Comment by somenameforme | Hacker News Reader

Comment by somenameforme | Hacker News Reader

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Do you know what all those megafauna, jungles, and forests had in common? They rely on or emit oxygen, and oxygen originated with cyanobacteria. [1] When cyanobacteria emerged they basically just genocided the entire planet because their emitted oxygen was extremely toxic to most of everything else alive at the time. It'd be like if plants today started emitting gaseous arsenic and flooded the oceans and atmosphere with it. So you end up having your enlightened aliens longing for a planet that exists only because of 'pollution' on a scale that caused a mass extinction event. We should work, within reason to preserve what we have, but the self loathing is nonsensical.

Humanity isn't perfect but it's pretty awesome, and may ultimately be the only reason that the species that exist on this planet are able to continue to exist. We're overdue for another major external mass extinction event, but this time humanity will hopefully be able to mitigate its effects. And as we expand our reach into the cosmos we'll certainly be bringing along our furry friends, tasty friends, helpful bacteria, and many others along for the ride. And they'll continue to thrive far beyond what might otherwise be their fate, left to their own devices on Earth.

If anything I'd think our enlightened aliens would be worried about us managing to kill ourselves before we reach into the stars. We're probably quite close, on both accounts. Hopefully we win the right race.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanobacteria

>Humanity isn't perfect but it's pretty awesome, and may ultimately be the only reason that the species that exist on this planet are able to continue to exist.

For now, the contrary seems most probable. It's humanity that's threatening most species on Earth right now.

That requires one to focus on the most narrow slice of time while ignoring both the past and the future. Species constantly go extinct. It's estimated that more than 99% of species that have ever existed are now gone. [1] And that's almost entirely long before humanity even existed. This planet is absolutely brutal on anything remotely like a long time frame. Most of every single animal that exists today will be extinct in one future. And that's a future that might be far closer than any of us could imagine - we are well overdue for a mass extinction event.

But we increasingly have the power to change this. That's a power and potential that no other species alive today has, or ever will ever have. And not only can we do it, but I think it's fairly certain that will we do it - if we are capable of it. Sometimes we go overboard on things and that can have very negative effects, but on the whole I think we've done great with our power. Think of what we have the ability to do, contrasted against what we have done.

[1] - https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/extinctions-in-the-...

That's just an excuse though. By that argument we were just made by the earth because it wanted some plastic. Cyanobacteria genociding species doesn't make it fine for us to do it. That just makes no sense as an argument. And regarding us doing good and protecting species? Yea parents don't watch one sibling die just because they protected another. You don't take that as a get out of jail free card.

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