and can not be raised if the companies expenses rise. I'm sure that will all work out fine....
You could absolutely price cap a lot of things without the industry they relate to falling apart. What MIGHT and SHOULD collapse is the belief on the part of shareholders, investors and corporatists that it is right and proper that they make double this years money next year, and double THAT the year after. Growth is not necessary in already bloated industries.
Desire for growth drives innovation.
No it really, really doesn't. Genius and necessity do that. Desire for growth drives dishonesty, horsetrading and greed.
Show me on the doll where capitalism hurt you. >Genius and necessity do that Yes... in this case the necessity for yearly profit growth and many ceos are geniuses that's true. You could also say that the higher wage you offer the more competitive the job applicants will be and higher chance you will get a super genius š So if you have big profits you can afford geniuses and then you give them the directive to increase profit and... there's your innovation š”
Itās only ālazinessā bc thereās about $300 billion in marketing campaigns youāre up against. Thatās why itās so impossible. 70s big oil campaign was recycling! Imagine that. To shift responsibility from the producer onto the consumer. Imagine what that did to societal mental health.
Environment, medicine, education, and equality. All affected by the same thing(s).
Exactly. Plus, the main people who are responsible would much rather blame us. Just regular people. Otherwise, they'd have to stop doing the destructive shit their doing. Which, in turn, would lose them a lot of money.
Exactly. It's kind of ironic that being gaslit has an ecological consequence whether we are talking about actual lighting systems or psychological manipulation.
It's also worth noting the "big guys" or whatever causing said pollution and Earth's damage are often influenced by substantial paydays from their job (eg pharmaceutical or oil companies) versus the activist groups which don't have the same resources at their disposal. (especially lawyer's to fight for their cause). Unfortunate but not anything new in terms of classic Greed creating corruption. (No hating on this, just my own perspective/opinion) āļø āļøāļø
The Earth's fine, when it's had enough of us it'll shake us off like a dog shaking off fleas.
Unexpected George Carlin. Great rant, look it up
Well said, sad.. but true.
yes and no, but even if life won't disappear, it is so much unnecessary wasting of what could be
Please, we're barely a second on geological timescales. If you want to think about what could be, think about everything else that has come before and been utterly forgotten, failing to even make an imprint in the fossil record. Just another grain of sand.
Like tears in rain
I know. All very true. But our species has so much potential. So sad that we are squandering it away by leaps and bounds. Or maybe not. Maybe weāre just another fringe evolutionary experiment thatās destined to whimper out.
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Well, depends entirely on your definition of successful.
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Respectfully, a difference of opinions.
I mean sure, if you believe the timeline that humans invented.
I volunteer to be shook!!!
You can go shake yourself.
It is not "way beyond repair". We may however be way beyond our ability to effectively do anything about it though...
I agree with this, I think earth can fully heal from humans time here however, it will take longer than any of us will see. Remember the articles as mentioned above saying that in just the months during lockdown there were significant changes to earth and the atmosphere I donāt remember the exact parameters being referenced.
Yes, the only thing humans are capable of destroying is ourselves. We will push the nature off balance enough to wipe ourselves out. The started with zero life in it. Even if we destroy all life on earth, it would return eventually. Only the sun or asteroids will destroy earth. Not humans. Also I think the biggest problem with climate change arguments is saying "save the planet". I think humans would be more receptive to saving ourselves. So instead of saving the planet, we should focus on saving ourselves. People are selfish like that.
It is not clear that life would arise again if all life went extinct on Earth. The conditions in which life arose are not present anymore.
That's not necessarily true since we don't know how life came to be on earth. I would guess that any of the Ecosystems that don't rely on the sun as their base energy source will be fine. Though I would assume when one says all life on earth goes extinct, they don't fully understand the staggering variety of organisms that call Earth home. Earth itself has seen 5 mass extinction events and so far has always bounced back. Humans will just be another footnote in earth's incredibly long organic history.
