Hacker News Reader

Comment by wkjagt | Hacker News Reader

There’s more than just humans and their tech here to worry about though. I get so depressed when I hear people describe the gravity of climate change only in terms of the chance of survival of us humans.

View on HN

Mass extinction events have happened many times before. The tragedy here is that it is the first preventable mass extinction event. If speaking about it in self-centered terms gets people to act then we should do it. Pragmatism is essential.

> The tragedy here is that it is the first preventable mass extinction event

I think that being responsibles for it is even more of a tragedy.

If climate change didn't affect humans we wouldn't care. Did we care when the skies started to glow at night due to air pollution and destroyed the ecology, or the importation of European honeybees, or effects of toxins on fauna. No it was "marvelous" a "triumph against nature".

The ONLY question to most people is: what will happen to me from it, if it will, why me changing anything will help?

I’m not disagreeing. This is exactly how it is. I’m just saying that this way of thinking (not yours, but the one you describe) is depressing.

You can make it a bit less depressing by thinking on the scale of the universe. Life on this planet has at most a billion years left, after that it's gone even if humans never existed. Humans are likely the only species that can save anything from this planet for the trillion years of life that is possible in the universe after this planet is gone.

The current extinction event is the most depressing part. A lot of environmental changes can be undone, but bringing back thousands of species is impossible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

Reply on news.ycombinator.com