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Comment by bluGill | Hacker News Reader

There are certainly more trees where I lived than there were a hundred years ago, but there are also more trees than there would have been a thousand years ago. I live in an area that should be natural prairie and humans have planted a lot more trees than the ecosystem would support in a natural situation.

I don't know if this is good or bad from an environment situation, but it is a part of a reason I am suspicious of claims that more trees are good.

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With efforts some desert areas get reclaimed with trees. Sure, ic nature took its course the deserts would grow, but there are efforts to push them back and some have had success. I think that’s positive despite going against the natural course of things.

Tell that to the desert-dwelling species that rely on that habitat for survival. Deserts aren't empty wastelands that are valueless without human development.

Maybe I saw too many Disney movies as a kid, but it took me a very long time to consider, “There’s nothing inherently good or right about what would have happened in the absence of people.” There’s nothing kind, nurturing, decent, or fair about natures course. It’s a thing without direction, not a “one true course of events” that we interrupted.

It makes those kinds of situations much harder to evaluate than the simple worldview, but I think it’s more honest.

And yeah, the hazard is in thinking the opposite is true. Lord knows we’ve done some objectively dumb shit, too.

Being such a wildly powerful species is a burden.

One thing I found is that the people that most believe there is some kind of natural order without humans is preferable or more "natural" than the nature we make suited to humanity, is that these people are almost always atheist or agnostic.

Of course you can not believe this and be atheist. But the deep sense of indifference to humanity is much more prelavent with godless people.

Humanity is part of nature. And undeniably a part with outsized impact on the remainder of nature. Seeing humans as just a part makes a lot of folks more humble and desire balance.

A more extreme view on the other side is that people should "go forth and multiply", consequences be damned. Which reads as naive as middle schoolers who think the bacteria in their enclosed experiment will grow and florish forever.

> A more extreme view on the other side is that people should "go forth and multiply", consequences be damned.

I think the best part of nature are human beings. I don't think it's a naive middle schooler idea. It's in fact the most lindy, biologically rooted idea that exists. Ignore it at your own peril (or the peril of your genes).

> I think the best part of nature are human beings. I don't think it's a naive middle schooler idea. It's in fact the most lindy, biologically rooted idea that exists

Every sentient species probably feels the same about their kind. That doesn't make it objectively true.

> Ignore it at your own peril (or the peril of your genes).

Genes of every species that ever lived have gone--or soon enough will go--extinct. We're just the lucky ones who've made it this far.

Life is worth preserving (IMO), and I've passed on my own personal set of genes a few times. I just don't think burning the world at the expense of everything else is worthwhile or sustainable.

Said another way, I'd be fine with humanity going extinct if it meant nature could go on making more interesting things. In fact, I think humanity is bound to be replaced by something else eventually. After all, there's no magical sky daddy who made us in some divine image or who is determined to preserve us exactly like this forever.

It’s not taking back historical desserts but rather reclaiming more recent desertification or simply stopping the advance of desertification.

> It’s not taking back historical desserts but rather reclaiming more recent desertification or simply stopping the advance of desertification.

Any successes in that specific regard are probably an overall good thing really. Fingers crossed for the folks doin' such things...

I think this is similar to those denialist articles that made the rounds a few years ago, about how bees aren't really dying, because look, there's so much honey produced nowadays (and obviously anyone who thought otherwise was just a woket*rd).

The reality was (is) that the honey is obviously coming from industrialised bees, who are destroying habitats for all of the other non-honey bees and insects.

I will link only to the rebuttal, as I don't enjoy linking to reactionary stuff

https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/2023/1/19/23552518/honey-b...

> I will link only to the rebuttal, as I don't enjoy linking to reactionary stuff

Link to everything. And if you are going to link to just one thing don't link to commentary.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-25290-3

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