We are perfectly capable of sustaining a clean and balanced environment. We probably will, eventually. The question is: how much damage and pain will we cause before we decide to?
this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2026
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We probably will, eventually
My old boss told me one time (I’m translating from corporate speak) that it’s 100% totally okay to personally inflict any amount of environmental damage that benefits us in the short term, because the solutions to climate change are on the way. Like it’s a totally forgone conclusion that the bright minds working on these problems will solve them. Always have, always will.
You and I and every sane person agrees minimizing the damage is best either way. It just reminded me of that convo lol. Bro was using the “confidence in human ingenuity” as a blank check excuse to actively cause the damage that will need to be undone. Absolutely insufferable. If it were 100% confirmed there were no way for us to survive what’s coming he’d still run the business the same way just with a different convenient excuse
"Well what does it matter that the oceans are all lava now, and will tsunami every livable inch of land, killing all life on earth? We can still harm the planet today. Won't batter next week when we're all ash!"
That's an easy thing to say, but not really accurate. Even without capitalism, we've wiped out entire animal populations. We're just doing it a lot faster now. Even if we were fully socialist, and there was no profit being made for anyone, our own humanity would be destroying the ecosystem; strip mining would still happen under perfect communism (e.g., not authoritarian states).
Capitalism and communism both need to same resources, they're just distributed different.
Capitalism and communism both need to same resources, they’re just distributed different.
I'm really not convinced by this. I'm not going to try and make an argument for communism. But the idea the amount of consumption under capitalism would be the same as under alternative economic systems is just absurd. The amount of waste created by planned obsolescence, fashion (fast and otherwise), consumption from status anxiety, the things people buy to cope with long working weeks and commutes. In addition to this the extra damage caused by the billionaires and mega rich.
We would still need access to the same types of resources under alternative economic systems. But there is so much waste created by things which are exclusive to capitalism.
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Virus implies we are invasive. We are born from and part of nature. Humans are more like cancer. We are growing too rapidly and killing the host.
Thats faulty logic. By that reasoning, virus's themselves are not invasive but simply part of nature. Hell, EVERYTHING is just a part of nature by that reasoning.
Was going to mention the Aral Sea
Wouldn't we need to exploit our planet for material for a growing population regardless of our species economic system? It's more of an issue of degree, no?
Education and quality of life improvements lower birth-rates. We have enough resources and the logistical means to ensure all peoples have access to high quality of life. We choose to deny this based on a capitalist profit seeking model, where we over allocate resources to the most wealthy and strip them from the least.
Preach
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Think about how much shit is wasted on the daily, and then think about if we just didn't do that. Tons of shit nobody wants is manufactured and destined for landfills for no reason other than to make a few billionaires some pocket change. Now think about all the plastic fucking packaging.
We could be doing shit in a sustainable manner. But no, capitalism.
It's the deliberate choice to use processes over more sustainable options, like using gas and coal instead of cleaner solutions like nuclear. Other examples would be outsourcing processes that we could do cleanly to the 3rd world because it's cheaper.
Doesn't matter. Both the first argument and yours presuppose the internal value of bio diversity detached from humanity, which is weird.
Nature is valuable insofar we can coexist with it. If climate change were driven by the factors independent of our actions, our collective goal would have been to defend humanity and not LDAR.
I cannot prove it, but vibes are that this sentiment is coming from years and years of anti climate action propaganda.
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Some exploitation is necessary, in the same way a bison exploits the grass.
But different economic systems can generate vastly different levels of environmental destruction. For example, our system encourages planned obsolescence, fast fashion, and overall disposable goods. There are countless materials we don't recycle simply because it's not profitable to do so. You can build a system on a more circular economy, where new raw materials are only harvested if recycling can't provide.
Yes, but if we stop capitalism the population will likely maintain itself at a reasonable level. The only reason we have as many people as we do now is thanks to government pressure to reproduce as much as possible, restricted access to family planning techniques, and rape culture.
This is the age old debate about human nature.
We have a biological imperative to consume and reproduce. Unchecked consumption and reproduction is unsustainable give finite resources.
Can we curb those innate desires, and can we do so ethically? It's not a simple answer.
Humans have existed for 300,000 years. It is only in the last few hundred that we have decided on this route. It is not human nature to consume and reproduce more than a ecological niche can support us and many peoples across the world live in balance with their ecosystems before Europeans invaded them.
It is not human nature to consume and reproduce more than a ecological niche can support us and many peoples across the world live in balance with their ecosystems before Europeans invaded them.
https://link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-3-540-33761-4_62
Tell that to the mammoths.
Professor Willerslev said: "Scientists have argued for 100 years about why mammoths went extinct. Humans have been blamed because the animals had survived for millions of years without climate change killing them off before, but when they lived alongside humans they didn't last long and we were accused of hunting them to death.
"We have finally been able to prove was that it was not just the climate changing that was the problem, but the speed of it that was the final nail in the coffin—they were not able to adapt quickly enough when the landscape dramatically transformed and their food became scarce.
"As the climate warmed up, trees and wetland plants took over and replaced the mammoth's grassland habitats. And we should remember that there were a lot of animals around that were easier to hunt than a giant woolly mammoth—they could grow to the height of a double decker bus!"
Humans did not cause woolly mammoths to go extinct—climate change did: study
Tell that to climate change.
For fifteen thousand years or more before the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, passenger pigeons and Native Americans coexisted in the forests of what would later become the eastern part of the continental United States.
A 2017 study of passenger-pigeon DNA found that the passenger-pigeon population size was stable for 20,000 years prior to its 19th-century decline and subsequent extinction, while a 2016 study of ancient Native American DNA found that the Native American population went through a period of rapid expansion, increasing 60-fold, starting about 13–16 thousand years ago. If both of these studies are correct, then a great change in the size of the Native American population had no apparent impact on the size of the passenger-pigeon population. This suggests that the net effect of Native American activities on passenger-pigeon population size was neutral.
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No, it's only the last few hundred years we had the capability to decide on this route.
It is not human nature to consume and reproduce more than a ecological niche can support.
Yes it is. It is a biological imperative to consume and expand. There is no biological imperative to stop doing that. Up until recently the balancing factor has been the cruelty of nature and vast amounts of human death, especially in the very young.
Yea breed till extinction is natures way. Those reindeer on the island off Kamchatka.
I think the biological imperative to stop is the total doom it creates us all if left unchecked. Pretty strong motivation. I think the game musical chairs is closer to reality than symbiotic relationship, conflict being inherent in survival.
Community created cooperative protection.
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And who created capitalism? Humans. Checkmark atheists
Capitalism started ~500 years ago in Europe. It did not come from humanity as a whole, yet you would condemn everyone on Earth to die because of that?
How about instead of this childish take on reality, we realise that it's a system that can easily be dismantled and we don't have to kill 8 billion people.
No matter what system you use, humans will ultimately ruin it. Regardless of how many it takes to ruin it. Throughout history, long before capitalism, every and all systems eventually fail when put against humans
so like, why are you here? you cannot genuinely believe this nonsense and yet have the will to live.
The fact that you spend your time commenting on the internet shows that you don't actually believe what you say.
See my comment further down, I've actually done what I can for my own footprint. Arguably more than most. I'll vote for change when it's possible and I'll encourage others to make a little changes here and there.
I'm just not going to let it become an obsession and ruin my life because ultimately in the end it won't matter human greed will always ruin it. I'm happy enough just making sure I'm not part of the problem as much as possible
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