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Comment by jnwatson | Hacker News Reader

I’ve always imagined that we’re in this situation of creeping ecological and environmental collapse because of a long buildup over hundreds of years of bad priorities.

But it isn’t. Most of the damage has taken place during our lives. Over half the carbon humans have emitted is after 1990.

This isn’t an inherited problem. We’re doing this to ourselves. Right now.

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I suspect, totally off the cuff, that this is more related to destruction of insect habitat, overuse of pesticides, cats, night time lighting, and a whole slough of other anti-insect man-made problems. Global warming plays a part, no doubt, but my guess would be that it’s not the primary problem. Almost all of the yards around me are insect deserts, and these yards are common across the US urban and suburban regions.

For many decades now, we’ve effectively been waging war on a key part of bird diets.

Edit: also, as mentioned elsewhere, we’ve reforested, but have subsequently lost critical meadowland. And our new forests tend to be more monocrop than the woodlands of old.

So, I prefer a dark house at night. There are even studies that indicate crime is actually lower in the dark(1).

What other studies are there that indicate turning off the lights and reducing light pollution is a good idea?

1: The Chicago Alley Lighting Project (1998-2000)

If you are interested in light pollution there is a fantastic documentary I would recommend called "Saving the Dark" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fHxNn-FEnc

Light pollution seems to be the easiest type of pollution to fix

> And our new forests tend to be more monocrop than the woodlands of old.

This is a huge problem.

When "reforesting", all too often the effort is just planting rows of evenly spaced out pine trees. Pine needles are decidedly less edible than soft leaves, and the piles of needles on the ground don't exactly provide a good environment for smaller plants to grow and certainly aren't a good home for insects. People are essentially planting green deserts.

There are simply too many of us and 'growth' will ultimately doom us unless we act fast.

It won't matter if the percentage of clean energy is 50% if we are still emitting greenhouse gasses at 1990 levels. We need carbon zero yesterday to be honest, but the world is only just now waking up to this fact...

The world going Carbon neutral by 2050-2060? The damage we are going to do between now and then will be phenomenal. ( if we ever get there...)

Going carbon zero "right now" will just trade one disaster for another. And some argue an even bigger diaster.

Energy is required for human life to live now. We cant go back with out massive famine and death. Just cutting boff energy production not get to Carbon zero NOW like many are demanding is not feesable, realistic, or moral

I think that implies that carbon emitting methods are the only way we can produce energy. Sure, constructing hydroelectric plants emits carbon right now but ideally it wouldn't in the future. We shouldn't be spending money and energy constructing new gas pipelines in 2021, for example. That effort would be better spent on emission free energy sources or on electric vehicle manufacturing capabilities.

I'm advocating switching energy sources very rapidly and shrinking the population gradually.

The alternative is literally the death and famine that you are afraid of.

I doubt we will be Carbon Neutral by then. It means that CO2 levels MUST at least become constant. Looking at the current graph I see CO2 levels not only always increasing, but the rate of increase is also accelerating.

I strongly suspect we will blow all targets and will move along the most pessimistic scenario.

We need fusion yesterday

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

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