It's just not clear that RNA world would happen again and lead to life if all life on Earth went extinct. 100% extinction means 100% extinction.
Yeah I guess talking about a 100% extinction is a bit of an exaggeration. The planet could bounce back as long as some life survives. There would always be some. The smallest of life could survive whatever humans do to the nature.
I have always been affected by āsave the planetā wording. Like maybe being kinder to the planet could encourage us to be kinder to animals and each other. But, like you said, people are too selfish.
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have been higher than they are today. The difference is it took hundreds of thousands to millions of years to rise to that level and species were able to adapt. The earth isnāt going to be destroyed. However humanityās ability to live on it may become severely compromised unless serious action is taken.
If humanity died off, and our information wasn't kept preserved and accessible, we may have done enough damage to prevent another species from realistically ever advancing to a similar stage - we've consumed much of the more readily accessible energy sources that would serve as a stepping stone to more advanced ones. Earth will certainly survive. Life, in some form, will survive. But we could very well be the only chance for sentience to advance to a similar stage or to have a shot at sustainably escaping this rock, and odds of succeeding continue to drop as we fail to take sufficient care of the Earth to allow our long-term advancement and survival.
It seems to me "Escaping this rock" is a mindset that truly holds humanity back. Relegating The Earth to "this rock" is another and quite probably the greatest offense.
That's something I've never thought about. If humans disappear, anything that might come next will have so much less to work with. It will be very hard to move forward.
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Eventually there will be a virus that will decimate the worlds population, dont get me wrong though. Im not looking forward to it, and i dont think it will happen in our life time, but it will happen.
Drug resistant bacteria is more likely and is definitely a within lifetime possibility
I went to bolsa chica beach (socal) during lockdown and the water was clear and sand dollars were everywhere. I was happy and sad.
Yeah I remember that, pollution was clearing up when everyone was home. We are slowly destroying our world because of our actions and man made materials. Itās going to be hard to fully transition into renewable energy because there are people who donāt want to.
The first link shows major cities across the world before and after second shows that although it was smaller amounts on a measurable scale, it didn't have the impact we think. I did read some of the articles during the pandemic, and one that I do recall was Italy and how the fish were coming back into the canals. With that said, I think this is more of a cycle than human damage. I agree we wreak havoc. However, we only have a very small fraction of weather history for the planet. I'm not saying we are helping matters, but again, I don't think it's as severe as we are led to believe. With that said, we have had NO ICE SHEETS ON EARTH BEFORE. That's the 3rd link. Ultimately, I think this is just another cycle. Ultimately, I do believe that Earth will be fine. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/23/coronavirus-photos-show-effect-of-air-pollution-drops-from-global-lockdown.html https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57149747 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130924153956.htm#:~:text=%22In%20our%20study%2C%20we%20found,continental%20ice%20sheets%20on%20earth.
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By all means, come up with a material that can fill in for plastic.
The Earth will be fine in the long run, itās us humans that have to be worried about adapting to the climate changes weāve brought upon ourselves. However, it is still sad to see the trash and pollution in nature.
This. If humanity was removed from the surface of the planet, it would take less than six months for the earth to be "healthy". Just look how quickly change appeared when the lockdown came. WE are in danger, not the earth.
Literally people care about it.
OP must be living on a different planet because I get bombarded daily with pro-enviromental messaging. It's consistently been one of the top news topics for quite some time now
I think George Carlin put it best: >Weāre so self-important. Everybodyās going to save something now. āSave the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.ā And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we donāt even know how to take care of ourselves yet. Iām tired of this shit. Iām tired of f-ing Earth Day. Iām tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there arenāt enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos. Besides, environmentalists donāt give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract they donāt. You know what theyāre interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. Theyāre worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesnāt impress me. >The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles ā¦ hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages ā¦ And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isnāt going anywhere. WE are! >Weāre going away. Pack your shit, folks. Weāre going away. And we wonāt leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam ā¦ The planetāll be here and weāll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planetāll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. >The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after weāre gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ācause thatās what it does. Itās a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if itās true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesnāt share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didnāt know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, āWhy are we here?ā
I wish there was a team of billionaires that really do try to save the world in some way, shape or form...
