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Humans are the most invasive species on the planet (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 days ago by Chainweasel@lemmy.world to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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[-] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 29 points 5 days ago

Humans are so invasive that they have gone to places that can’t even support human life for prolonged periods of time. Deep sea trenches, tall mountains, polar ice caps etc. Even the Moon isn’t safe from humans, and now they are also planning to invade Mars. Once they’ve spread all over every planet, moon and asteroid in the solar system, they’ll probably try to land on the Sun.

[-] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 8 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

They'll collapse their own civilization well before all that becomes possible. Personally, just the idea of Mars colonization strikes me as just cringingly deluded. Forget the hard limits imposed by relativity, even to get something as tiny as a satellite into space requires the full stack of today's civilization to be up and running - i.e. everything from the food and energy system required to keep 8 billion people alive to the advanced microchip factories. All of this depends on a climate that humans are currently turning upside down and on an ecological substrate (soils, oceans, freshwater, biodiversity) that we're pounding into oblivion. To anyone who can see in front of them, some kind of collapse is literally inevitable. Forget Mars colonies, we'll be lucky if we're eating. A few decades at most.

PS: This comes across as a bit depressing but I don't mean to spread hopelessness. Personally I'm not a cynic or even really a pessimist. After all, there's always some way that we can make things better than they might otherwise be. It's important to be realistic but nothing about the future is inevitable.

[-] AmidFuror@fedia.io 6 points 5 days ago

Username does not check out.

[-] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

Ha. Dumbest name ever but too late to change now.

[-] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 days ago

Yeah, you’re right. None of these absurd journeys can take place if the rest of the population struggles to survive. My guess is, wrecking the whole planet beyond repair is the only thing that will force governments to start banning fossil fuels and investing in carbon capture and storage technologies.

[-] sxan@midwest.social 18 points 5 days ago

Haven't seen The Matrix, huh?

[-] BeatTakeshi@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago

[-] thenextguy@lemmy.world 14 points 5 days ago

His speech about humans being the only life that simply expands until all resources are used up is not at all true. Most living things do this until or unless they have some kind of predator or competitor to keep them in check.

[-] sxan@midwest.social 11 points 4 days ago

But... it's the smell.

[-] thenextguy@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago

I feel saturated...by it.

[-] BeatTakeshi@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

Well a lion doesn't have a predator (besides us) and doesn't kill for pleasure then waste a whole antelope

[-] ahornsirup@feddit.org 3 points 4 days ago

Lions might not, but housecats do. Bears are also known to be very wasteful with the salmon they catch.

[-] entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 4 days ago

Lions tend to be bad enough at hunting that that is their population control lever.

[-] thenextguy@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

Sure. I said most living things. Not all.

[-] friendlychemist@infosec.pub 10 points 5 days ago

And the most destructive. Seriously, I hope enough of us can get a grip and make world governments get their shit together.

[-] Nougat@fedia.io 7 points 5 days ago

Wouldn't that mean that we would have had to be transported by some other species into environments where we previously weren't? We didn't "hitch a ride" on anything else; we went on our own.

[-] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

Interesting point and actually quite hard to refute!

[-] TommySoda@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago

We're even invasive to ourselves.

[-] thenextguy@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

Go invade yourself.

[-] brlemworld@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

What about ants? Aren't there like 3 trillion septillion or something?

[-] JDTIV@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

Might be an unpopular opinion but I don't think we are an invasive species. We naturally shifted and took over.

[-] Etienne_Dahu@jlai.lu 1 points 5 days ago

You don't know reynoutria japonica.

this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2025
102 points (100.0% liked)

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