Is man interfering with nature too much?

jetsonx

I was shocked to learn about this new species last February and shocked to discover just how this new species had spread around the world.

It really brought home to me how much man is interfering with nature.

Is the Labradoodle a step too far?

completedit

It took the labradoodle for you to wake up to man's interference with nature?

McGinniesta

Environment me hole.

Me Bollix

touts

We're in the middle of an extinction level event on the planet with 1 million species of animals and plants likely to go extinct in the next few decades possibly leading to our own extinction. I wouldn't worry about the Labradoodle. It probably won't make it out of the century.

Thelonious Monk

We totally are but no one really cares. Ireland and Europe have been destroying its nature for millenaia and now that Brazil and Asia are catching up there wont be any biodiversity left in the coming decades. Meh, we are fiddling while Rome burns.

KungPao

Mother Nature will one day say enough is enough and then a nice untreatable illness will wipe all us out. Those antibiotics won’t work so well soon.

Animal Lives Matter.

Smee_Again

We may be “winning” the battles but nature will most definitely win the war. One way or another.

jetsonx

KungPao wrote: »

Mother Nature will one day say enough is enough and then a nice untreatable illness will wipe all us out. Those antibiotics won’t work so well soon.

Animal Lives Matter.

I actually started this thread as a bit of light-hearted fun in these very
worrying times.

But some of the responses have been very prophetic.

Thank you.

4068ac1elhodqr

(All) x20 of the 5yr UN Sustainable Development Goals/Targets have NOT been met (again).
This was set in 2010, and reviewed every 5yrs.

A Currently OVer populated world, needing a solutIon or remeDy?

Potatoeman

The labradoodle, harbinger of doom.

Gregor Samsa

Labradoodle is not a species, it's a breed (or more accurately, a cross-breed). The species is Canis familiaris (domestic dog) or a sub-species of Canis lupus familiaris (wolf), depending on who you ask.

But your point still stands, we interfere a lot in nature. It's undoubtedly been the cause of our success as a species over the past 300,000 years (and other hominids were interfering with nature long before that), but it may also be our downfall.

TheBlackPill

We are not interfering enough. We need to keep going until faster than light travel is invented

iamstop

According to the Doomsday clock we are 10 seconds to midnight. The latest it's been since it began.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51213185

biko

Woman is interfering also.

Exodus 1811

completedit wrote: »

It took the labradoodle for you to wake up to man's interference with nature?

woosh..!

Kylta

The problems with humans is they think they know it all. I'm glad i'm an alien.
You're all going to die

corner of hells

Potatoeman wrote: »

The labradoodle, harbinger of doom.

Beware the four Labradoodle men of the apocalypse .

riclad

Look at the weather in America right now, 100s of fires, high temperatures, people afraid to go outside because of low air quality. We are seeing the effects of global warming. Alot of animal species are bring wiped out. We have the technology to switch to solar power and to reduce our use of oil and coal to reduce global warming
People in California are moving to other colder states as the fires are getting worse each year and causing more damage
There does not seem to be the political will to take strong action to fight climate change maybe because the people in
power are mostly over 50
They might be retired by the time the effects of climate change become
more severe
It's the next generation who will be left to try and deal with the more severe effects of climate change

jetsonx

riclad wrote: »

Look at the weather in America right now, 100s of fires, high temperatures, people afraid to go outside because of low air quality. We are seeing the effects of global warming. Alot of animal species are bring wiped out. We have the technology to switch to solar power and to reduce our use of oil and coal to reduce global warming
People in California are moving to other colder states as the fires are getting worse each year and causing more damage
There does not seem to be the political will to take strong action to fight climate change maybe because the people in
power are mostly over 50
They might be retired by the time the effects of climate change become
more severe
It's the next generation who will be left to try and deal with the more severe effects of climate change

Good points.

I'm still not sure whether the Great Pandemic of the 2020s is going put climate action on hold or accelerate it.

China claim their emissions are going to peak in 2030, I just can't believe anything from that country.

