Its probably against the platform rules to state the best way. But if you’re curious you could look up the french revolution and the battle of blair mountain.
The capitalist will sell us the rope something something
This is correct.
They asked the wrong Lemmy.
Makes me wonder if there’s an opportunity for /c/AskLemmyFromMotorhead
edit: thanks to the bot for a reminder
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You dont.
You alone cant stop multi billion companies from destroying their habitats.
This. Unite with people around you and fight for the future
Like another commenter said, attracting insects can help, by providing food for pollinators and other bugs which also help feed smaller animals which then feed larger animals etc. Never ever use herbicide/pesticide, or artificial fertilizer. (For example, anything with glyphosate in it will kill anything with permeable skin in the area. Salamanders will die from levels even below EPA standards of safe drinking water.) If you need fertilizer use compost.
Even better: kill your lawn. Let native wildflower species take over. If it all turns to clover, you don’t even have to mow it.
The main problem is our economic system which demands infinite, unsustainable profit and expansion, so at the very least get the conversation going on that. I know it’s impossible for an individual to fight the whole world, but that’s why organizing is important. You must build a large enough group to become a force for change.
In the meantime, since we aren’t ready to kill capitalism, make your own space as much of a sanctuary as it can be.
🤔 I wonder how much milkweed costs. We have an epic fuckton of butterflies in our neighborhood, and attracting monarchs seems like a good idea, come to think of it. Thanks
Make sure to pick native plants. Don’t unbalance something else with an under researched plan.
What’s the best way to “kill a lawn” without harming the local ecosystem?
Just don’t water it. If it’s someone elses lawn, you get involved in local government to make sure that lawncare is an unlawful requirement for all HOA’s etc.
Insect-friendly garden.
- Eat low on the food chain and try to minimize unnecessary consumption.
- Don’t have children. Probably this should be #1 because there’s really nothing as environmentally damaging as creating another human (and all their descendants).
- Try to convince others to do the same when you can.
Trying to help specific individual wild animals is never going to have an impact close to any of those items, unless you’re already very wealthy and powerful.
This is 100% wrong and individualistic thinking with a healthy dose of sophomoric “humans are the disease” thinking.
This is 100% wrong
How about a counterargument instead of just saying “no”? If I’m wrong, it shouldn’t be difficult to refute my points.
You also weren’t very clear about what you think is wrong. I’m assuming point #2, but who knows.
Ultimately we live in a global society with around 8billion other people. Individualistic thinking such as “don’t eat meat,” or “don’t have children,” is making a moral judgement as well as using the trivial answer to the problem. (If there were no humans there would be no human-caused climate change, amazing.) It doesn’t advance anyone’s understanding of the problem, and it doesn’t even pretend to address the societal problem. It also implies that if people change their diets to be less burdensome with current tech, that things would be solved which is demonstrably untrue. An all vegan diet of 8 billion people just kicks the can down the road until we have 15billion people and run into almost exactly the same problem, but now instead of meat production we have industrial farming practices of soybeans or whatever to blame.
If you want to say that earth cannot support anymore then X people that are eating meat, or we should only have Y people total and they should all be vegans that is an argument that I’m pretty sure no one can support. Feel free to prove me wrong however. But you must start the argument by saying what number of people you think is the appropriate number.
Otherwise you are just advocating for a trivial demand side solution that puts the blame of the current problems on literally everyone that currently exists which is also false.
I don’t want to pollute the well by giving my ideas yet, but if you wish to engage, let me know what I’m getting wrong about my critique of your position. To succinctly sum-up my critique of your position. You say that global climate destruction is a “consumption” problem that individuals can solve, but I say that it is a systemic problem that individuals are forced into and cannot escape thus the solution cannot be at the individual consumption level.
Individualistic thinking such as “don’t eat meat,” or “don’t have children,” is making a moral judgement as well as using the trivial answer to the problem. (If there were no humans there would be no human-caused climate change, amazing.)
Saying “don’t eat meat” is an individualistic proposal, but that doesn’t mean it is ineffective or a moral argument; reducing the carbon intensity of the food you eat is undeniably effective at reducing the demand for carbon intensive foods. It’s not the same as shutting down a factory farm, but it is still having an affect. It can’t be the only thing done, but saying “that’s an individualistic argument” seems like avoiding the fact that it is undeniably effective. Choosing to eat meat is an individualistic decision as well.
Not having children is more complicated. Humans don’t inherently have a net positive carbon offset, because we are able to create things like carbon sinks that more than offset that person’s individual carbon output. The problem is that our system as it stands actively discourages people from having a positive environmental effect. I choose not to have children, because in our current capitalist driven climate change train, having children is like bringing a log into a house fire; they’re not going to make a big difference but they are kindling nonetheless and will suffer for it.