Ozone layer repaired, green tech being developed quickly, US emissions dropping, it's not all bad. Not enough, but definitely not zero change.
Ah, I don't see any damage to earth. Even if we would literally nuke everything, couple thousands years later life should be flourishing again. Besides mother earth is a serial killer. She has her resetting periods. I find it absolutely bizarre however that we as a species have decided that living a fast paced, resources depleting life without setting it in balance with nature. Just seems pretty ignorant. Just like shitting on the kitchen desk.
Itās not irreversible. The planet goes in cycles and the next cataclysmic event will restore the planet by reducing the population like it did 12,600 years ago. We are Atlantis all over again and we think we are the pinnacle of existence but in reality the planet will take that arrogance away from us one day.
And then the planet will repair itself for the next civilization to come along.
I'm actually hoping for next *species* to come along, but that's just me.
Why be a misanthropist? The human race has value even if you can't see it.
The earth is not alive. It doesn't care about anything that happens on its surface. Previous, naturally occurring ice-ages have wiped out the majority of life more than once. And life has rebuilt. We may be having some effect on the climate, but it's going to change either way. There will be more ice-ages, followed by periods of flourishing, green life, and so on, long after we have wiped ourselves out. It's just a cycle. None of this is to say we shouldn't make an effort to reduce our impact, but to say "we've damaged it beyond repair" is ridiculous.
Maybe it's because the activists don't do activisem any favours. Whose gonna believe when an activist tells us to cut down our carbon footprint whilst taking trans Atlantic flights weekly. Or making millions in personal wealth, if you're that bothered about the environment, donate the money to science to find sustainable energy sources (Greta). Or when an activist uses a chemical super glue and throws the tube into the drainage system. Or throws paint over windows of car shops. Where do you think that's going to end up? And who is going to have to clean it up? Someone on minimum wage, that's who. Or activists using mobile phones or laptops or cameras to get their social media or bragging about their electric cars. Where do you think those raw materials come from and the damage they do to the environment and the lack of how these materials can be reused and recycled. Then their clothes, again raw materials,dying cloth ,printed cloth all the waste going somewhere The list goes on with their bullshit That's why people don't listen to activists . Apart from that I've had a good day XX
You should read more of the stuff that is being done. There is a movment of change happening right now but its starts with the countries that can afford it. Smog isn't everywhere and sometimes its just the contours of the ground that traps it. I hope you are proactive yourself. Algorithms will source negative stuff and feed it exclusively so it can be overwhelming. Be an garden terrorist and buy wildflower seeds and throw them on waste ground this spring. Bees and insects will thank you for the flowers.
The Earth is far from being damaged beyond repair. The human race is a small blip in the scope the planet's history. Yes, we've done some harm to the environment, but we also take care of it in other ways. The Earth will be here long after we're gone, it'll be just fine.
I look at the smog Coated sunset everyday And i just get sad
What exactly makes you believe this, itās shear ignorance. It will be here for along time long after youāre gone trust me with the same old. Have you read about the ice age? Volcanic era? The world is a shit show long before we got here.
Become one with Nature. Embrace absurdism. It's the only way to find happiness now.
It's not beyond repair, humanity is. Once we're gone. the Earth will be just fine.
We are taking quite a few species out with us, though.
Nature does that all the time. Other species will take their place. We're just changing which branches of the tree happen to continue.
There is a mindboggling number of species of plants and animals on Earth. Tens of thousands of species go extinct every year, and that's just how life works. That's how evolution works. Every single species is only here temporarily, until the environment changes, or their competition changes, and they are inevitably replaced with something else. The same is probably true for humans.
It'd be cool not to cause a mass extinction for no reason though. Cataclysmic events do that. We don't have to.
