The earth will be fine. It’s been through way worse than us.
People say this a lot, but what are we calling ‘fine’?
Supporting life is what makes Earth special; if that’s snuffed out and Earth becomes just another dead rock floating through space, I’d argue it isn’t fine at all, in the same sense that you or I wouldn’t be fine if we suddenly died, even though our physical corpse would remain for much longer.
And we’re WAY far away from life being completely extinguished, but even in its current state with life relatively abundant, Earth is running a high fever, so I’d say it’s already crossed the ‘not fine’ line.
We’ve discovered hundreds of billions of planets, and so far we’re only aware of life existing on a single one of them: life is an incredibly rare, incredibly fragile, statistically insignificant fluke in our universe. It may literally be the single best example of “it’s the exception, not the rule”.
So, why are people always so certain that it’ll persist? Life in general will certainly persist well beyond humans, but even the most resilient of extremophiles have their limits. The whole “Life, uh, finds a way” is great and all, until it doesn’t.
The damage we’re doing to our planet directly is pretty small on a universal scale, but we’re playing with forces we don’t understand - some of those forces are feedback loops, so our involvement may be the first tiny domino that sets off a cascade of increasingly large dominos until our planet is molten all the way to its core.
Or, we die off and feedback loops stop, the environment stabalizes, and Earth lives on happily ever after. Or anything in between: the point is we have no idea, and no basis to make and real predictions good or bad.
Hopefully Earth will be fine.
…sorry that was so wordy. I ramble when I’m tired.
If the heartbreak I feel didn’t come through about the destruction of our home and everything that makes survival on it easy, the possibility of our total extinction and the certainty of massive scale suffering of every living thing on the planet, then let me make it clear: Yes, that’s a bad thing.
You’re absolutely right. People insist on making this ridiculous point every time a topic like this comes up. It’s like, holy shit, just let the destruction of all life on Earth be the point of the conversation instead of some stupid tangent about a lifeless rock in space.
People say this a lot, but what are we calling ‘fine’?
Supporting life is what makes Earth special; if that’s snuffed out and Earth becomes just another dead rock floating through space, I’d argue it isn’t fine at all, in the same sense that you or I wouldn’t be fine if we suddenly died, even though our physical corpse would remain for much longer.
And we’re WAY far away from life being completely extinguished, but even in its current state with life relatively abundant, Earth is running a high fever, so I’d say it’s already crossed the ‘not fine’ line.
We’ve discovered hundreds of billions of planets, and so far we’re only aware of life existing on a single one of them: life is an incredibly rare, incredibly fragile, statistically insignificant fluke in our universe. It may literally be the single best example of “it’s the exception, not the rule”.
So, why are people always so certain that it’ll persist? Life in general will certainly persist well beyond humans, but even the most resilient of extremophiles have their limits. The whole “Life, uh, finds a way” is great and all, until it doesn’t.
The damage we’re doing to our planet directly is pretty small on a universal scale, but we’re playing with forces we don’t understand - some of those forces are feedback loops, so our involvement may be the first tiny domino that sets off a cascade of increasingly large dominos until our planet is molten all the way to its core.
Or, we die off and feedback loops stop, the environment stabalizes, and Earth lives on happily ever after. Or anything in between: the point is we have no idea, and no basis to make and real predictions good or bad.
Hopefully Earth will be fine.
…sorry that was so wordy. I ramble when I’m tired.
If the heartbreak I feel didn’t come through about the destruction of our home and everything that makes survival on it easy, the possibility of our total extinction and the certainty of massive scale suffering of every living thing on the planet, then let me make it clear: Yes, that’s a bad thing.
You’re absolutely right. People insist on making this ridiculous point every time a topic like this comes up. It’s like, holy shit, just let the destruction of all life on Earth be the point of the conversation instead of some stupid tangent about a lifeless rock in space.