How do we get humanity to sacrifice for the greater good?

Great Debates
101

Yes. My point was the very number of machines required would be prohibitive.

To give a sense of scale, the world makes about 85 million motor vehicles per year. That is an enormous industrial effort to make those things.

That many magic air scrubbers would be a teeny drop in a huge bucket. We’d need a manufacturing capability that dwarfs the motor industry. Then we’d need to power all those things we made.


My bottom line:
The problem with scrubbing isn’t that scrubbing is per se hard, although it certainly is.

The problem with scrubbing is the scale of the problem is simply far, far vaster than layfolks think it is. it really is a “bailing the ocean with a teaspoon” scale of problem.

102

Not blaming my parents, no. I remember thinking as a teenager that it would be a sacrifice worth making to kill myself so that there would be one less person on earth. The idea that it would be better for the planet if people voluntarily died, if it could be accomplished in sufficient quantities to make a difference, was something I did think about, back when I was more extreme. It does make a great deal of sense, to me. I don’t see why it doesn’t to others. But the drive to keep existing overrides everything else.

103

I’m not an expert or anything, but I think there may be something wrong with you that you might want to discuss with someone.

104

Being literally anti-human is not the way to get humans to go along with your agenda, no matter how good an idea that agenda may be. And a movement in favor of self extinction is an innately self defeating one; it will always be outnumbered and then replaced by those who disagree. Just ask the Shakers.

105

Exactly. I want to save the planet, but I want to save it in order to benefit humanity. The world is a beautiful and wonderful place, and I want us to be around to appreciate it.

106

There isn’t anything wrong with me. I have a lovely meaningful life with people who love me, full of beauty. I just see the big picture, and it’s quite clear to me that humans are laying waste to their only possible home, the home of billions of other organisms, and they won’t stop doing so, and there is no fixing it, due to human nature.

Truthfully, I don’t understand why this isn’t obvious to everyone. All the data points that way,

107

The idea of voluntary self-extinction is something I thought about when I was seventeen. I’m 68. It’s not a wrong idea, just not practical. Generally speaking humans are in favor of being personally alive, in my experience.

I had quite a number of impractical ideas then, including an art hotel filled with concept rooms, like the sand room which was furnished with nothing at all but sand. I had a lively imagination.

108

See, I’d be happy if the planet flourished without us. I’m not very human-centric, despite my species.

109

Yeah, I didn’t think @Ulfreida meant humanity should LITERALLY sacrifice themselves. That’s a bit of a hard sell. I thought he meant like lower the AC a bit or close my swimming pool a few weeks early.

As George Carlin said, “we don’t need to save the planet. The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are!”

110

I think it is obvious to most of us. Not the people in thrall to interest-based propaganda, but to everyone who actually is paying attention to the actual facts.

Where we differ is in how to respond to the situation.

IMO human nature is as immutable as the 24 hour day or the force of Earth gravity. And equally arbitrary. The Earth’s spin rate or strength of gravity could have been different. Human nature could have been different. But they all are what they are and we are stuck with them as they are. Railing against them as they are and a-wishin’ and a-hopin’ they were somehow different is both pointless and useless.

Humanity was foreordained to shit the bed. You and I just have the “privilege” of living in the era that is watching the oncoming train become unmistakably a train, not something good like the end of a tunnel opening onto a bright sunny day. We didn’t get to live in the oblivious 1800s, nor are we forced to live in the horribly messy 2200s. Instead we got to live our middle age into dotage at the peak of the good in the twilight of worry before the true dawn of the really bad.

111

The Earth will be fine, no matter what we do. It’s survived extinctions before. If you could, would you travel back in time and divert the Chicxulub asteroid, preventing the K-T Extinction Event? Would you condemn the mammals to save the dinosaurs? Mass extinction is part of the natural cycle of life on this planet. At least if we do it it’ll be homegrown, and not caused by some alien rock.

At some point, hopefully in the distant future, humanity will go extinct, and then, in a blink of the eye - 20 or 30 million years, no more - life will evolve into new and beautiful forms and repopulate the Earth. So it’ll all turn out OK in the end.

112

This oddly does not comfort me.