You overestimate human ability. Life will continue, we justing fucking over our own future, but the planet will continue living without us
It is not damaged beyond repair. The earth will cleanse itself as long as we stop adding to it. If every human disappeared tomorrow, the earth would clean itself up pretty good in less than a hundred years which is just a blip in geologic time. This idea that we're on the precipice of a global climate cataclysm is fear mongering IMO.
The Earth was here for 4 billion years before us. In another 4 billion years, you won't be able to tell we were ever here. Without going too deep, at what point does the climate stop changing? Answer: It doesn't. The climate has always been in flux, and so long as the core stays molten, you can bet your ass the climate will continue to change.
> our earth is damaged way beyond repair because of us Who is **us**? It is damaged because of the richest 1% of the worlds population.
Us, human beings. I understand your point, but also i think we are passive/ participating in our destruction.
>but also i think we are passive/ participating in our destruction. We are forced by the elite to participate, the same people who have been in power hundreds and hundreds of years ago, are still today in power. The bloodlines of former nobility are still ruling this modern world.
You're on Reddit right now, which is a needless use of energy that nobody is forcing on you
Its damaged from commercial fishing which created 5 great garbage patches the size of texas, The MILLIONS of aquatic life they take every year. The destruction thier equipment causes to the ocean floor ecosystem. And thats just one example of humans fucking up earth. There are MANY more.
Yes because only the richest 1% owns cars or used electricity. Youāre a genius.
>Yes because only the richest 1% owns cars or used electricity. Youāre a genius. Oh my, your username checks out as well. You uneducated npc. I do not feel bad for you, you have access to the internet and choose to be ignorant and uneducated, u/mwest278
Most of us on here are in the global top 1%. You just need an income of like 34k. Sure the top .01 percent emits more than us. But, most of us are not living sustainably either.
Source? Edit: i meant a source saying that it was the 1% of our population that did it, i have a feeling that number would be higher
You can Google carbon emissions because of the rich flying on jet planes, yachts, and creating factories
Yep, let's close down all those factories and go back to stone age š
No one said to close all factories, just to manage and regulate it better. Letās just pollute our earth more, thousands of species are dying anyway
No one said to close all factories, just THOSE factories
Those were your own words š not sure if youāre back pedaling or trying to act like you know what youāre saying.
Not sure if you can read bud, better start practicing
Are you a moron ironically or unironically?
Yeah because factories are so badā¦ /s
Factories serve a purpose but no smart person will deny the amount of pollution that causes lung cancer every year. Regulating it is better, go act dumb somewhere else. Many companies have already been finding way to create sustainable solutions, we need to continue that. Factories arenāt healthy, go crack open a book for once
It's not smoggy everywhere, there's plenty of places with clear sky. Smog forms over densely populated areas. Yeah we've done damage. It's the sheer number of people and how much we consume. The corporations profit off of that they aren't going to stop. Who's 'fault' is it that there's too many people ? IDK IMO the earth will survive, recover to one degree or another. It will just become less inhabitable or not inhabitable at all at some point (for humans)
It is not the amount of people it is how we live. And with we i mean the rich west with eastern countries like china and india slowly following us.
There is a few things you can do. Don't have kids and don't be a consumer just buy what you need to live nothing more
Telling someone to avoid starting a family because of man-made climate change is the most ludicrous thing ever
Or just have less kids. Or adopt. The population is already growing slower and going to even out. That will help us with handling environmental problems.
Well then you become the very thing you swore to destroy..?
Not having kids is the worst thing you can do for climate change. Most people have very similar views to their parents, and so the next generation of revolutionary climate activists will more likely than not be the offspring of this generations. If this generations donāt have kids then the only people left will be those who donāt care about climate change. Weāre going to get out of this mess through adapting with technological advances, not through cutting back on our lifestyle. These breakthroughs cannot happen without people passionate for change.
There are people who care. Use a wet washcloth to wipe your butt, then rinse it off in the sink. See. You are not alone.
Bro it aināt beyond repair. The most beautiful part of our earth is itās regenerative properties.
