https://archive.ph/9tbj7
3% fewer insects this year than last year
1/3 the birds of 40 years ago
99% of land mammal biomass humans or livestock
about 50% more volume of boat in the ocean than of fish
it'll all be over faster than you think
99% of land mammal biomass humans or livestock
uhh technically its 96%
Fun fact. In order for that to happen, said mod would have to account for 75% of all human and livestock biomass.
This was not fatphobia, it was modphobia. I fear their power and size.
more was destroyed by an asteroid. and 6 other times. stop thinking you are so powerful vs the ecosystem.
we are fine. we're just being humans. can't be anything else.
this is irrelevant though, the context is the survival of the human race and it's foreseeable future, not the theoretical animals that could emerge from the post-nuclear ashes millions of years in the future
What the fuck are you doing on a communist board if you're just going to say "it was meant to be" to any possible future? That sort of nihilistic quasi-spiritual bullshit was dumb when Leibniz did it, and it has aged very poorly in the interceding centuries.
"honey, did you set fire to our entire house with everything we owned still in it? and the two of us and our families still in it?"
"pfft, the tunguska event caused much more destruction. stop thinking one person can effect the world that much. and this whole thing is just nature rebuilding iself, do you think we're not part of nature? anyway how much longer did you expect us to live? fifty more years? nothing remains forever. hey, let me tell you about the heat death of the universe..."
"Comrade" is like "billions will die and that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make because [hippie bullshit]"
Its not even hippie bullshit!
This is mall ninja nihilism!
Its the kind of shit the almost-school shooter in high school would mutter under their breath while declining an invitation to a birthday hangout.
whatever happens was meant to be
WE DID THIS TO OURSELVES YOU OVERWHELMING PIECE OF SHIT
IT WASN'T "WHATEVER HAPPENS" THAT'S WHAT YOU SAY WHEN A BIRD SHITS ON YOUR HEAD OR A FREEWAY ACCIDENT MAKES YOU LATE FOR WORK
NOT FOR HUMANS KILLING THE PLANET AND FUTURE GENERATIONS FOR THE PROFIT OF PORKY AND HIS PALS
EAT MY ENTIRE COCK AND BALLS, THEN WALK INTO TRAFFIC YOU ECOFASCIST FUCK
These articles always imagine themselves exempt from their argument.
It's like he just assumes the billionaire class is going to swoop in and protect him and everybody he loves due to his obviously superior genes and massively over-developed brain.
Correct me if I'm wrong but "extinction" is not a "force" of destruction right? Extinction is the result of destruction, it's a state of being not an actor
If FernGully taught me anything it's that extinction is Tim Curry and he's not doing too hot these days
Extinction is literally the loss of biodiversity. What the absolute fuck?
They’re probably talking on a several million year time scale these lunatics think humanity will make it that long probably
The answer is the intuitive one: We absolutely need to be worried about what humans are doing to the planet. But we should be worried about the transformations we’re causing and all the destruction of ecosystem services that they entail, not because extinction is inherently bad, but—first and foremost—because these transformations might well destroy us.
What a pointless waste of time and energy to write this article. "Extinction isn't bad unless, of course, we're eating at the very foundations of human existence, in which case it is in fact bad."
Also his pinned tweet is a link to an article claiming global warming would have been worse under socialism.
Did The Atlantic grow this toxic fucker in a lab test tube? - https://xcancel.com/leigh_phillips
A recent tweet
I must be doing something right if an article I write prompts the climate denialists to accuse me of eugenics, the degrowthers to accuse me of being a Big Oil shill, and the Hamasniks to do their usual thing. (Note that the article on extinction does not at all reference Isr/Pal)
The same person who is for mass extinction is against Palestinian armed resistance.
https://xcancel.com/Leigh_Phillips/status/1810805850145181952#m
He wrote People's Republic of Walmart. I want the people of the global south whose homes will be underwater soon to be allowed to execute him and Matt Huber.
I would say most of the time Leigh's takes are correct, but some of his opinions are definitely questionable (particularly on Palestine as you've pointed out). He is very, very well read, and his book Austerity Ecology is pretty much the definitive guide for eco-modernism. He's highly educated, and presents some unorthodox opinions on climate change (he is - strangely - quite optimistic about our ability to curb it, and backs up everything he says with evidence, which I appreciate)
On the other hand, there's shit like this lol.
