I’m torn, because there’s an idea that industrial capital only knows how to consume and destroy what it touches. And there’s ample evidence to that effect.
But there’s this other more naive notion that life never changes, species don’t compete for habitat, and doing anything to alter the local ecology is this unforgivable sin. This, despite the fact that everything in the area is itself a product of eons of speciation and evolution and carnivorization.
The impulse to preserve has to be balanced with the expectation for change. The goal should be symbiosis, not stasis.
The issue is that you’re changing the ecosystems and environments so much that all those eons of evolution are simply lost. The only other times this happens is during natural catastrophes. Sure, in the long run this allows new life forms to take the old ones places, but it’s still a massive loss of diversity and evolutionary knowledge - and unnecessary suffering for millions of living beings.
When species compete for a habitat, they rarely destroy it - and those species that do either don’t survive for long, or they wipe out large swaths. We’re actively killing almost anything in our habitats, and destroying them for almost all previous species.
The idea that nature is precious and must be preserved is human-centric.
Trees caused an extinction event when they appeared by absorbing all the carbon dioxyde and radically changing the atmosphere. But we feel bad when we’re the ones doing it
I’m torn, because there’s an idea that industrial capital only knows how to consume and destroy what it touches. And there’s ample evidence to that effect.
But there’s this other more naive notion that life never changes, species don’t compete for habitat, and doing anything to alter the local ecology is this unforgivable sin. This, despite the fact that everything in the area is itself a product of eons of speciation and evolution and carnivorization.
The impulse to preserve has to be balanced with the expectation for change. The goal should be symbiosis, not stasis.
The issue is that you’re changing the ecosystems and environments so much that all those eons of evolution are simply lost. The only other times this happens is during natural catastrophes. Sure, in the long run this allows new life forms to take the old ones places, but it’s still a massive loss of diversity and evolutionary knowledge - and unnecessary suffering for millions of living beings.
When species compete for a habitat, they rarely destroy it - and those species that do either don’t survive for long, or they wipe out large swaths. We’re actively killing almost anything in our habitats, and destroying them for almost all previous species.
The idea that nature is precious and must be preserved is human-centric.
Trees caused an extinction event when they appeared by absorbing all the carbon dioxyde and radically changing the atmosphere. But we feel bad when we’re the ones doing it