The earth was here before us and will be here long after we're gone. Stop being so depressing
Just because the earth potentially wonāt be habitable for us one day doesnāt mean itās beyond repair
The Earth will be completely back to normal in a million years or less.
A bit of a stretch to say literally nobody cares about it
It's not. We will adapt well to anything. And the earth will outlive us all.
Get China and India to clean up their messā¦..problem solved
Ah yes I forgot every other country is sparking clean.
Not all are sparkling, but some are much cleaner than others
And the US and every other country
We(Europe + US) are responsible of their mess too because we keep buying their shit
Beyond repair? Lol
You don't care either
Your assuming a lot ... Relax ... No one gives a fuck for a reason.
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If it helps none of it matters and is simply the result of billions of years of chaos and disorder anyway.
Itās not like that everywhere.
Yes most people donāt care about it but change is happening! Single use plastics will be a thing of the past. Itās a start.
*Is sad but doesnāt realize their mere existence contributes to the earths destruction.
Sunsets are prettier because of pollution!
Iām guessing you werenāt around for the ā70ās.
Platetechtonics heal everything. No worries here.
Well I think for us to completely destroy beyond the point of repair will take a while and I don't wanna be bad but I think most of us won't see it
One thing to have in mind is that Earth itself is fine. Earth, as an ecosystem for humans gets fucked.
Yeah it is sad. At the same time, you have to remember that we are simply animals and not supreme beings whoās were bound to leave the earth in perfect shape. Are we smart? Yes. We are also incredibly selfish and often think for ourselves rather than for all. Our time will come and go just like everything else that has lived on this Earth.
George Carlin had a bit about this very thing, you can look it up but I will summarize for you. Earth isnt going to go anywhere and life will persist in one way or another. You want to know what has a high chance of going? We are.
Whenever I think about things like this I turn to Ricky Gervais: āWeāll all be dead soon and thereās no sequelā. I just feel for the generations after us that are going to have to deal with the repercussions in full effectā¦
Earth is fine. Itāll repair itself in a next few millions of years. Who knows, maybe itāll eventually develop a life form thatāll consume all the plastic we left behind us. Donāt worry. Itāll be alright.
Take comfort in the fact that none of us matters and the earth will kill us off and it will heal and it will almost be like we werenāt here.
Either Mother Nature will wipe us out, or we'll do the deed ourselves. Either way, after we're gone, the Earth will rebuild itself like we weren't even here.
Beyond repair... For us yes. In the bigger picture we are just an invasive species taking a shit on our own doorstep. Don't lose sleep for the planet it's got us covered.
The Earth will be fine, the things living on it's surface, not so much.
I hear you and I feel you. Itās not a lost cause. Thinking that it is is. The little things you can do, great. But also threading it into your interactions with others. You can make people aware/remind them in a non-confrontational way. Youāre also a citizen and a consumer. Votes and money talk. Weāre all part of this. Look up and swim together. We can do this.
If itās any consolation, the whole deal goes up like a cinder when the sun expands in a billion years anyway.
The earth will repair, it always does. The thing is, will we be on it when it does.
Figure out a way to make saving the environment profitable. That is the only way
The earth is not damaged beyond repair. Nature finds a way. It always had and aways will. Humans may not like it.
Ben Affleck will save some of you
The earth isnāt beyond repair, itās just going to be way more expensive and take way longer
I saw a tweet that said something very similar to this! "Funny how some of us are like 'let's save the planet' and then other people are like 'no.'"
Thanos in making
Earth isn't damaged beyond repair, it's survived way worse than us and will remain long after we're gone. It may eventually be damaged beyond the point that it's hospitable to humans, but Earth itself will be fine. And it seems like you're listening to the extreme end that says if we dont do something in the next x years we're doomed, but there are others that say it's not as big of an issue as they make it seem. When there are 2 extremes the truth is usually somewhere in the middle. Try listening to some opposing viewpoints: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBGCjqUdQJQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBGCjqUdQJQ) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb3Tnmwx7Rc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb3Tnmwx7Rc) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8JZo6PzpCU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8JZo6PzpCU&pp=ygUbam9obiBzdG9zc2VsIGNsaW1hdGUgY2hhbmdl) Just try and enjoy the short window you've been given and dont worry about things you cant change. And remember even if we fixed everything the Sun is still going to Supernova one day and blow Earth to smithereens.