And yes you're right, the next generation will have a lot of cleaning up to do.

Pauliedragon

Myah Nice Vice wrote: »

(All) x20 of the 5yr UN Sustainable Development Goals/Targets have NOT been met (again).
This was set in 2010, and reviewed every 5yrs.

A Currently OVer populated world, needing a solutIon or remeDy?

Maybe we should all start eating bats. That seems to cull a few people.

growleaves

riclad wrote: »

Look at the weather in America right now, 100s of fires, high temperatures, people afraid to go outside because of low air quality. We are seeing the effects of global warming. Alot of animal species are bring wiped out. We have the technology to switch to solar power and to reduce our use of oil and coal to reduce global warming
People in California are moving to other colder states as the fires are getting worse each year and causing more damage
There does not seem to be the political will to take strong action to fight climate change maybe because the people in
power are mostly over 50
They might be retired by the time the effects of climate change become
more severe
It's the next generation who will be left to try and deal with the more severe effects of climate change

Arson.

Wibbs

Humans have always interfered with nature. It's our killer app(in more ways than one). We externalised our evolution, the only species to ever do that. Food an obvious one. You know the vegan idea that humans aren't "designed" to eat meat? Well, it's not quite true, but to take their point yes we're not on the face of it. We don't have the slashing claws, teeth or stomach acids to break down meat. But we didn't need them. We came up with "claws" in the form of spears and tools, we then we tamed fire and cooking took care of softening the meat to be more edible, killed any parasites in it and pre digested it so we didn't need the stronger stomach acids. Actually similar can be said for many plant foods. A fair number are either pretty indigestible in their raw form, some are poisonous and not having the longer digestive tract of pure herbivores means we can't extract the nutrients efficiently, but cooking solves all of that.

That was fine until modern humans evolved. Beforehand we were in stasis with nature. A tiny number of apex predators. We come along and we kick off mass extinctions and we explode in population and then with farming we exploded in population even more, killed off more species and started to really terraform the place, cutting down forest for pasture, killing off other apex predators that were in competition etc.

The problem is these days our population is too damned high(and many econo politics want to increase population) and the stuff we make is way too much and way harder to recycle or just break down. Think on this: Half of all plastics ever made have been produced since the year 2000, yet we think ourselves ever more "green". How many phones has the average 40 year old owned? How many cars(battery or oil burning is the tip of the iceberg and means little enough), how much stuff, you didn't need, but thought you did?

We need a radical overhaul of how we exist as a species and if anything worse it's getting over the last four decades.

topper75

So plays around with toilet rolls and kids but still looks stylish in a bijou penthouse apartment. Best of both worlds.

What's not to like. We need more not less of this.

I'm coming to terms with the fact that our species has totally overshot it's population with regard to it's sustainable carrying capacity for the planet and that we simply won't, as a species, alter our behaviour enough to remedy the situation before it's too late.

There are billions of people only capable of being fed due to artificial fertilisers which need fossil fuels to make and when they become uneconomical to extract, or simply run out in practical terms, renewables and nuclear just won't be able to fill the gap. Just because we kicked the can down the road with the green revolution does not guarantee we can kick it indefinitely.

And just because we can just about feed billions of people for say a century or two, using enormous amounts of one-off fossil energy, does not imply we can feed even hundreds of millions sustainably indefinitely without it, seeing as continuous agriculture of monocrops quickly using up the topsoil, which takes forever to replenish.

Couple this with enormous overfishing, extremely high expectations for living standards, global warming, deforestation etc, and my oh my, our species is on a crash course to disaster. We are constantly going against nature and resisting entropy, to a wildly greater degree than our ancestors, and that can't go on forever.

I'm trying to come around the idea that I am helpless to change the situation, in a world with billions of people who are going to do what they want, so rather than get depressed feeling personally responsible for what's happening and going to happen, I'm just going to enjoy the high-consumption party while it lasts, like everybody else. In a few thousand years, the 20th and 21st centuries will be the stuff of myth.