Individualistic thinking such as
OP specifically asked for what they could do as an individual. It seems really weird to chastise me for “individualistic thinking” if I give them an answer to their question.
is making a moral judgement
I certainly have my own ideas about what’s moral or not, but you’re reading in stuff that didn’t actually exist in my post.
The reason I made those points is in terms of practical effects. Roughly 90% of food energy is lost per link in the food chain. Consequently, if you eat high on the food chain you are effectively throwing away 90% of the food energy. Scale this wasteful approach up to feeding 8 billion people and the effects on the environment are very extreme. I also said to reduce unnecessary consumption.
Humans, especially privileged humans living in developed countries (generally, anyone that will be reading posts here) use a disproportionate share of resources. We exist by exploiting other people and the environment, and it’s nearly impossible to avoid. We don’t pay the real costs for those effects either, for the most part. We usually don’t even account for those costs, which are or will inevitably be paid by someone eventually.
I don’t even know what an average individual living in the US or similar countries could personally do to break even, let alone have an overall positive effect. In general, or for simplicity we can just say in terms of the environment. Either way, it’s basically the same. So creating a new human, who is overwhelmingly likely to be average (and even if they’re not, maybe they do a lot of harm, maybe they do a lot of good) is almost certainly going to be harmful from an environmental perspective. Not only that, but this new human may also propagate and so one’s responsibility for the effects involved in creating that individual don’t just stop there.
It also implies that if people change their diets to be less burdensome with current tech, that things would be solved
If I’d wanted to say that, I would have written it in my post. However, I didn’t so that implies what?
It reduces harmful effects. Reducing harm is worthwhile, even if it doesn’t just solve everything in one fell swoop. Reducing or mitigating harm can also allow more time for more permanent solutions to be developed before irreversible changes/losses occur.
An all vegan diet of 8 billion people just kicks the can down the road until we have 15billion people
What? You just got done criticizing me for saying people should choose not to have children and now you’re acting like that part didn’t exist. Not to mention, I even said the not having children point should probably have been #1.
If you want to say that earth cannot support anymore then X people that are eating meat, or we should only have Y people total
I mean, unless you want to argue that the earth has infinite resources then there has to be some point where resource consumption in unsustainable. If you take steps to reduce resource consumption, for example by eating low on the food chain then the point where it’s unsustainable changes.
So while I wasn’t saying that in my post, it’s just factually and obviously true that one could put a general number on how many humans can sustainably be supported in various scenarios.
Otherwise you are just advocating for a trivial demand side solution that puts the blame of the current problems on literally everyone that currently exists which is also false.
I think consumers have at least an equal part of the blame, but they don’t have all of it. However, production won’t exist without consumption. Politicians also won’t/can’t pass laws and policies that will just immediately get them voted out. If a politician says “Okay, starting tomorrow we start paying the true price of meat production including future environmental effects as accurately as we can quantify them: so the price will quadruple” it wouldn’t matter if that was accurate. They’d just get voted out.
The population has to support (and indicate their support) for that sort of thing before politicians can pass legislature that will restriction companies.
let me know what I’m getting wrong about my critique of your position.
Your biggest issue is imagining a bunch of arguments and points that never existed and devoting your time to attacking them. Respond to what I actually wrote.
For the OP. Asking what an “individual” can do in a society specifically addressing a trivial part of societal waste (animals) the answer is nothing. It doesn’t matter a single bit what an individual does on their own without collective action. This is the same answer for what an individual can do about car-dependency, about cruise lines, about the fact that oil extraction and the oil dependent industry is ~70% of all carbon emissions. An individual cannot do anything about that. It’s framing the question wrong. I didn’t structure our society around fossil fuels and ignore the externalities they present, so what the hell am I supposed to do about it?
I wanted to engage you specifically. Because you proposed specific individual solutions that I wanted to critique. So I apologize for making conclusions about your position without providing the reasoning for my conclusion.
The things you have suggested can be boiled down to reducing individual consumption. But the logical conclusion of that line of thinking is that zero consumption of the individual is the ideal situation. The only way for a living being to consume nothing is to kill themselves before breeding. So how can that possibly be a reasonable solution?
I apologize for making conclusions about your position without providing the reasoning for my conclusion.
I appreciate that but like I said before, you should focus on responding to what I wrote. You seem incredibly focused on reading between the lines, to the point that you’re only reading in between and ignoring the content of the lines themselves.
You said you made conclusions about my position: I feel like you still really don’t even know what my position is. That includes this comment because in spite of how I asked you to respond to what I actually wrote, you just kept right on trying to guess what I might be “implying”. Once again: If I wanted to say it, I would have written it down.
