Like climate change seems really easy to solve if we just plant a bunch of jojoba bushes in the Mojave desert.
Also it’s the easiest thing to get the billionaires on board. Argue we are learning how to terraform Mars and suddenly Bezos and Musks’s meats would be spinning.
So even if Im talking very low scale?
Like the mass cultivation of Jojoba and the buildup of water through runoff collection.
I don’t think it would be possible to terraform the entire Sahara. I was thinking more as a border region thing in the Sahel, or in the area between the Colorado Rive and Palmdale.
yes, even that. The biosphere is very fragile, if you just started growing more fingers on your head after losing your hand that would not fix the problem and would probably cause more.
No it would not help. Yes the biosphere is fragile , but what are we doing when we have to deal with 10 billion people and 1.5C growth on the conservative end come 2050.
Is restoration and conservation in high CO2 capturing environments the only answer? I just don’t see that happening with the Amazon anytime soon.
At this point we can't go back, we should just stop all fossil fuel and let nature determine how she will face the new environment. Humanity has proven not up to the task of terraforming, given how badly we've fumbled so far, we should just let the cycles of nature even themselves out and just clean up the plastic.
Indigenous peoples beg to differ
I may be severely mistaken, but I believe that indigenous peoples have in general worked more with the land as it is, not made an irrigation nightmare in the desert.
They certainly have, but we must be careful not to fall into noble savage type mythologies here. Everywhere people have lived, from the Amazon, to Europe, and Asia, indigenous peoples have deliberately and methodically shaped the ecology of their native lands.
To call that not terroforming is to deny their successes and to centre this much needed science solely on white imperialist history and experience.
then perhaps I should regard that as light terraforming, not to dismiss its effects but to acknowledge it as not being as damaging as heavy terraforming which is what we now suggest.
I don't think I'm willing to cede this knowledge space to tech bro douchbags like Musk and Gates. Indigenous practices aren't "light" terroforming, they're successful terroforming. All the sci-fi shit being proposed is mostly just capitalist vaporware and grift.
we've been pretty successful in terraforming swamps into cities and deserts into farms, leveling mountains and making lakebeds dry. These things require more technology, and are also way more destructive.
Are you being deliberately obtuse right now, or just firing from the hip as the comments come in? The topic of this sub-thread is examples of successful and sustainable terroforming and how indigenous practices count for that. How is your comment a good response to my previous one?
the second one. Anyway, you're not being clear on the metric of success. I was suggesting light and heavy as signifiers because one is far more devastating and requires more power. To bring in the idea of successful is unclear, as the altering of the environment in modern america and europe sure has achieved its goals. If you mean sustainable that still doesn't really convey what is going on, as damming rivers is sustainable for the local region but screws the people downstream over more.
Placeholder commmet: I'm enjoying this conversation and will resume it after dinner.
:soviet-heart:
Have a good dinner! :stalin-heart:
sorry for getting remove-happy there, I shouldn't end a chain over getting petty frustration at some random point, carry on (comments restored)
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we have no idea how fragile and interdependent these systems can be. it's best not to throw a spanner in the works 'just to see', because this shit always backfires