TIL in the Carboniferous Period, no fungus existed to decompose trees. They just grew on top of each other up and up. - eviltoast

The weight of the trees was so great that the ones on the bottom got squished and became coal. That’s where coal is from. Bonus fact: the whole time this was happening, sharks were hunting in the oceans. Sharks are older than trees and fungus!

  • Allonzee@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    They didn’t know what they were doing, we do, and we actively choose to keep doing it. Unlike those trees mindlessly performing a base biological imperative, we possess the capacity to stop and simply don’t because we’d lose some of the comfort and convenience our destructive tech provides.

    We’re cruel to this planet, all the other creatures on it, and one another. So my reverse ask is, why do you want us to survive? Just because ra-ra home team? Because billions subsisting to serve the whims and ego of a few thousand of our worst, most broken, greedy sociopaths in perpetuity is somehow meaningful? Genuinely asking.

    • ferret@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      I don’t understand why you believe there is a difference between choosing to continue destroying the world and just “destroying the world”

      • Allonzee@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        The difference is intent, which matters to me.

        I wouldn’t equate a meteor that struck Germany killing millions to Adolf Hitler killing millions because there’s no reason to hate the meteor. It did nothing wrong because it had no agency or sapience, you might as well be mad at physical reality. Its a tragedy, but no one did it, causality set that meteor on our path from some random collision millions of years ago, and it just happened.

        Your comment is akin to not seeing a difference between someone who drops dead from some internal reason like a heart attack or brain aneurism, and someone who was shot in the head. After all, who cares how, that person is dead, what’s the difference, amirite?

        • Ech@lemm.ee
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          6 months ago

          But their question wasn’t “Do humans deserve to go extinct?”, it was “Can we survive?” Your (valid) issues with human-driven climate change don’t really have anything to do with what they brought up.

          • Allonzee@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Completely fair and correct criticism. I mistook their how query as a why query. I was wrong.

      • Allonzee@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Just because wealthy business interests have spent a century pointing and laughing at the scientists warning us of what were doing to our only habitat(with our obedient consent because “jerb creators”), doesn’t mean we have ignorance as an excuse. Pretending the science was wrong out of convenience still means we knew and are responsible.