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Comment by stefan_ | Hacker News Reader

Long before humans ever roamed this planet species went extinct with regularity. Why should we care about the California Monarch Butterfly in particular? Because they look beautiful, to human eyes anyway?

Ever since we know about evolution, we realize that the whole concept of enumerating species is a mostly pointless, sisyphean task that originated in a religious fervor of documenting Gods creation. Focusing on specific species without any particular systemic issue in mind is little more than a throwback to the dark ages of science.

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The monarch is simply one of the more noticeable affected species. Before long it may be apparent that (micro)plastics and emissions have royally screwed the organisms and systems underlying everything else.

But water bottles are so convenient eh?

Obviously, butterflies are the only species having a problem and everything's fine.

Because humans are causing the extinction and more importantly have the intellect/ability to prevent it. The problem is more systemic. This happens to be a specific case.

> Why should we care about ... X?

Because we can.

Not just that but mostly because we (humans) are the cause of their disappearance. So we ought to care.

It’s not just the monarch butterfly. Entire ecosystems are collapsing throughout the world as insects disappear followed by the birds that eat them and on and on.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2018/10/15/hyperalarm...

I was just commenting the other day about when I was a kid, you'd drive somewhere in your car and you'd have to scrape the bugs off your windshield. I drove about 700 miles a few weeks and not one bug. Something is wrong.

To support your anecdote, I've seen this comment posted by a number of users the last few months in relation to environmental-destructive posts. And to add my own data point, I too, have noticed the same as you on road trips through various parts of western US, although I always just thought I was just crazy. I can't say as of when exactly, but I really started noticing the last 3-4 years. Even hiking around where insects used to be numerous on warmer days, sometimes annoying in-your-face at every turn, seem to be nearly void of creatures.

Outside of massive global extinction events is there any record of extinction on the same scale as the one brought on by the human species?

Most records show that as soon as humans set foot in an environment the local species were decimated one way or another. And I'm not assigning blame exclusively to modern humans, it's been happening since the dawn of humanity.

Maybe when a collision with a planetoid turned half the planet inside out and in the process created the moon, but other than that, no.

We've created a new geological age. If there's intelligent life on the planet a million years from now they will look back and go what the fuck.

Any invasive species does the same thing to a new environment. Zebra mussels, kudzu vine, etc.

Sure but how many other species managed to invade every single other environment like humans managed? Not too many, which is why our impact is overexpressed.

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