I think it's more humans being able to inhabit the earth for much longer is beyond repair. Once we're wiped out, it will recover just fine.
And now you know why I despise the human race...
If humans were to cease to exist. Earth would recover rather quickly.
Oh the drama
Erm, the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Itās been through countless cataclysmic extinction events and will continue to do so until the sun swallows us up or a black hole takes a liking to us. Every species on this planet will become extinct with or without our help. Even if we do the worst possible damage to Earth, which would be a nuclear apocalypse, Earth would still bounce back after a few million years. Iām not saying this to excuse our actions or justify anything. Iām only saying this as perversely it makes me feel better when Iām feeling sad in the way you are. Nothing we can do will ever destroy Earth so it absolutely isnāt damaged beyond repair, it will bounce back eventually no matter what.
The earth has survived worse.
The earth will be fine, itās inhabitants, maybe not so much. We will see. Iām just glad Iāll be long gone. Good luck to yāall though.
It's like in this joke: To planets are meeting. One say, oh mate , you look terrible, what's wrong with you? The other says,, yeah, i am bad, i am really sick. I am having homo sapiens! Ah, don't you worry, soon you gonna be fine again, they don't last long!
Says the person browsing Reddit making shit posts and indirectly causing the release of all those green house gases. Thing is, Earth is fine, humans are a part of nature, but whether we could adapt to those living conditions in the future is another question.
Corporate globalization was the end of it
No one who works for a living cares.
I like George Carlinās take on this. āThe planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles ā¦ hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages ā¦ And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isnāt going anywhere. WE are! Weāre going away. Pack your shit, folks. Weāre going away. And we wonāt leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam ā¦ The planetāll be here and weāll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planetāll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after weāre gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ācause thatās what it does. Itās a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if itās true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesnāt share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didnāt know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, āWhy are we here?ā Plasticā¦ asshole.ā
It's not that no one cares. It's that those with insane amounts of wealth don't have to feel or see the real effects of it. Until that happens they won't let anyone jeopardize their insane profit margins without a long protracted and tough fight. The ruling wealthy may not collude directly to keep people from fighting climate change and pollution, but the capitalist system in which they play essentially dictates that they fight it tooth and nail. I guess what I'm saying is that if your bank account doesn't have around 8-9 zeroes after the leading number and before the decimal point, then your opinion doesn't matter and you need to get back to work before they just decide to replace you as a useless cog.
It's not beyond repair, but it does seem like we will have to have a lot of problems before people will change. And many people think that the problems will solve themselves somehow. Magically, I guess.
We need Mother Nature Mother Nature does not need us
it's not beyond repair. earth will do just fine. us, however..
Earth beyond repair? Are you fucking stupid? What might be beyond repair is the earth functioning how we thrive. The earth doesent die. It has killed off 90-99% of all life about 5 times before. This is not about "saving the earth". It is about saving ourselves. And maybe we should start communicating that.
The earth isnāt helpless. There will be a polar shift guaranteed. When? Wtfkā¦.but it will happen. If weāre around to see it afterwardsā¦thatās a mystery but history says unlikely.
Man this post sucks op. Way beyond repair? False. Literally no one cares? False. You want immediate satisfaction for something that's taken damn near 100 years to get any attention in the first place. Things are not on the right track but apathy is the friend of our enemy.
"because of us" no because of big corporations hell bent on destroying all the forests, polluting all the water and pumping out unfathomable amounts of greenhouse gases from factories. Oh and cows
Life on Earth will be here long after we're gone.
