[pardoned_turkey]

Why does it depress you that we as a species fared well thus far? Is there intrinsically higher value to a planet where humans struggle but the quagga dominates on all continents?

I'm not taking the position that the negative impacts of our civilization should be ignored, or that biodiversity shouldn't be preserved. But I really struggle to understand going from "we should be better stewards of the environment for our own benefit" to "it would be better if we never succeeded in the first place." Maybe that isn't your point?

[digging]

> But I really struggle to understand going from "we should be better stewards of the environment for our own benefit" to "it would be better if we never succeeded in the first place."

They didn't say the latter, though. I think it's odd to even bring the idea of success into the question - I would not define "10xing the rest of the mammal biomass" as "success". Not even on evolutionary criteria - usually I understand "successful" creatures as ones that are widespread and long-lived, but we really haven't combined those two traits yet.

[Scarblac]

I just have a gigantic feeling of loss. So many huge ecosystems, so many of the things we things we grew up with reading about in books and seeing in those beautiful Attenborough narrated documentaries are just coming to an end, forever. Replaced by the same human sprawl as everywhere.

That there are so many of us and so few of everything else isn't necessarily "faring well".

[JohnFen]

> "it would be better if we never succeeded in the first place."

I don't see where anyone even implied that.

[nonameiguess]

Not the parent, but I'm also frequently saddened by loss of wildlife and my "point" is definitely not that it would be better if humans never proliferated in the first place. I'm almost certain you can understand this sentiment. Most people have had to leave a home, break up with a significant other, change careers, in such a way that it ultimately worked out for the better and it was necessary to achieve some goal, but the loss at the time still brings about grief.

I'm not going to say this is an exactly analogous situation. One, I don't know that is really is necessary to human civilization thriving that we have to rapidly and recklessly destroy natural habitats the world over to make way for farms or just plunder crops, pelts, and whale oil and what not for a few decades to make a single generation rich until it's all gone. There is very likely a more sustainable way to do it that isn't as disruptive to the pre-existing ecosystems and still allows us to feed and house a large number of people. This isn't purely a matter of hey, they needed to go to make way for us. Think of blue whales or bison in North America. Populations absolutely decimated, damn near reduced to nothing until legislation and interional treaties finally agreed to protect them. But all that ocean and all that grassland is still there. We didn't displace them to use it for something else. We just killed them damn near for nothing, because blubber and fur could be traded for a lot of money for a few decades.

Second, it remains to be seen whether this is really for the better even for humans. All of this "success" you're talking about is the population exploding over the course of the last 500 years. The reasons for this are largely positive reasons. Indoor plumbing, germ theory of disease, global transportation networks, figuring out how to rapidly move food and water, not only for ourselves but for crops. Drastically increased land yield. All great stuff. But we're talking about a few centuries of success here. Sharks have been apex predators for 200 million years. Whether humanity is truly going to thrive over the long run or be a flash in the pan that disappears and leaves a mass extinction in its wake is yet to be determined.

But still, even if it ends up ultimately turning out for the best, it is still perfectly possible and reasonable to feel grief about the loss virtually all other large animals with rich inner lives and social relations have had to endure while it happened. Have you ever read about or watched many US Civil War material? I don't know that it's totally unique or even atypical for wars, but it's always poignant to me in the way that the two sides largely didn't hate each other. Many of the victors took little joy in the victory. The land they plundered and people they killed were their own country and their own countrymen. I can't say it was a bad thing as it ultimately ended one of the most evil things humans have ever done to other humans, but it was still a sad thing.

[bjelkeman-again]

Thanks. You said what I feel better than I could.