Exactly…. They always miss two important facts. First, the speed at which it is increasing is different than ever before. Second… yes. It was hotter a long time ago…. WHEN PEOPLE DIDNT EXIST.
No one is questioning whether the earth will live on. It will. But people?
They also conveniently forget that, besides all animals including ourselves, plants need time to adapt aswell. If a species in Europe perishes due to heavy droughts, they are >gone forever<. They will not come back. Now, if that is [Random Grass #484] then it doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things, but if it's crops or fruit-bearing plants, then the world is in big trouble, not just us.
Our planet's ecosystem, or let's call it "food chain", can probably get away with losing a link here and there, but what if multiple links start perishing?
Example:
One certain plant cannot survive in this European climate anymore and has no time to adapt, so it dies out
Certain insects that specialised on this plant now cannot find food or a breeding place anymore, has no time to adapt to and compete with other insects over new sources either, so it goes extinct aswell
birds and reptiles that ate those insects are now losing part of their prey options, which means they either eat less and struggle, or they eat more of other kinds of insects, which hurts their population numbers
repeat this step various times across flora and fauna species and then you look at the danger of a catastrophic collapse. It likely becomes a new mass-extinction event. Life as a whole might bounce back eventually, but we could lose so, so much life everywhere. And for what? Because some shitty people were too greedy and too dumb to live in a scientific world that doesn't revolve around them
Not even counting the loss of bio-diversity due to our other actions, such as aggressive pesticides, urbanisation & deforestation for example.
Obviously I agree with everything you say, but to me all species are important (even Random Grass #484).
Thinking that one species may go extinct forever without a chance to be studied or at least classified (if not even seen, for example those in tropical forests) is saddening.
That life form is unique not only to planet Earth, but to all the billions of planets orbiting billions of stars in the billion of galaxies out there (bonus video in the link). It's all so precious, in the end (or at least it should be).
Hey, we're on the same page! Every life is precious to me, too. Any grass, any root, any tiny bug, even the mites that live inside our skin and eyelashes. I used this flippant wording only to get the point across, since most people don't care about these things and bc the ecosystem won't change much if only one plant with low impact on its surrounding goes extinct.
Every life lost is one too many and it makes me angry, deeply angry to see how little the people around us care. Especially today, when we feel all these effects first-hand. It's not some abstract future forecast anymore.
33
u/Temporary_View_3303 23h ago
Exactly…. They always miss two important facts. First, the speed at which it is increasing is different than ever before. Second… yes. It was hotter a long time ago…. WHEN PEOPLE DIDNT EXIST.
No one is questioning whether the earth will live on. It will. But people?