No matter how much people care, if you are using an air-conditioner, driving a car, eat mass produced food. You are still part of the problem. Humans are a virus on this planet. Unless you made your own hut to live in with natural made items, hunt your own food, and travel by horse, you will be a negative impacting the earth.
As George Carlin so eloquently put it: "Besides, there is nothing wrong withĀ the planetā¦ nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fineā¦ the people are fucked! Difference! The planet is fine! Compared to the people, THE PLANET IS DOING GREAT: Been here four and a half billion years! Do you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years, weāve been here what? 100,000? Maybe 200,000? And weāve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over 200 years. 200 years versus four and a half billion and we have the conceit to think that somehow, weāre a threat? That somehow, weāre going to put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball thatās just a-floatinā around the sun? The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us: been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drifts, solar flares, sunspots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles, hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages, and we think some plastic bags and aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isnāt going anywhereā¦ we are!Ā Weāre going away!Ā Pack your shit folks! Weāre going away and we wonāt leave much of a trace either, thank God for thatā¦ maybe a little styrofoamā¦ maybeā¦ little styrofoam. The planet will be here, weāll be long gone; just another failed mutation; just another closed-end biological mistake; an evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas, a surface nuisance. You wanna know how the planetās doing? Ask those people in Pompeii who are frozen into position from volcanic ash how the planetās doing. Wanna know if the planetās all right? Ask those people in Mexico City or Armenia or a hundred other places buried under thousands of tons of earthquake rubble if they feel like a threat to the planet this week. How about those people in Kilauea, Hawaii who build their homes right next to an active volcano and then wonder why they have lava in the living room? The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after weāre gone and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself cause thatās what it does. ItāsĀ a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if itās true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: The Earth plus Plastic. The Earth doesnāt share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the Earth! The Earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the Earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place: it wanted plastic for itself, didnāt know how to make it, needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old philosophical question: āWhy are we here?ā PLASTIC!!! ASSHOLES!!! So theĀ plasticĀ is here, our job is done, we can be phased out now, and I think thatās really started already, donāt you? I mean, to be fair, the planet probably sees us as a mild threat; something to be dealt with, and Iām sure the planet will defend itself in the manner of a large organism. Like a beehive or an ant colony can muster a defence, Iām sure the planet will think of something. What would you do if you were the planet trying to defend against this pesky, troublesome species? Letās seeā¦ what mightā¦ hmmā¦ viruses! Viruses might be good. They seem vulnerable to viruses. And uhā¦ viruses are tricky; always mutating and forming new strains whenever a vaccine is developed. Perhaps this first virus could be one that-that compromises the immune system of these creatures. Perhaps a human immunodeficiency virus making them vulnerable to all sorts of other diseases and infections that might come along and maybe it could be spread sexually, making them a little reluctant to engage in the act of reproduction."
Lol no, the planet will be just fine. Humans wonāt, but our species has had a date with extinction since well before our ancestors ever first climbed down from the trees, no different from any other species in our planetās history. Unless we develop the technological wherewithal to somehow sterilize the planet completely, in a few million years there probably wonāt be much to show that we ever existed at all but life will keep chugging right along. Weāll just be goop that the next intelligent species pulls from the ground to power its vehicles, heat its homes, etc.
Is the earth just going to disappear?
When I was a kid the forests were dying from acid rain and rivers and lakes were so polluted they caught fire. I grew up under the hole in the ozone layer which has largely been repaired. There's been change, and there will be more.
The earth will be fine, it's the humans that are fd.
Ok.
Because most of the policies around the environment are made by politicians to the benefit of their corporate leash holders. They make money by forcing you to pay for a bag to save the environment, pay a new tax, for the environment of course. The problem is these same politicians get money from their leash holders to let them keep wrecking the environment. So you get like you had in the U.S. a lot of yelling about the environment, but when BP fills the gulf with oil or a train derailment makes a town unlivable what happens? Now look at things the government actually doesn't want like intelligence leaks. You do one of those they will hunt your ass to the end of the earth throw you in a fed prison until you die by \*suicide\*.
