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by mvn9
2124 days ago
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Evolution has local optima. Octopus and dolphins kind of have the intelligence to create civilizations but they are stuck in water. Dolphins never have the time to re-evolve feet because predators will hunt them down. There are C3 and C4 plants [1] but without technology, it is very unlikely that C3 plants become C4 plants. Enter technology, and food production can be optimized. Combine those processes with others, and you can create plants that don't exist yet but are much better at creating food. Technology doesn't mean that plants are outright destroyed. But it is very likely that new processes will be more efficient. To hedge against the threat of not knowing, seed banks will be kept. A risky move compared to keeping nature alive, but I doubt that anybody in power will maintain a rain forest over using the area for more efficient means of energy and resource creation. Maintaining nature only makes sense if we are interested in knowledge as the primary driver. But the primary driver is power. Like Alexandria and Baghdad, there is no way that knowledge will be maintained when it stands in the way of power. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C4_carbon_fixation |
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> A risky move compared to keeping nature alive, but I doubt that anybody in power will maintain a rain forest over using the area for more efficient means of energy and resource creation.
> Maintaining nature only makes sense if we are interested in knowledge as the primary driver. But the primary driver is power.
I understand the sense in which you are saying all this, and I agree, this might be how things go about provided humanity even survives this century provided we reach this hypothetical synthetic economic optimal. lots of ifs. and risky as hell, very very risky. but yeah probably how things would go by, the best one can be is sad.
tbh if you ask me I really doubt human enduced climate change can ever be mitigated through collective human effort. we'd rather chose annihilation over it.