<story><title>Birds Are Vanishing from North America</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/science/bird-populations-america-canada.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>anigbrowl</author><text>Your approach will fail for the same reason than an ethical environmental appeal does.&lt;p&gt;Enough humans who feel and fear their impending mortality are selfish and vindictive enough to obstruct change because they want to conserve whatever material comforts they have now and &lt;i&gt;do not care&lt;/i&gt; about what happens to other people after they&amp;#x27;re dead. I would go so far as to say that some of them take a perverse pleasure in the idea of everyone else being worse off, going by the number of facially specious arguments and overtly sadistic rhetoric deployed by many self-styled &amp;#x27;skeptics&amp;#x27;.</text></item><item><author>ff317</author><text>+1 - I think the kind of marketing and messaging that makes environmentalism all about saving &amp;quot;the planet&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;the animals&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;the natural environment&amp;quot; really doesn&amp;#x27;t serve us well.  A better strategic approach would be to highlight (with the right crafty messaging) that a very tiny statistical slice of earth&amp;#x27;s historical states and potential future states are any good at supporting large human populations comfortably like we do today, and our goal is preserving this state in our own self-interest.  It&amp;#x27;s not environmentalism at all, it&amp;#x27;s human self-interest.</text></item><item><author>technothrasher</author><text>&amp;gt; or we die out and the planet recovers on its own.&lt;p&gt;That makes it sound like there&amp;#x27;s some kind of natural &amp;#x27;ideal state&amp;#x27; for the planet to recover to.  Without us, the planet would just go on changing, without anything to judge the current environment at any point as good or bad to any particular standard.&lt;p&gt;Saving the environment is simply saving ourselves.  Nothing more, nothing less.</text></item><item><author>bsmitty5000</author><text>This article doesn&amp;#x27;t mention the declining insect population at all but I would think it&amp;#x27;s clear that a quickly declining food source would be a major cause of population decline. I wonder if there&amp;#x27;s a similar decline in other animals that rely on insects, eg bats. Although, interestingly, the article does mention neonicotinoids as a direct reason for the decline in population.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s hard to imagine humans taking the corrective solution here. My gut says we either continue on this road and completely destroy the natural world a la Trantor in Foundation, just one huge mega-city that fabricates all of its needs, or we die out and the planet recovers on its own.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>corey_moncure</author><text>&amp;gt;say that some of them take a perverse pleasure in the idea of everyone else being worse off, going by the number of facially specious arguments and overtly sadistic rhetoric deployed by many self-styled &amp;#x27;skeptics&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;We don&amp;#x27;t even have to look at arguments and rhetoric.  Simply go outside and observe.  You can immediately see people driving conspicuously huge vehicles, and some of them have modified their vehicles to increase dangerous and undesirable emissions (noise emissions, combustion emissions e.g. coal rolling) for no other purpose but than to antagonize the people around them and intentionally degrade the natural environment.&lt;p&gt;Nearly every street you drive down in residential America is lined from one end to the other with lawns that have chemicals pumped in to increase growth unnaturally, and simultaneously chemicals pumped in to control undesired weeds and insects.  None of this serves any practical purpose at all.&lt;p&gt;Look carefully at the ground and you&amp;#x27;ll find it&amp;#x27;s full of fragments of the discarded plastic and metal containers of quick junk food and the so-called &amp;quot;energy drinks&amp;quot;.  Not only is it bad enough we have to produce these items to satisfy a temporary need at the cost of creating permanent* garbage, we have to go and toss them by the side of the road just to illustrate how utterly callous and thoughtless we are.&lt;p&gt;Hopeless.  Sometimes it feels very hopeless.</text></comment>
<story><title>Birds Are Vanishing from North America</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/science/bird-populations-america-canada.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>anigbrowl</author><text>Your approach will fail for the same reason than an ethical environmental appeal does.&lt;p&gt;Enough humans who feel and fear their impending mortality are selfish and vindictive enough to obstruct change because they want to conserve whatever material comforts they have now and &lt;i&gt;do not care&lt;/i&gt; about what happens to other people after they&amp;#x27;re dead. I would go so far as to say that some of them take a perverse pleasure in the idea of everyone else being worse off, going by the number of facially specious arguments and overtly sadistic rhetoric deployed by many self-styled &amp;#x27;skeptics&amp;#x27;.</text></item><item><author>ff317</author><text>+1 - I think the kind of marketing and messaging that makes environmentalism all about saving &amp;quot;the planet&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;the animals&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;the natural environment&amp;quot; really doesn&amp;#x27;t serve us well.  A better strategic approach would be to highlight (with the right crafty messaging) that a very tiny statistical slice of earth&amp;#x27;s historical states and potential future states are any good at supporting large human populations comfortably like we do today, and our goal is preserving this state in our own self-interest.  It&amp;#x27;s not environmentalism at all, it&amp;#x27;s human self-interest.</text></item><item><author>technothrasher</author><text>&amp;gt; or we die out and the planet recovers on its own.&lt;p&gt;That makes it sound like there&amp;#x27;s some kind of natural &amp;#x27;ideal state&amp;#x27; for the planet to recover to.  Without us, the planet would just go on changing, without anything to judge the current environment at any point as good or bad to any particular standard.&lt;p&gt;Saving the environment is simply saving ourselves.  Nothing more, nothing less.</text></item><item><author>bsmitty5000</author><text>This article doesn&amp;#x27;t mention the declining insect population at all but I would think it&amp;#x27;s clear that a quickly declining food source would be a major cause of population decline. I wonder if there&amp;#x27;s a similar decline in other animals that rely on insects, eg bats. Although, interestingly, the article does mention neonicotinoids as a direct reason for the decline in population.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s hard to imagine humans taking the corrective solution here. My gut says we either continue on this road and completely destroy the natural world a la Trantor in Foundation, just one huge mega-city that fabricates all of its needs, or we die out and the planet recovers on its own.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>solotronics</author><text>I lean more towards ignorance than malice. The average Earth person (out of all 11 billion) probably doesn&amp;#x27;t have as solid of a scientific or historical background to form an educated opinion on what affect we are having on the ecosystem in the long term.</text></comment>