This also wouldn’t be so much of a problem if you were making reasonably charitable assumptions, but your assumptions have all basically started out assuming I’m an idiot and extremist and would be implying absurd things. It’s kind of insulting.
a trivial part of societal waste (animals)
Animal agriculture actually doesn’t have a trivial effect on the environment.
It doesn’t matter a single bit what an individual does on their own without collective action.
You have to “be the change you want to see in the world”. Obviously each of the 8 billion people on the planet can’t just casually do something that changes the whole world in major way.
Also, even if something isn’t visible on a global scale it can still “matter”. A single murder isn’t going to make a difference in global death statistics. Right? But it’s going to “matter” if the victim is you, or someone you care about. So doing things that help individuals still has value.
The things you have suggested can be boiled down to reducing individual consumption. But the logical conclusion of that line of thinking is that zero consumption of the individual is the ideal situation. The only way for a living being to consume nothing is to kill themselves before breeding. So how can that possibly be a reasonable solution?
How is it possible to write something this ridiculous without realizing there’s a problem?
Me: We should brush our teeth regularly.
You: [reads the above, thinks to self] KerfuffleV2 says we should brush our teeth regularly. What could be more regular than continuously brushing our teeth? But if we continuously brush our teeth we won’t be able to eat or drink! We’ll die of dehydration and exhaustion!
You: [exclaims in horror] Oh my god, why do you want to kill everyone!? You monster!
Me: Huh?
I am a person that likes to “engage” but I don’t see how I can with you. You just twist everything I say beyond recognition.
Go with the classic: build an ark.
🤔
you can’t.
consider just one tiny ecosystem: american prairie (in general, not all the different kinds of prairie).
prairies are maintained by fire. natural fires come from lightning strikes and places that get more strikes are more likely to have scrublands, prairies, barrens, etc. strikes are related to global weather patterns and when they increase or decrease in regions those places are gonna change into different ecosystems that will support different animals and plants. the spread of fire is regulated by all kinds of fire breaks, a good amount of which are manmade.
without that ecosystem, the animals from it can’t live. a person could try to mitigate the effects of manmade firebreaks and manmade fire avoidance systems with proscribed burns but that’s a much more holistic approach to saving the animals and a lot of the work understanding it is from game management perspectives, not ecosystem preservation.
so lets say you did decide you have a hundred acres that youre gonna turn into prairie and manage through proscribed burns while the weather patterns that would have naturally allowed for its existence shift wildly and new, unexpected manmade firebreaks come into being as people adjust to climate change.
what happens when you die or can’t afford to manage that little preserve? what happens when the rainfall gets too far out of line to really have whatever particular kind of hipster ass barren (i’m not slagging on barrens but there’s a bunch of kinds that are particular to specific areas) you happen to be shepherding along? what kind of preserves should be maintained for animals whose natural existence is now impossible? what about wide ranging or migratory animals?
have a natural lawn and do burns and try to appreciate animals but also try to recognize that you can’t save them. the world is changing and their environments are going away. there’s not much that can be done about it on an individual level. love them while they’re here i guess.
In that case, I would set up a foundation to manage the land and hire people to take care of it.
🤔 So I’ll need wealth, a lot of wealth. I guess maybe that’s the answer.
Actually getting rich and building artificial habitats to preserve species doesn’t sound like a bad idea.
The thing to remember is that you can’t control the weather and even stuff people don’t usually think about like lightning strike frequency have huge effects on the types of ecosystems that a given area can sustain and move through.
Having wild, native environments you manage is great. It’s really worth considering deeply what animals you’re trying to save and how. Let’s say in a hundred years you’ve managed to preserve a tiny three hundred acre swath of habitat and keep it from becoming destroyed. Are the animals there saved with no habitat they can live in unless people maintain it? You may well end up creating wildlife thatre as unviable in nature as brachycephalic dogs.
🤔 Doming over parts of the land would mitigate most of those problems.
Honestly, I think that most environments are going to end up being human controlled, especially as we begin human expansion into space and bring those environments up with us, so it’s kind of a moot point.
I think you might be seriously underestimating the complexity of the ecosystems around you.
For an idea of the complexity we havent touched on: soil acidity, moisture content and average temperature determines what fungi and microbiota can live there. Those determine what plants and fungi and animals can live in the area and what relationships they can have with each other. If that still sounds like something you can get your head around, the mineral content, the very origin of the rocks that would be weathered into substrate for the microfauna of any one of thousands of biomes have deep implications for what chemical pathways energy moves around.
If you want them to exist only so that the animals (which ones?) can exist in what people will view as a natural setting then yeah, using domes to make something like an ecosystem that has for example grouse or turkey is possible. If you want the ecosystems to exist in their truly natural interactions with each other as systems whose existence is tied to the entire global climate, a dome isn’t gonna cut it.
It’s not bad to underestimate your own backyard. It’s wildly complex.
