What benefit has humanity been to this planet?

Great Debates
21

I liked the movie, but even when I saw it in the theatre I knew this was junk. It’s right up there with “humans are the only animal that fight wars.”

I think the idea of humans being a benefit or detriment to the planet is a little weird. We’ve killed off individual species, and that’s obviously bad for those species. But species kill off other species- that’s something that happens. Animals don’t stop preying on each other because they’re concerned about endangering them or about the larger ecosystem. Only we do that. Sometimes we do it, anyway. I’m not trying to argue against conservation or environmentalism, I care very much about both. But in terms of the question we’re looking at here, those things don’t matter. Individual species don’t matter, and neither do we. Life will adjust and the species that survive will adjust, just as they would to any other event or catastrophe. The Earth is a rock. You can’t do right or wrong by a rock.

22

The benefit we’ve brought to the planet is inventing terms such as “benefit”.

23

Can you define “weird”?

24

I dunno, maybe Venus is envious of Earth and all its life forms. On the other hand, maybe it’s happy to have nice clean semi-molten surface free of all such icky infectious junk.

25

Your question presupposes that the planet can benefit from any animal. In what way can any animal be a benefit to the planet?

Marc

26

Heck, I’m a little surprised nobody’s challenged the characterization of Agent Smith as an “alien”. He’s as much a product of the Terran ecosystem as any human or animal.

Incidentally, the second and third films imply Smith himself has gone viral, but the logic is shaky.

27

Indeed, I wonder about this. Perhaps every creature exploits and destroys the environment in some manner. Maybe this is just how things are. It just seems that we humans do so in so much more a pointed and focussed manner than other species. It seems that we really try to destroy our living situation, even in the name of temporarily achieving longer lives, at least for humans.

Is this, perhaps, the ultimate goal? Is this what we are here to do? Is this our purpose? Are we merely aspects of what the Hindus call the Kali Yuga, the age of Destruction, and our purpose on the Earth is to contribute to this destruction?

It’s a thought…

28

Scientifically, there is no purpose to our being here-- or any other animal being here, either. You are looking for a scientific answer to a phylosophical or religious question, and there IS not scientific answer to these types of questions.

But you might also consider that a key difference between humans “destroying” the environmnent and animals “destroying” the environment, is that we can realize the consequences of what we are doing.

29

What on Earth do you mean by “destroys the environment?” Organisms change their environment. Some of these changes benefit them and some other organisms. Some of these changes are detrimental to other organisms, and sometimes to themselves. But to speak of “destroying the environment” is just nonsense.

Early life on Earth was anaerobic, adapted to living in an environment almost free of highly reactive molecular oxygen. Eventually photosynthetic organisms evolved that produced large amounts of oxygen, which was toxic to other organisms. They “destroyed” an environment that was suitable to the original life forms, which now must take refuge in oxygen free environments.

Life has no goal, other than to persist.

30

I think I explained at the end of the post. Others have stated the reasons, too. What is the good of the planet? How does anything benefit the Earth? The self-hating view of humanity is popular, and certainly we possess the capacity to do more damage to other species, but how do you benefit or harm a planet?

31

The OP wasn’t perfectly clear, but I assume they would define “good of the planet” as it’s ability to support life. Deforestation could be considered “bad for the planet” as it decreases both bio-diversity and the amount of biomass that can be supported by an area of land.

32

Supporting life isn’t good or bad for the planet; it makes no difference. But to go along with that, I’d wager biodiversity and deforestation are both things that have gone up and down through history.

Perhaps that’s another reason I find this weird: we’re being asked to consider humans as disconnected or intruding on the planet that they evolved on.

33

My point is that we treat this planet as if we are disconnected from it. And this certainly is a practice based in self-loathing. It is as if we are simultaneously trying to extend our lifespan (presumably a positive), while degrading our quality of life. We now live much longer in a state of misery and extended disease. This would be another thread, which I’ll start forthwith.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts!

34

You’re confusing short-sightedness with self-loathing.

We experience less disease than ever! That’s part of why we’re living longer, as a matter of fact. Misery is more subjective, but if you’re looking at it that way, at what point in the past were things better?

35

I‘m not saying that the situation in the past was “better.” But what we have now is a relatively well-fed population, medically much better tended-to, which results in longer lives, but with an incident of protracted disease that is unprecedented in the history of civilization. Rather than looking at it as longer lives (a positive), we are now taking an exceedingly long time to die (a negative).

As for confusing short-sightedness with self-loathing, just what is short-sightedness except self-loathing? The term “short-sightedness“ itself implies, to me, a deliberate refusal to view things with all of the capacities we have, and make adjustments as appropriate. I think we are short-sighted by choice. If not, then that’s another thing…

36

[QUOTE=drmark2000]
Admittedly, this question came out of a pretty grim mood…

“The Matrix” is far from being a favorite movie of mine, but there was one scene in which one of the aliens points out that, besides humans, there is only one other type of creature on Earth that will populate it’s environment to the point that the environment can no longer sustain the population - we call them viruses.{/quote]Actually, this is my biggest peeve with the whole damn movie-
Firstly, every type of creature does this; the population increases until something limits it - predation, lack of resource, whatever; the only diffference is that when something forcibly limits human populations - famine, for example - we happen to consider it a great tragedy, but we aren’t by any means the only species to experience it.
Secondly, a virus is not a living creature.