Phillips wears his antagonism on his sleeve throughout, referring to Transition folk, degrowthers and the wide spectrum of the Green/alternative economics world as "anti-packaging jihadis", "degrowth militants", "green Mr Magoos", and "an army of tattooed-and-bearded, twelve-dollar-farmers’-market-marmalade-smearing, kale-bothering, latter-day Lady Bracknells"
I'm gonna go with a thanks but no thanks on Austerity Ecology
It's a fantastic book. But if you're pro-degrowth you'll absolutely hate everything he says.
Hard to see an alternative to degrowth when its opponents feel the need to write articles with the thesis "actually, extinction isn't so bad"
Based on the review, it doesn't seem like he has much of a handle on what proponents of degrowth are actually arguing. The idea isn't to stop technological progress in its tracks, it's to orient the economy away from emphasis on productivity per se to meet everyone's needs at a lower resource intensity.
it doesn't seem like he has much of a handle on what proponents of degrowth are actually arguing
His argument is actually that the degrowthers don't understand what their own position actually is:
degrowth unwittingly endorses what would be an imposition of austerity on the Western working class far beyond anything a Thatcher, Cameron or May could imagine, this time in the name of the planet.
That article doesn't do anything to dispel my suspicions that he has no idea what he's talking about.
The most egregious aspects of the article were addressed in Jason Hickel's response to Milanovic. I think it's funny that he's citing a World Bank economist for a major chunk of his article given that the World Bank's position is that we can grow our way out of global poverty (it'll only take 200 more years!) and currently defines the threshold of extreme poverty at $770 per year, so it's a little bit hard to take the argument that $5,500 is unacceptable (even if that were the degrowth position, which it is not) with a straight face.
As far as the argument for decoupling goes, the evidence is that to the extent that it's happening, it isn't fast enough.
we literally have to pull back our production amount. I am not saying this because I'm a hippie, I'm saying it because I'm a Marxist and a literal defining feature of capital is its tendency towards creating exponential and endless industrial growth. Said growth has to be pulled back eventually because otherwise it sucks. I don't have a problem with people enjoying things or having luxury- Quite the opposite in fact. I just think capitalism is incapable of doing it sustainably and a TRANSITIONAL SOCIALIST ECONOMY THAT INVENTS SUSTAINABLY SOURCES FOR THE SAME LUXURY is necessary for humanity to survive ,
let me guess. he rips on veganism too? I wouldn't be surprised, what an unserious fool
I mean yeah, I agree of course. Capitalism is of course incapable of doing it sustainably, this is all too obvious. We need to take control of the machine.
Just take transportation as an example. There's no need for everyone to be driving around in single occupancy vehicles when we could just have trains instead, I think everyone on this website would agree with that. It would reduce production overall, reduce GHG emissions, and improve everyone's lives. But it would still require building more things (train tracks, trains, etc).
I don't know what his opinions on veganism are but I can almost guarantee you he is not a vegan lol.
If you're doing a bit I have admit - whoosh - it went straight over my head.
Not at all.
Like I said, overall I agree with most of what he says (mostly regarding the environment and modernism, which is the primary subject that he writes and talks about), but there are other times that I'm fundamentally at disagreement with him.
He is - strangely - quite optimistic about our ability to curb it, and backs up everything he says with evidence.
That's one of the strangest sentences I've ever heard from a rational Hexbear. I'm not against contrarianism. But you're going to have to explain yourself. I have a couple questions.
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Strangely? C'mon. This isn't rocket science. He's an obnoxious turd who surely wants some sugar-daddy billionaire to fund him the rest of his life. And being quite optimistic and dismissive douchebag is a possible ticket to Cash City.
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Evidence? What is this "evidence"? I really want to know.
I've done the numbers and there are lots of hopeful and deceptive bourgeois who tell me that their technological solution will work.
surely wants some sugar-daddy billionaire to fund him the rest of his life
I do not see any indication of this at all.
What is this "evidence"?
Pretty much everything he writes is very well sourced, citing studies etc etc. His seminal piece on anti-degrowth is here if you want to give it a read
As you know the article was written in 2019. It's pretty funny that now in 2024 we have a symbolic representation of the evils of growth and capitalism. It's called AI. Maybe you've heard of it?
