For Scandinavians and Brits especially, though others can participate in this poll, do you know what AMOC is and what it's collapse will mean?A spoiler is that a growing number of experts believe it's either already collapsed or about to collapse
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@MAJ1 @Shivviness @SallyStrange
Go for it
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@Shivviness @SallyStrange @MAJ1
Here's a rad article about how humanity were / are good stewards of nature, but colonialism came and messed it all up."People have shaped most of terrestrial nature for at least 12,000 years"
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2023483118"The current biodiversity crisis can seldom be explained by the loss of uninhabited wildlands, resulting instead from the appropriation, colonization, and intensifying use of the biodiverse cultural landscapes long shaped and sustained by prior societies. Recognizing this deep cultural connection with biodiversity will therefore be essential to resolve the crisis."
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@HeavenlyPossum @MAJ1 @SallyStrange
Humans tend to subjugate nature, e.g. obliterating megafauna and, since the invention of agriculture, growing monocrops to the detriment of biodiversity. Capitalism merely supercharged our ability to destroy everything
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@Shivviness @HeavenlyPossum @MAJ1 @SallyStrange We didn't even invent monocrops until the eighteenth century, so I'm going to call 'false' on that. Even then, most farms continued to be mixed farms practising crop rotation -- with fallow -- until the mid twentieth century. The modern practice of continuously cropping the same crop on the same land only became possible with the widespread availability of artificial fertiliser.
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@simon_brooke @HeavenlyPossum @MAJ1 @SallyStrange
You're right regarding monocrops.
I was trying to get at the point that agriculture of any kind exacts a cost on the environment -
@Shivviness @HeavenlyPossum @MAJ1 @SallyStrange Well, that's false, too. Organic farming demonstrably increases topsoil depth and sustains biodiversity. Whether that's a greater increase of topsoil depth than allowing the land to revert to forest (where forest would naturally grow, but the whole of the UK is naturally forest) is more debatable, I admit.
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@simon_brooke @HeavenlyPossum @MAJ1 @SallyStrange
You're suggesting that an organically farmed piece of land is more biodiverse than were we to just leave it to return to nature?
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@Shivviness @MAJ1 @SallyStrange @simon_brooke
In many cases, yes!
Virtually all of the global biodiversity we associate with “nature” is found in places that were inhabited and altered by humans for thousands of years.
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@HeavenlyPossum @Shivviness @MAJ1 @SallyStrange @simon_brooke
No, the deep wild places were still deep and wild when I was young. -
@SallyStrange @Shivviness @MAJ1 @TheDailyBurble @simon_brooke
Yes, as a result of thousands of years of human habitation. The idea of “pristine untouched wilderness” is a social construct, not some biological or ecological fact.
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@HeavenlyPossum @SallyStrange @Shivviness @MAJ1 @TheDailyBurble @simon_brooke indeed, as long as our species has existed we've altered the Earth on a grand scale for our purposes. The only question is how or to what end.
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@FinalOverdrive @HeavenlyPossum @SallyStrange @Shivviness @MAJ1 @TheDailyBurble well, 'to what end' implies intention. The destruction of Britain's forests was mainly to graze sheep, build ships, and smelt iron. No one was setting out to burn the planet – but also, I think, no one was aware of the long term consequences of their actions.
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@simon_brooke @FinalOverdrive @HeavenlyPossum @SallyStrange @Shivviness @MAJ1
Surely there was a "to what end" at any point in history. I hope our "to what end' might be a bit more benign. -
@TheDailyBurble @simon_brooke @HeavenlyPossum @SallyStrange @Shivviness @MAJ1 We can only hope, but we will never truly let the world "be"
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@FinalOverdrive @TheDailyBurble @simon_brooke @HeavenlyPossum @SallyStrange @Shivviness @MAJ1 I don't know why we'd want to?
We can hope to achieve some kind of "equilibrium", sure, but letting it "just be" implies an, I dunno, inertness which is literally impossible. Every living thing acts upon the earth in some way, consciously or not, just to live.
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@neonsnake @FinalOverdrive @simon_brooke @HeavenlyPossum @SallyStrange @Shivviness @MAJ1
Well as stewards of the earth we are a total fail anyway. I'm not sure what's so wrong about wilderness? It's far from inert. It has biodiversity and balance going on. Things live there.
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@TheDailyBurble @FinalOverdrive @simon_brooke @HeavenlyPossum @SallyStrange @Shivviness @MAJ1 Balance is what I meant by equilibrium, for sure.
Even in a wilderness, it's a constantly shifting environment as some creatures move, some die off, new plant life is introduced by migratory animals and so on.
And whilst we have been spectacularly bad at stewarding the earth we live on - no disagreement there from me! - there have been times and places when we were actually, overall, pretty good at it.
It's only really over past maybe 300 years that we've got *catastrophically* bad at it, and the reasons for that aren't that "we" (humanity, I mean) are naturally bad it overall, but that we changed our relationship with the planet as new forms of society became embedded (capitalism, basically).
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@neonsnake @FinalOverdrive @simon_brooke @HeavenlyPossum @SallyStrange @Shivviness @MAJ1
Probably not paying attention. More interested in making money or doing wars. Or gaining status. The whole lovely thing about wilderness is that it shifts along on it's own and balances itself. Without us. Or with us. It's there but if we kill it it isn't. Our loss.
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@TheDailyBurble @FinalOverdrive @simon_brooke @HeavenlyPossum @SallyStrange @Shivviness @MAJ1
Yes, but we don't have a history of knowingly killing off vast swathes of "wilderness" for most of our existence*, up until the past few centuries.
And yes, it's about making money - or more accurately, in concentrating money into fewer and fewer hands.
*heavy caveat: Obviously there'll be exceptions where mistakes have been made, either honest ones or greed-driven ones.
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@neonsnake @FinalOverdrive @simon_brooke @HeavenlyPossum @SallyStrange @Shivviness @MAJ1
I suppose the joy of it is unknown. now. If all you know is fields of farms, going unbound is a bit odd. It's my age, I knew these things. I was lucky. I think there are still fragments of it left. But if you prefer acres of farm, wire fences and tarmac, it's all yours, won't be wanting.
