• IzyaKatzmann [he/him]
    ·
    10 days ago

    As well humans aren't special in the fact that there are apparent macro-changes to our environment. I heard a notable marxist biologist, Richard C. Lewton state that beavers have made more of am impact on the geography and environmental conditions of north america than humans. It was a bit shocking to hear that, but it made sense to me after I thought about it.

    I think partially the difference in my understanding and the other commentator's is I don't place the effect of humans to be meaningful in any special way as compared to other mechanisms of changing the environment and climate.

    That is, besides our relation to climate change as being a consequence of human activity at a certain stage of development (I mean the base and superstructure here) it need not and indeed is less effective to add qualitative distinctions like "humans are worse" and "we have a responsibility".

    Responsibility, yes, and humans are adapting to climate change. Instead of direct-human activity there could have hypothetically been a solar flare from our sun of a particular kind, or gamma ray burst from a nearby dying star which causes a large volcanic erruption such as the kind during the precambian extinction (wiki link) and wiped out human technological development in say the 1800s before major global industrialization began...

    We'd still have to deal with it, the why matters insofar as it relates to addressing the problem.