113

I agree it makes sense. I don’t want to die, but I’m not taking the possibility of voluntary death off the table.

114

Changing human nature has never, ever worked. But technology has always rescued the human race from starvation.

115

70 million people have starved to death in the past 100 years.

Yes, I realize you probably meant the “entire” human race.

116

Sorta. That statement bears a more than passing resemblance to the old question / logic teaser of whether god could create a rock so heavy he could not lift it.

We may indeed have invented a rock too big for ourselves. Or at least we cannot assume a priori that it’s a liftable rock.

And I don’t mean it’s unliftable in the sense that a tech solution is a physics impossibility. But it may well be a speed / scale / economic / political impossibility. Which are, or at least can be, just as insurmountable obstacles as mere physics.

117

Yes, mass extinctions are part of the natural cycle on our planet. However, the Anthropocene/Holocene extinction is unlike the previous five major die-offs because it’s not natural; it’s predominantly human-driven (hence “anthro”). The key issue is that our current extinction rate far outstrips past events. Species today simply don’t have time to evolve and adapt.

Contrast that with the Cretaceous–Paleogene event (~66 million years ago), when the Chicxulub impact delivered a catastrophic gut punch (sucks to be you, non-avian dinos). While it caused immediate chaos, the majority of extinctions—which claimed about 75% of species—unfolded over tens of thousands of years, giving some life forms a fighting chance to adapt. In comparison, the current Holocene/Anthropocene mass extinction has accelerated at breakneck speed—kicking into high gear around the Industrial Revolution and ratcheting up drastically in recent decades. Most complex species can’t cope with that kind of evolutionary whiplash.

So yes, the Earth as a planet will carry on, and life in some form will also endure. Microbes, fungi, insects, and certain resilient mammals might throw a post-human party someday. But for us—and other large, complex organisms—this scenario could be catastrophic.

Humans caused this crisis, so we should be motivated to address it. Not just for our sake but for all the endangered species we share this planet with. As a member of our hairless-ape tribe, I’m ashamed when I look my cats in the eye. If they could talk, they might say, “Dude, what the f@$k? You guys are killing us all!” and all I can respond with is, “Sorry, kitties…maybe some extra Little Friskies?”

If cats beat us to apex status, I think they’d have done a better job—but who knows? Maybe this destructive stage is the universal “great filter” that all advanced civilizations hit before reaching super-advanced status. It could even answer Fermi’s nagging question of “Where is everyone?” with a sad “nobody else made it this far.”

But hey—on a more cheerful note—it’s not too late. We can pull up our collective big-boy pants and protect this amazing biosphere. Earth has hosted life for billions of years; the least we can do is ensure it keeps doing so for billions more. Let’s get scrubbing.

118

The problem with the so called Holocene extinction event is indeed- many insect and other small species are going away. No doubt. Lots of them. But all the previous mass extinctions were tracked by fossil remains- large megafauna species in one layer- and not in the next. The current event can not be tracked by fossil remains- the tiny species going extinct are not the sort that could be tracked that way.

The KT extinction event was a pretty thin bright line. Not a single non avian dino above it. All the marine archosaurs- there on one side- gone on the other. True, the number of dino species did seem to be dwindling before the KT event- no one knows why, or maybe just poor fossil records. About 75% of known species went extinct. The Permian-Triassic extinction killed 90%.

In contrast the Holocene event has killed off an estimated 1% of known species. It it really too early to call this a mass extinction on the order of the previous ones. Mind you- 1% is a lot, really. If you apply a slippery slope to that, it could look bad.

119

And yet, even when you thought that, you made it clear that giving up even that little was a bridge too far for you. Says it all, really.

120

Two things:
1: plenty of larger animals have gone and will go extinct during this event as well.
2: of course small animals like invertebrates or chordates are trackable. “Large megafauna”[sic] are not even the primary way we tracked other extinctions. Conodonts, trilobites, brachiopods, graptolites, etc. Even the Great Dying at the end of the Permian, the largest extinction event ever, is primarily marked by marine invertebrates. Palaeontologists’ best tool is the microscope - most marker species are barely visible to the naked eye, if at all.