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Comment by morceauxdebois | Hacker News Reader

Just think of the long term co2 savings we could make by not stopping the virus.

"Let's save the Earth by letting loads of people die"?

Breatharianism [1] would solve global warming pretty quickly, within a matter of weeks, really. Anthropogenic emissions of CO2 would disappear.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inedia

A surprising number of people hold the belief that humans should voluntarily go extinct to not destroy the planet.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Movem...

Which is a facile, ludicrous notion on its face. Absent a human consciousness, what does ‘destroy the planet’ even mean?

Let’s be a bit more pragmatic about it: what are the typical characteristics of the “loads of people” that would be dying? Here’s a hint: it’s not the young and healthy.

A society that does not protect the elderly and the sick is not a place where I want to live.

OP is advocating killing half a million sharks to save the sick and elderly as something that “shouldn’t even be up for debate.” A few of us happen to disagree.

A scarier thought is that it has been hard to convince people to wear masks to save themselves, so what hope do we have of getting them to save the planet or even just some species that share it with us? (read a tweet to this effect, but didn't keep a ref)

Please, please consider your privilege first, before beying condescending about the world population.

Helping the Earth is very, very high on Maslow's pyramid, just appreciate that you are that high on it and think how to bring more people at thay level.

Plagues and wars cannot help the environment, but the bettering of the condition of man kind can, and is the only way forward.

In order to help the Earth, we first have to help man kind.

Wars, and plagues do help “the environment" when the latter is meant in the way too many environmentalist view it - as a no-human wilderness.

The environment can be preserved if:

a) you keep the human population minuscule, at a primitive techonlogical level

b) you completely wipe out all humans

c) humans become so advanced they transcede their natural limitations

Single variable optimizations lead to funky results sometimes.

Unfortunately every major problem humanity faces today can be solved with properly targeted elimination of mass of people.

How is my tinnitus and now vertigo helping save CO2?

Covid has massive painful ramifications throughout the world population and economy.

Surely we can do better than a plague to save the Earth.

This will most likely be over in a year or two after massive vaccinations and synthetic antibodies, but the economic impact will linger for a loot longer.

And guess what will happen when this is over and the world wakes up in a major economic crisis -- that's right, the world won't give a damn about the environment, it will all be about efforts to restart the world economy and cleanup the fallout.

Mother nature has a way of healing itself

If this sounds desirable to you, by all means offer yourself as a volunteer for human sacrifice in the altar of Mother Nature.

I'd rather have vaccines.

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