37

You want a potential benefit? We have evolved to the point that we may be able to prevent asteroidal/cometary impacts that would otherwise wipe out large fractions of the Earth’s species. Only human beings can do this. The “cost” associated with that is the infrastructure necessary for us to reach that point is destructive to some other, much smaller fraction of the Earth’s species.

38

I’m not sure what this means. What protracted disease do you mean?

I don’t know what this means either.

The difference is intent. Short-sightedness is ignoring consequences. Self-loathing is consciously bringing about bad consequences.

39

The dirty little secret is that we are really just using the Earth to develope starships, so we can get to other planets, which we will once again use to evolve to transdimentional beings.

But the story we tell to the earth is we are just trying to get rid of all that nasty stuff, like oil and minerals in it.

40

Actually, starships are one of the things we’ve done that’s of a benefit to this planet.

There’s no known mechanism, other than human-launched spaceflight, able to remove complex systems from the Earth’s gravity well non-destructively. Anything else that could take something from earth to elsewhere in the universe would probably destroy any complexity it had. I’m thinking asteroid impact here, mainly, although there may be other natural forces capable of this.

What good is it? Maybe none, maybe a lot. Depends on how good we as a species get at it. It could save our life, and all life on earth. That’s probably a good thing, at least from our perspective.

What else have we, as a species, done that couldn’t be done otherwise? Because I think that is the question here. Not whether what we’re doing is good, or bad, because that’s all a question of morality. The question is what do we do for the planet… and I think that, in a sense, everything we do is FOR the planet. Because we’re part of it as much as it’s part of us. Excuse me, I must hug a tree.

…
Ok, I’m back.

Humans have spread speceis across the entire globe. Everything from ourselves to our plants to virus and bacteria species. There are bananas in Alaska and chili peppers in Antarctica. There are penguins in Pittsburgh, and Koalas in Cancan. There’s also fire ants and killer bees… but remember, this is the earth’s idea of ‘good’, not ours. The earth is all about life and competition and evolution.

Without us, how does life spread? Birds, ok, they can migrate, and insects, and I guess fish and stuff. But other species… there’s no way a tiger is going to cling to a piece of driftwood long enough to make it from Africa to South America on its own, AND be able to reproduce successfully once it gets there. But with our help, they can and do.
What else are we doing? We’re changing the very environment on a global scale. From deforestation and global warming to re-forestation and desert reclamation efforts, everywhere you look mankind’s impact can be seen, to some extent. Will this hurt us? Maybe. Will it hurt the earth as a whole? Almost certainly not. Life WILL go on, no matter what happens.

Again, without humans, how would the earth change its environment? Not just locally, but globally? If it ‘needed’ (again with the anthromorphism) the average planetary temperature raised by, say, five degrees, how would that be done? Nudge the planet closer to the sun, maybe, or perhaps a couple dozen volcanos, or maybe the sun itself gets a bit hotter. All pretty drastic things, really, when you think about it. And pretty hard to regulate, or reverse.

But humans? Get 'em to start burning fossil fuels for a hundred years, then stop… and there you are, global warming.

We’ve brought things up from the bottoms of the ocean, and from the depths of the ground, and put them where the other thing was. How is the earth supposed to get a 50-lb piece of solid gold to the bottom of the sea, without having humans put it there, by means of a sunken ship? No, I don’t know why it needs to be there either, that’s not the point. The point is that it couldn’t happen without humans. We also put shipwrecks down there, which form reefs, if you’re still hung up on the whole gold thing. It’s just an example.

In fact, that’s possibly the thing we as a species do best. We go out, find stuff, and then put it where it doesn’t belong. Kind of like how a bird will pick up something shiny and put it in its nest. We do that with all kinds of things.

Look at a landfill sometime and tell me humanity isn’t doing SOMETHING that’s changing the planet.

We pull raw materials out of the ground, turn them into products, and then bury them in the ground. By the metric assload, every single day, all over the planet.

What else does this? Trees, perhaps, in a sense. Certain animals, I suppose. Anthills are all about moving inorganic material around. But only humans do this with such passion, such frequency, in such great amounts.

In fact, we PROCESS this material. Sure, trees turn carbon into sugars, but WE turn anything into anything, if we put our minds to it. We turned sand into your computer, after all. That’s pretty sweet. Sand and dead dinosaurs, actually.

Dead dinosaurs. Petroleum. Plastics.

THAT, I think, is what mankind is REALLY doing for the planet. That and the whole space thing, if we ever get that going again.

Petroleum is waste. Sure, we’ve found a few types of bacteria that seem to like it, but nothing else on the planet seems to know what to do with these billions and billions of gallons of thick greasy sludge that’s accumulated over the eons from all the LIFE this planet’s been making. But humans found it. And humans liked it. And humans learned to make stuff out of it.

And we’ve been making a LOT of stuff out of it, haven’t we? Gas, plastic, drugs, you name it, petroleum is all over the surface of the planet now isn’t it? And in all sorts of neat new high-energy forms, whereas it was once a relatively unusable mess.

What will the earth do with this? Who knows. Doesn’t really matter… give it enough time and it will come up with something.

It always has before.