If I could get rid of one thing, it would be this nihilistic ‘humans are the worst’ mindset.
Very generous of them. 
I assume you do pest control?
let me be the asshole in this threat:
I’d eliminate FRICTION … and gleefully watch the world as we know it sink into disaster, as all screws would undo and all nails would fail, planes falling out of the skies, cars breaking down within minutes, well - the whole 9 yards.
yep, that’s the kind of person I am …
although eliminating GRAVITY would have its own merits as well …
I’m a scientist who has been researching mosquitoes for over 25 years.
i’m not a nihilist. At all. I just want to save my planet. Humans are just fine, in reasonably quantities. Carrying-capacity quantities. In the quantity we have now, humans ARE the worst. Indisputably. Anything worse than us, other than a meteor, has not ever happened to Earth’s biomes.
What if the genie eliminated 7 billion people, but all of the survivors were Trumpists? And you?
If you eliminate gravity the Universe will cease to exist. Not sure that’s a useful move.
We are humans. We make our own environment, generate our own carrying capacity.
7 billion humans is above the carrying capacity for humans living as hunter gatherers. So is 1 billion, or even 500 million. But it is not above the carrying capacity for our modern technological society.
Human population is projected to peak around 10.5 billion by the 2080s. With continued investment in renewable and perhaps nuclear energy, it isn’t impossible for us to sustain that number of people.
I don’t know how else to describe the notion that the vast majority of us must die to save the world other than nihilistic.
When plants first evolved they nearly wiped out all life on Earth by poisoning it with oxygen.
It would be a hijack to say anything more, but I wholly disagree with your premise.
You’re welcome to start another thread and tag me in it if you think that the idea that we would be better off if 7 billion people died tomorrow is remotely defensible.
I don’t have the energy for anything like that. I have felt, more strongly than I can well express, that we are destroying everything for all living things, for as long as I’ve been an adult. I see feeble efforts to mitigate that endlessly washed away by the deluge of human need and human greed and human shortsightedness, and I have been watching this happen for more than half a century now. All I have is the evidence of my senses.
Humans are only precious because we are human, just like our dog is precious to us because it’s our dog. Otherwise, we’re just a species run amok, nothing more. And that is cold science.
Right - nothing has inherent meaning beyond what us intelligent, sapient beings imbue it with. Which is why I find your contention, that it would be better if the vast majority of those beings died off, to be so abhorrent.
On the other hand, there’s an argument that if the human race has value then we should act to protect it by eliminating the greatest threat to its existence. Which is the human race.
I could go either way on the getting rid of 7 billion people idea, but I’m certain I would like to magically eliminate the laughing-until-crying emoji.
My bolded part is exactly where I utterly disagree with you. All life is precious, All life has meaning. External to human intelligence. That there is why there’s no argument to be had. You either feel this or you don’t. Shit, I am sorry I started this hare.
The Earth has endured five previous mass extinctions, all caused by natural events. Each of these extinctions lasted from thousands to tens of thousands of years. The most recent, the K-T extinction, was triggered by a Mt. Everest-sized bolide that collided with Earth, rapidly wiping out about 75% of all species. The extinction’s effects continued long after the initial impact, with recovery taking millions of years.
We are now experiencing our sixth mass extinction event, known as the Holocene or Anthropocene (anthro = man). This one is primarily caused by human activities. It began around 10,000 years ago but accelerated significantly after the Industrial Revolution. It is expected to last thousands more years and could potentially wipe out more species than the K-T extinction. It’s effects are already felt, but it’s going to get worse, maybe not for us, or our grand-kids, but certainly for future generations.
The future outlook is uncertain and heavily depends on human actions. Efforts to conserve biodiversity, mitigate climate change, and protect ecosystems are crucial for slowing or halting the current extinction trajectory. If current trends continue, the loss of biodiversity could have profound and lasting impacts on the planet and human societies.
This is an existential threat to both humans and animals. But unlike previous extinctions, this one is not due to natural forces—it’s our doing. While there are now green policies in place to mitigate the progression of the Holocene extinction, many, including myself, believe it may be too little, too late. More should have been (and should still be) done, especially after public awareness was raised by events like NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen’s Senate hearing in 1985 and Carl Sagan’s congressional hearing in 1986.
Human population is just one piece of the puzzle regarding climate change, but there’s little doubt that a significant reduction in population would positively affect mitigating the dire outlook of the Holocene extinction. I don’t think anyone is [really] suggesting exterminating a large segment of the population, but it’s clear that the planet would fare better with fewer of us.
I did one time wish that a new covid strain came out that made men sterile. So, men who had their shots up to date would likely be okay- and it would strike only one year of men. So, just a huge reduction in births, but humans would continue.
I’d be game for that. But I’m a bit crusty.
I don’t argue with any of that. However, as you point out, this extinction didn’t just start yesterday. In fact, 10,000 years is a severe underestimate. It’s been going on for as long as we have existed. Over the last 150,000 years, nearly all species of megafauna outside of Africa (where we evolved alongside many of the surviving species) have been wiped out - the majority of them long before the development of agriculture.
Face it: there isn’t some sustainable level of human population and technology that could exist in harmony with nature. With rudimentary control of fire, wood and stone tools, clothing, and simple boats, we were able to make our way to every other continent on the planet, and to wipe out nearly anything significantly larger than us.
If every human on the planet disappeared in 1712 at the moment that the first practical steam engine was turned on, it would still take hundreds of thousands of not millions of years for the world to evolve megafauna rich ecosystems again.
Given this fact, pining for the past, dead world is useless. Even if the vast majority of us did die off, “nature” would be irrevocably damaged, and the things that the survivors would have to do to first survive and then recover and claw their way back to where we are now would damage the planet even more. When you’re worried about starving or freezing to death in the immediate future, worrying about environmentally sustainable practices is not very likely to be something that you actually do.
Instead, we should focus on the future. On developing the sorts of sustainable practices that might just save us. On rewilding efforts that could restore ecosystems much faster than disappearing and waiting for new animals to evolve on their own.
The problem with the attitude I am responding to is that if I believed that sustaining 10 billion people was impossible, then the rational response would be to realize that there is no way to save us all and, rather than investing in renewable energy, we should be grabbing as many resources as possible to prepare for an inevitable final resource conflict. If only a handful of survivors will inherit the Earth, all we can do is try to end up among them.
Yellow Hawkweed. The ubiquitous cousin of the dandelion. I have no problem keeping my yard dandelion free even though my neighbors have it in their yards. Then when the weather gets warmer hawkweed is everywhere, including my yard. Watering my lawn to keep it a yellowish green color makes it worse. From my house I see at least 6 neighbors that have yards full of this stuff. The middle school half a block away has acres of the stuff.