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A literal canary in a coalmine situation, writ large.

What is doubly distressing is that we collectively could be addressing issues such as these if we wanted to.



"if we wanted to."

It's unfortunate, but people are too obsessed with their short term comfort and prosperity to consider making sacrifices for saving the environment, nature and future generations.


do we have to be? are we unable to overcome this trait?


I become more and more pessimistic by the day that we can overcome these aspects of human nature. Sure, we can probably get some subset of the population to overcome these traits, but we need the vast majority of people to sacrifice their current comfort for the good of the planet and future generations. I just don't see that happening, unfortunately. Our response to covid, especially in the west has been abysmal and that was a relatively easy testcase which we've failed (Asian countries have generally done much better, though).

I think that in order for us to save nature we need to get away from our western utilitarian view of nature - the idea that nature is here for us to exploit and exists only to the extent that it furthers our goals. But these are deep-seated beliefs that are very difficult to change on a mass scale in a relatively short period of time - it would take generations and we don't have that kind of time.


its kind of mind boggling to start thinking about all the stuff we do that's detrimental to birds habitat (and basically every other animal). Even down to the tiny factors like yard maintenance: do you blow/rake/bag every little thing in your yard and send it to a land fill? you just stole food/housing-material from birds, squirrels, etc...


Every time I see someone filling plastic bags with clippings, and later fertilizing their yard, I just… yeah. I honestly don’t get that behavior.


How can we better communicate the urgency with people who do not find it an issue?


Outspend dozens of large deep-pocketed industries in lobbying and misinformation.


I'm not sure we can match those many $Billions year after year. How about some kind of campaign finance reform? (a longshot, I know in the current political climate, but something that needs to be considered)




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