[Ibon]

A very honest assessment by a terrestrial ecologist with 15 years experience on the front line.

I am struggling to find a new message, one that moves past the death and destruction I have witnessed and beyond the feelings of helplessness and frustration, but one that is still honest and useful. I have been thinking about change and shifting baselines a lot recently, as I struggle to comprehend as everything – from frogs and fish, to bats, bees and forest trees – decline in number. I remind myself, “Nothing is as constant as change.” It’s inevitable. This is the most honest and most hopeful thing I can say: evolution happens. Life is resilient.


http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/gue ... to-change/

[Newfie]

Well, maybe, from Earth's point of view, Humanity is the pathogen, and Evolution is trying to find a way to be resilient to the epidemic. Either to tolerate the parasite, or eradicate it.

Yes life is resilient. We are but one form of life.

[KaiserJeep]

There can be no happy ending for this planet with 7.3 billion humans on it. In their struggle to live, they will invade every ecological niche, consume everything that can be consumed, with no regard for spreading fungal plagues or any other malevolent diseases until nothing remains but humans and their food species. Then that single over populated species will crash from environmental destruction, clean water depletion, hydrocarbon depletion, climate change, etc.

There are FIVE mass extinctions documented in fossil history, with causes such as mega-volcanoes and giant meteor impacts. We are living in the SIXTH which is caused by HUMAN OVERPOPULATION. On the Geological time scale this extinction event will occur in the blink of an eye, in a couple of thousand years. This IS, after all, the first half of a bell curve:



Who would have thought that the greatest human thoughts recorded in the writings of religious figures such as the Buddha or the Christian prophet - the messages that humans should love one another and aid one another - were a prescription for killing the ecology of an entire world, by promoting the overpopulation of the human species?

For we humans are after all, a predator species, designed to compete and to contest over territory, equipped with canine teeth for tearing out each other's throats, and eating each other's flesh.

Sorry for these blackest of thoughts, but a thousand years before now, we could have done something about this if we had only understood our fate. But the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus would not share his thoughts until 1798, and even then, they were so black in nature that the good reverend published under the pen name Joseph Johnson:



Now it is TO LATE. Those 7.3B human beings are ALREADY HERE. There is no alternative plan not to have them, they are here and completing the destruction of the ecosphere in record time.

[sparky]

.
Yep !

[rollin]

As each thread of species heritage is snuffed out, a line going back to the beginning of life is erased. For what? For Ipods and BMWs? For television and soccer games? For a false belief that humans are the superior creature, the rulers of the earth, given power by the gods? A mass delusion and hubris of the greatest order.

If homo sapiens is so superior, why are they madly pursuing the largest mass murder-suicide ever conceived? We do not need alien life forms to travel endless space and eradicate us, we can do a fine job on ourselves and much of the rest of the life forms on this planet.

[noobtube]

Can these threads be honest, for once?

Africans, and a lot of Asians are not destroying the Earth.

Lay all of this at the feet of the Europeans and their descendants.

This is not homo sapiens... this is Europeans and those who wish to be like them.

The European way is the way to self-destruction.

When Europeans or Americans think it's good, they want all the credit.

When it's something bad, that they caused, suddenly it's everybody's fault (i.e. humanity, homo sapiens).

I have a word of advice to Europeans and Americans, embrace your failure if you want to survive.

[SeaGypsy]

A highly fanciful view of Africa and Asia.

[KaiserJeep]

Well, as it turns out, just reproducing is the problem. The World can sustain less than 1B, perhaps as little as 125M in some estimates, using perma-culture or agrarian lifestyles. The 7.3B we have are destroying the planet by breathing, drinking, eating, and consuming fossil energy.

No need to interject race/ethnicity, as all races exist in Europe and the US.

[dinopello]

I might ask - will there be any ending at all ? And, if there is, could it ever be a happy occasion ? What are we talking about ? The human race ? Of course it will end, maybe replaced by a sprout off our own tree or maybe a muskrat or insect. Are we talking about mother earth ? She will survive until pulverized by some interstellar collision. Maybe the next top 'dog' will be anaerobic. We are made of star stuff and that's where it all ends up. Can't blame the dog for how it is. People say we should know better, but that is just a form of hubris.

[Lore]

It's not just the consumption, but the waste that comes out the other end.

[dinopello]

I might ask - will there be any ending at all ? And, if there is, could it ever be a happy occasion ? What are we talking about ? The human race ? Of course it will end, maybe replaced by a sprout off our own tree or maybe a muskrat or insect. Are we talking about mother earth ? She will survive until pulverized by some interstellar collision. Maybe the next top 'dog' will be anaerobic. We are made of star stuff and that's where it all ends up. Can't blame the dog for how it is. People say we should know better, but that is just a form of hubris.

I don't know dino. Death is a sad fact of life, but so is resistance. You say we can't blame the dog for how it is. Ironically you have chosen one of the many species that does understand morality and compassion. We also feel compassion, have maternal/paternal instincts by our genetic design. Resignation is our natural state. But so is love, for each other and the planet earth. So is resistance.

I agree, although sometimes I wonder if complaining is not our natural state.

[sparky]

.
No need to whinge , things will sort themselves out ,
there might be a few hundreds years of misery , starvation , disease and violence will do their bit
but in the end , people will live in a balance with their resources ,
fossil energy gave a holiday from want for some of us , it will be over ,
simply because it will return to what it was , one misstep away from a miserable death .
nature doesn't take prisoners

[Keith_McClary]

there might be a few hundreds years of misery , starvation , disease and violence will do their bit

I can live with that ... oh, wait, I wont need to.

[ROCKMAN]

Sparky – “…one misstep away from a miserable death...nature doesn't take prisoners”. So true. Thus, in a way, having a fatal disease doesn’t seem so bad to me after all. In fact, don’t we all have a fatal disease called life? I don’t recall anyone surviving it much beyond 100 years yet. Obviously a question as to how one checks out and not if one checks out. Or as we in the MS community like to say: Yes…it’s a fatal disease but if you’re lucky something else takes you first. LOL. Who knows, maybe my end will come by falling off my roof while installing a solar panel. As they say: “Sh*t happens”

[Lore]

We've been crafty little devils lately, trying our best to outrun nature and cheat death by a few years. Often forgetting that it's the fabric of our ecosystem that supports all this. Unfortunately I don't think we can count on the future being so kind to people like Hawkins, or most people with chronic illnesses.

[Tarrel]

I suspect we have a marginally greater chance of reaching out into space than moving away from our consumption-oriented behaviour.

If we DO have the capability to reach out and leave the planet, maybe we'll need to accept that we'll become the locusts of the universe; flying from planet to planet, terra-forming, reproducing, consuming and moving on.

Not a particularly nice self-image, admittedly, but it seems to work for the locusts.

[Ibon]

Of course it will end, maybe replaced by a sprout off our own tree

Highly doubtful. Here are some comments from Frans De Waal, a primatologist who has studied for decades our nearest ape relatives; The Chimpanzee, Bonobo, Gorilla and Orangutan.

By the year 2040 virtually every suitable ape habitat will be gone. We humans will be diminished if we cannot even protect the animals closest to us, who share almost all of our genes, and who differ from us only be degree. If we let them go, we can just as well let everything go and turn the idea that we are the only intelligent life on earth into a self fulfilling prophecy.

From Our Inner Ape, Frans de Waal

[Ibon]

We also feel compassion, have maternal/paternal instincts by our genetic design. Resignation is our natural state. But so is love, for each other and the planet earth. So is resistance.

The book I just quoted in my last post goes into this. I highly recommend it. Many of you who post here I am sure would find the writings of Frans de Waal very enlightening.