I wonder, after 500 years, after 1000 years of industrialization, what will be left of Earth?
In the last 150 years we went from almost zero protected areas to 26 million sq km of nature preserve, or a fifth of the Earth’s total landmass (excluding Antarctica, which is also protected). Out of the ~106 million sq km of habitable land, half of it is unprotected forest (37%) and shrubland. Only about a third of that forest is used for lumber so there’s room to protect about thrice as much as is already protected.
We have to remain vigilant but the global zeitgeist is very much on the side of preserving more nature rather than less. There will be more hickups but I wouldn’t be surprised if we double the amount of protected land in the next 100 years.
We do NOT live in those times, and the edifices propped up and successful in Europe and America, well and truly wish to undermine those protections.
It takes resources and it takes a middle class / working class for the collective will to matter. When those groups are under resourced, then it’s a question on whether nature appeals to some coterie of elites.
It creates a narrative of momentum, which is necessary to not be overwhelmed by the situations we face, but it’s no longer viable to ignore it.
As just one sign - Academics in environmental science and conversation have PTSD, because of how hopeless things are.
In that same 150 year period, more species have been wiped out by man than in history.
As a species we are a force of nature.
I can find common ground that some of us are changing and that efforts are being made.
I disagree that it is inevitable- it’s hard won and must continue to be fight for
hate to break it to you but over the span of history, elites have been way better at natural preservation than the middle and working classes.
Correlation here is not causation. By that same criteria, elites have been responsible for the grandest acts of destruction and waste as well.
But I suppose someone may want to leave preservation efforts up to random chance and inheritance. Subjective preferences can’t be debated after all.
Individual wealth does not cause environmental damage, it mass wealth that does.
The global zeitgeist is very much not on the side of preservation, seeing how much irreversible damage has already been done, and how nothing is tried to prevent more from being done.
Let's not even talk of global warming, ocean acidification, ecosystem collapse...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-ra...
Just saw an trailer for an unreleased game: rollercoaster tycoon, but for parking lots.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3031880/Car_Park_Capital/
> The world that is being created by the accumulation of technical means is an artificial world and hence radically different from the natural world.
> It destroys, eliminates, or subordinates the natural world, and does not allow this world to restore itself or even to enter into a symbiotic relation with it. The two worlds obey different imperatives, different directives, and different laws which have nothing in common.
> Just as hydroelectric installations take waterfalls and lead them into conduits, so the technical milieu absorbs the natural. We are rapidly approaching the time when there will be no longer any natural environment at all. When we succeed in producing artificial aurorae boreales, night will disappear and perpetual day will reign over the planet.
We lost the majority of the old, large trees, but the forests came back.
500 years sounds optimistic. Are we ignoring climate change here?