The year I was born, the entire human population was less than 70% of what it is now. It was not obviously a better place then, in the depths of the Depression.
I would not eliminate religion as such. It does little harm in itself. You need faith. I have faith that my wife is not out to poison me. But organized religion is another matter. The advantages of organized accrue entirely to the organizers. I would eliminate all religious organizations. And change human nature so that they would not reappear.
Chiggers itch worse than mosquitoes and serve absolutely no purpose.
At least ticks serve as possum food, but chiggers do nothing but bite and itch like crazy!
True, Depression-era America and other parts of the world were tough times for humans, despite our reduced population. But ask the Javan Rhino, African Wild Dogs, Asian Elephants, Snow Leopards, Amur Leopards, Sumatran Tigers, Hawksbill Turtles, Mountain Gorillas, Orangutans, Vaquita, Blue Whales, and countless other Earthmates if they were at least a little better off then compared to now. I think they’d say yes.
We humans are just one of approximately 8.7 million species on this planet, yet our actions profoundly impact the fate of so many others. It’s high time we do a better job as caretakers.
Having had a personal encounter with it recently that made me miserable for weeks, I’m going to go with poison ivy. (Yeah, I know we have an FQ thread extolling it’s virtues. Kill it anyway.)
I would suggest that many items considered to be trash or waste may become quite valuable once the raw materials that it originates from are exhausted. This includes nuclear waste, for example. The high-level stuff is dangerous because it still contains a lot of energy. Someday we may want to harness this.
With respect to global warming, I assume you are talking about carbon dioxide. For what it’s worth, in the very far future hundreds of millions of years from now (long after the likely passing of humans), rising temperatures on Earth due to the increasing luminosity of the Sun is projected to cause a long-term drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Carbon dioxide levels will eventually drop low enough to interfere with photosynthesis, killing off all plant life (and hence animal life).
So although well-meaning, it wouldn’t actually be good to magically lose all or even most of the Earth’s atmospheric carbon dioxide. A better wish would be for it to be sequestered back into the ground until it is needed later.
Human-caused global warming is definitely real, of course, much of which is due to elevated CO2 levels. But yea, if CO2 were to be 0 ppm, the Earth would turn into a snowball. At least that’s what I’ve read.
This is why I opened the thread to posit getting rid of all CO2 above 20,000 feet above sea-level. This would be about half the CO2 in the atmosphere, putting us around pre-civilization levels. There is nothing up there so there shouldn’t be any great shock from the immediate loss, and atmospheric levels should normalize relatively quickly. There is still the ocean to worry about but at least it would be a start.
I can agree with this one.
Do your work, get paid and do some more for more pay. Don’t expect continuous pay for no more work. Excepting reasonable amounts of time limited royalties.
That would be the least of our problems if atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were to go to 0 ppm. As I mentioned, plants need carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, so no carbon dioxide would lead to the loss of all plant life.
So you certainly would not want to wish for all carbon dioxide to disappear.
I was actually referring to anthropogenic excess carbon dioxide released by the combustion of fossil fuels. You wouldn’t actually want this to all disappear either. But it would be better if this excess carbon dioxide were sequestered in rocks instead of in the atmosphere where it is contributing to the current problem of global warming.