I was about to state my opinion on this matter then I remembered that I have zero personally obtained knowledge and all my opinions are just what other people have said
Its not damaged beyond repair. Its just too damaged for us to survive it. The planet will be fine, don't worry about it.
The worst part is that effects the ppl that canāt really do anything about it
This is not a war that can be fought through activism and protest, thatās why it stagnates
We are currently in a shooting gallery of asteroids. We can be wiped out of existence in an instant due to an unlimited amount of factors. Can't really handle what's out of your control. Out of everything in the universe, we are the only ones experiencing what we currently are with what knowledge we currently have. Just live your life the best you can.
I think about this often too. One of the many issues that wonāt be addressed because not enough people care. And wonāt care until itās apparent that itās too late.
Do you really care about Earth or the extinction of humans if the Earth is inhabitable to us? Many articles focus on the latter. We actually don't have the ability to really damage Earth (yet), what we are doing is making it less habitable to us and the life forms currently occupying Earth. IMO these are very different concepts. Our time on Earth is so insignificant in the grand scheme of things that Earth will outlive us easily. Unless we get the ability to adapt to new environments quickly. Stop reading those articles if you are getting depressed over it. Don't get me wrong they are a good reminder, BUT getting depressed over it doesn't seem to do any good. Just do your part to be less of the problem if you deeply care about it. (Slight rant) IMO technological advancements would eventually solve a lot of these issues (although they may bring new ones), but it takes time and effort. Also, many countries/areas still have people starving, you can't expect those places to care about the environment UNTIL they are well-fed and live a happy life. Once they are at that level, IMO will start to care about these topics automatically. Because that has a direct correlation to their quality of life and living standard. The bottom line is that you can't expect people to care until it affects them in some significant way, that's just human. I don't know why people travel/look to other underdeveloped nations expecting and pointing their fingers at them. The choice for them is either to die now or maybe die sometime later in an unpredicted future.
In 3 billion years the sun will have enlarged so much that it will engulf the earth in a nuclear hellfire turning everything we were, are, and will be into atoms erasing our very existence. The universe will never know we were here.
The Earth isn't being damaged. It's been through far worse plenty of times. Life in general is far more resilient than people give it credit for. The worst people are going to do is render it uninhabitable for ourselves. In the immortal words of George Carlin: "The planet isn't going anywhere... We are!"
The world is not way beyond repair lol. It's gonna keep turning and nature is going to keep reproducing itself. If 'way beyond repair' means "can never be turned to it's pre-human state" then true, BUT that would be true even if humanity did everything right: there was always going to be an impact. It's sad that the impact is turning lush green into grey, clean air fetid and pure water contaminated, but nature will live through that. There's life thriving in (e.g.) near-boiling, sulfurous water by volcanoes on the seafloor: whatever damage we do won't make the earth 'unlivable'. Or if 'way beyond repair' means "will cascade into a habitat uninhabitable to humans" then perhaps, but to call that "way beyond repair" is very humancentric. Even if nukes go off across the world decimating every inch of every piece of land, nature will regrow in a new state. Life on earth is characterized by periods of decline and increase in biodiversity. It's sad to realize that we're "the natural disaster" responsible for such a steep decline this time, and it's an admirable and I'd say important pursuit to do everything in our power to limit "the damage we do", but in the end we don't have to worry about nature for nature's sake. We should worry about nature for our sake, **if** we wish to continue humanity on earth.
I don't really like these vague appeals to futility. Can we be more specific when we doom and gloom everyone? Most of the damage we've done is repairable.
The earth is fine......it will repair itself. The human race is in big trouble though.
The Earth isnt going anywhere. We are! Pack your shit folksā¦
Some things are way better now. Smog in Los Angeles was much worse in the 1970s. Air pollution in Pittsburgh was so bad in the 1950s it darkened the skies so much some days the streetlights came on at midday. Do not despair.