Do you want to preserve a certain animal or was it more of a thought experiment?
More of a thought experiment. I am contemplating how best to prevent the effects of climate collapse, as it’s one of the things I want to do with my life.
You can’t.
We can’t.
Our world is changing and it can’t be stopped. Even if we were to magically halt emissions and use carbon capture to reverse what’s been done, the consequences that are already rolling in combination with the other effects of human civilization on earth will take millennia to reach some kind of equilibrium and involve large scale devastation.
We can never recapture the past and our present is fleeting.
What kind of future do you want?
Donate to WWF.
I’m not sure I entirely trust large charities. There should be local habitat charities which may have more stake in your local conservation efforts or zoo/wildlife projects nearby to look up.
You concerns are well-founded. Charity, large or small, is just a middleman to address a social problem that should be addresses by the appropriate governmental body through progressive taxation to begin with. The reason large charities exist is so that revolutionary ways to address our current economic order can be safely redirected from any kind of long-term action that may threaten the status quo.
…Start a suicide cult?
Only semi-sarcastic with this one - nothing personal towards you, my point is just that everything else in the planet would do far better without us (the only exception I can think of is our pets that have learned to depend on us). Yes, I’m very fun at parties…
But that CO2 will stay in the air and the oceans regardless unless we do something. Killing ourselves won’t solve anything. I know it’s tempting and even seems logical to hate humans on account of all this, but other animals have accidentally caused mass extinctions before, and we are the first with the ability to reverse it. So please, let’s focus on meaningful solutions and not give in to our demons.
This is brilliant!
I realized shortly after posting how unhelpful my response was (you were quick!)
It’s all good fam, I know how bleak things look and how easy it is to fall into despair in such trying times. I guess the moral of all of this is that all we have is each other, and working together is what it’ll take to solve the problem.
Wow, you really are the greatest!
Keen on being a shining light, cuz!
There’s nothing we can do at this point. Help animals die a dignified death while they still have a chance. They are going to slowly cook alive otherwise.
I don’t have any hope left for the planet.
Castration.
You will save those who aren’t born yet.
That hot moment when you realize you forgot to add the [serious] tag
Edit: fixed
No, no. He’s got a point.
I confess, I genuinely don’t know if they were being serious or not. There’s a lot of antinatalism that goes around climate circles, but that also would be a chance at a joke I unwittingly walked into.
I don’t plan on having kids regardless so in my case it’s a moot point. I just hope others have other ideas for ways an individual can contribute to prevent climate induced species extinction.
Half serious.
There is nothing you can do. You can’t stop climate change and environmental destruction with your metal straws and reusable bags. You also can’t save animals in a global sense. You can only pick a few and help them. Individual effort means nothing and even NGOs and activists are futile in this struggle.
Yes, those animals that you help shouldn’t reproduce because the whole problem arises from excessive use of resources and one more mouth to feed is one more mouth to suffer starvation. On the other hand, it’s so marginal that it doesn’t make any difference. Environmentalists really need to understand that Karen the vegan won’t make a difference, they need to make poor people from China, India and Africa refuse meat, poor people from Europe and America and middle class BRICS to refuse plastics and fuel, make sure that Nigeria never gets a middle class with cars and electronics, keep the US and Europe from renewing their car fleet even if they switch to electrics (they won’t throw the ones that were already made into the trash), to have a chance of making a difference. And that won’t happen because these people aren’t stupid, it would make their lives worse for what? To make sure that Karen the Vegan and her kids can stay rich in a proper climate while they spend 2 hours per day commuting? No, lol.
Assuming the question was about pets
Are you telling me you aren’t willing to go into the wild, kidnap lions and try to castrate them?
Suicide. Every human less increases some poor animal’s chances. If enough people died today, some species may even not go extinct just yet.
God damn do some of you people need lithium scrips
You asked and that’s the simple truth. The climate collapse you mentioned is caused / accelerated by humans and nothing decreases an individuals carbon footprint more than dying. Less humans = less consumption = less human impact on the global climate = better chances of survival for animals.
Us dying off wouldn’t fix the climate and you and I both know that. Only human ingenuity can. My question is how. A lot of you all are speaking in bad faith, unironically calling for people to die over this as if it’s going to fix anything. You all need therapy
Climate has always been changing and animals were always around. Not always the same species, but there won’t be any collapse because even the worst IPCC predictions (that won’t come true because of myriad of reasons, even by IPCC’s own acknowledgement) predict weather like it was in Eocene when certain animals, mammals specifically, prospered.
You don’t. In fact even considering animals in the question shows you don’t understand the problem and have no actual desire to address the root cause.
If we solve climate change by transforming our economy from a capitalist one predicated on endless growth, animals get to enjoy the benefits too.
