this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
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Fun fact: I've been doing a lot of reading about indigenous peoples, and one of the constant themes is how those peoples' traditional life ways were net positives for the environment. In California, for instance, Native American agriculture involved controlled burns every twenty years or so - keeping the soil fertile and encouraging a healthy mix of the "wild" species they cared for. They had been doing that for maybe 20,000 years. So when "environmentalists" in the early 20th century decided native lifeways were primitive and bad for the environment, and established enormous national parks where natives were no longer permitted to hunt or gather and fires were stamped out immediately, those national parks turned into tinder boxes - instead of the controlled burns the plants had evolved to take advantage of, we ended up with decades of fuel building up in the undergrowth, turning into massive uncontrolled burns that killed everything, and then invasive species rolled up and finished off the native plants.
"But untouched pristine wilderness"... No. That never existed. That's a racist trope spread by white colonists who wanted to think of Native Americans as enemies of nature in order to justify genocide. It's the opposite of the noble savage myth and equally racist. Fuck John Muir.
Over and over again, when you compare areas where indigenous people had lived in their traditional lifeways to areas where the people were killed or exiled but the environment was left untouched, the areas where humans were genocided have less species diversity, less fertility, and less healthy environments overall.
And if we, 21st century humanity, can use our science and technology to rediscover the old knowledge, we can take up our previous role and manage the environment around us for the benefit of all. Hell, in a lot of environments we have a duty to do so - we brought the rabbits to Australia, who's going to get rid of them if not for us?
And all that rant is to say, humans aren't the problem. Capitalism is the problem. Greed is the problem. Humans have lived as beneficial parts of the environment for approximately 150,000 years and we can do so again.
Adam Smith stands to speak as the ship rocks with the waves.
"The creation of wealth is what matters. If an industrious businessman wants to use available resources to create goods which he can then sell in the market he should be applauded for producing something of value. No one should be allowed to stifle industry."
"But how can you not see what harm you are causing? By promoting this naked greed you endanger us all. Every day the planks of our ship grow thinner. And for what? So that some baron can collect more of our coin?"
"Tecumseh, you are a simple minded savage. The items for sale in the market today: toothpicks, wooden spoons, hair combs, if they didn't have more value in that form then nobody would pay for them. The planks, the mast, and the deck boards of the ship must all have less value than the products made from them. The market has decided it is so."
"This market is destroying the very foundation of our life. Even now the water is knee high in the bilge and rising faster than we can bail it out. We lived in harmony with the ship for years. But ever since you established the market your 'businessmen' have been tearing the ship apart. How can we continue to live if the ship is sinking?"
A loud crack as one of the spars snaps sending splinters raining down on the deck. Several well dressed passengers scramble to collect the pieces.
"You see, Tecumseh, even on a collapsing ship there is opportunity for profit. You can't deny the genius of the market. And if the ship starts to sink the market will substitute another, better ship, as soon as it is profitable."
"Sigh. Only when the last mast has snapped, the last plank has broken, and our ship is underwater will you realize that coin will not keep you afloat."
humans have invented capitalism therefore humans are bad for the ecosystem. In just a century, it surpassed whatever good we did in the past.
Adding to that, indigenous Brazilians in the Amazon Basin area effectively created and spread terra preta (dark earth), which is extremely fertile and have been doing that for several centuries, that's also a net positive for the environment
About the national park undergrowth...how about the option to release herds of goats to eat all that extra stuff on the ground to avoid having it burn eventually?
I'm not an expert, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. If goats aren't native to the area, we'd want to be careful not to do more harm than good (like, what if the goats like the native plants but don't eat the invasive species), ofc.
It's certainly better than the logging industry's argument that they can replicate the effects of forest fires by clear cutting old growth forests.
i mean i think it would've existed before the population of america deforested shit tons of land for both lumber and construction, but idk, i just feel like there would probably be a lot more very large trees around the US if that hadn't happened, maybe i'm wrong tho.
also, tangentially related, we see similar things outside of these populations in science generally, for example airfoil and propeller design is starting to mimic whales more and more over time. Only just now we're discovering that. So it's probably just the 1900s science/social behaviorisms that were problematic, capitalism played a role, but at the end of the day capitalism just responds to the market, so.