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Comment by worik | Hacker News Reader

In one thousand years, when there are still ninety nine thousand years to go, what will the people in Europe think of us?

We left toxic waste dumps, of waste that is silently toxic, a stealthy killer, all over the place. Some will be leaking. Some won't.

And why did we do it? To pay for our current consumption.

What will they think of us?

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What do you think about people who lived 1000 years ago? Do you care about the pollution and deforestation around some mining areas in use during their time? Probably not. These issues, although serious, get swallowed by the progress of civilization.

I don't understand why your comment was downvoted. If humans haven't transitioned into nuclear waste eating flying robots within a couple of thousand years, that's because they then have managed to go extinct, and in that case, whatever nuclear material that might leak into a nearby lake will only affect some fish and the occasional moose walking by (and these are creatures that we, today, kill for food, so it doesn't seem like most people care about them all that much).

Caring about how future generations of humans will handle our nuclear waste is akin to someone 2000 years ago being worried that leaving a heap of rocks somewhere would be to much of a hazzle for us to get rid off.

Likely as unsophisticated people that were unable to harness the remaining energy in that waste.

Likely the same as I feel about the PCB/DDT emissions from just the last century. How on earth could you be that stupid and selfish?

The idea that random stuff sunk into oceans was "gone" lived into the 60's even in progressive places like Sweden. It's insane to think that this wasn't one generation ago.

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