All right - how long is the article. 7.5k words? I won't be lazy. I won't be lazy. I won't— Oh, I can't resist. I shouldn't do it because I'm going to read that thing but I'll do a ctrl-f for "climate".
Because degrowth rejects the notion of socialist economic growth, it commits three grave errors.
First, degrowth lets off the hook the real source of the problem, thus condemning civilisation to dangerous climate change and parallel ecological threats.
Second, degrowth unwittingly endorses what would be an imposition of austerity on the Western working class far beyond anything a Thatcher, Cameron or May could imagine, this time in the name of the planet.
And, worst of all, degrowth would bring an end to progress itself—the steady expansion of freedom for all humanity.
The hell with reading that thing. Yet "the real source of the problem" intrigues me. What sort of nonsense- I mean argument - did he put forth???
Having grown up in the 80s, I remember at the time bugging my mum to stop buying cans of hair spray. She did not follow my advice.
Thankfully my advice was not taken by policymakers either. Instead, the Montreal Protocol regulatorily intervened in the market against and over the wails and lobbying efforts of the industries affected.
What does he say at or near the end?
Thus an end to growth declares an end to technological development, an end to science, an end to progress, an end to the open-ended search for freedom—an end to history.
What a strange thing for a self-proclaimed socialist to say. In some regards - he sounds exactly like a right-winger.
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Right-wingers love to spout ridiculous, hyperbolic nonsense. In the US - they do it every single day. I'm sure you're aware that Senator Snowball just died.
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"My way or the highway" is a classic, simplistic tool of the right-wing to make something highly complex into a binary where - surprise - the speaker is 100% correct in their ironclad reasoning which is: "I am right and you are wrong!"
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It's especially amusing when one and two are combined as they are in the article.
Degrowth does not proclaim such stuff as we need to turn off all the electricity and use only horses (and other beasts of burden) for transportation. Does he envision everybody getting fired and then being forced to fight for scraps just to survive? Where does here get that crap? I'm not expert on anything but I'm pretty damn sure using electricity is still okay and using buses is encouraged.
This is no philosophical sophistry.
Pffft. I'm not reading that folderol article. Sorry.
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our ability to calculate that statistic is a product of the same neuroses that makes our unstoppable drive to consume the entire earth continue forward forever
no and this take is fucking insane. it's because we have an elder god of capital urging us towards collective suicide under threat of mass starvation is what's causing us to consume the earth. counting extinct insects is literally directly disincentivized by our current economic structure for the exact same fucking reason that structure is destroying everything with reckless abandon. hence why this useless fucking article disapproving of the practice was written. read theory or shut up (the unabomber's shitty ass manifesto doesn't count nor does Zerzan "the disabled dying is just how it has to be" PrimitivistMan)
many people spent millennia having access to rational thought without committing genocide, fix your angloid brain, murder isn't equivalent to "progress"
read theory or shut up (the unabomber's shitty ass manifesto doesn't count nor does Zerzan "the disabled dying is just how it has to be" PrimitivistMan)
Now, that's unfair to anprims. Their theorists also include the illustrious Leslie Keith, whose claims to fame include making explicit transphobia a part of the movement and writing a book about how veganism is bad.
If you're gonna be a mid tier poster that dies on a strange hill and gets banned, can you at least choose a funnier one?
Ohhh, so humans etching that HS-boundary* in fossil records is so that
ourcrab or chicken descendants in 10 or so million years will marvel at the biodiversity boom happening in their time??
We must be the kindest species ever, so selfless!
I hope no one and nothing remembers us.*the homo sapiens boundary can be identified by the distinctive concentration of plastics & PFAS, as well as a sharp fall of biodiversity in the sediments above it
Oh cool so the Atlantic is publishing Gary Oldman's monolog about destruction from the Fifth Element... cool, cool.
Who could've thought that Leigh Phillips would write something like this ... lol. Is he even pretending to be a socialist still?
edit: I don't know how to spell
Look, tech bros are disruptors and they're good at it. We're talkin' trillions and trillions of dollars - okay? Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Elon Musk. So they can disrupt the climate. They can do that. There will be some losers. But that's how things work. That's life. Pun intended.
