Memes of Production

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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the “ML” influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.

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Deceptichum@quokk.au

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capitalism is killing the planet (infosec.pub)

submitted 1 day ago by Deceptichum@quokk.au to c/mop@quokk.au

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[–] cheesybuddha@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is the age old debate about human nature.

We have a biological imperative to consume and reproduce. Unchecked consumption and reproduction is unsustainable give finite resources.

Can we curb those innate desires, and can we do so ethically? It's not a simple answer.

[–] Deceptichum@quokk.au 11 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Humans have existed for 300,000 years. It is only in the last few hundred that we have decided on this route. It is not human nature to consume and reproduce more than a ecological niche can support us and many peoples across the world live in balance with their ecosystems before Europeans invaded them.

[–] cheesybuddha@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

No, it's only the last few hundred years we had the capability to decide on this route.

It is not human nature to consume and reproduce more than a ecological niche can support.

Yes it is. It is a biological imperative to consume and expand. There is no biological imperative to stop doing that. Up until recently the balancing factor has been the cruelty of nature and vast amounts of human death, especially in the very young.

[–] Christobootswiththepher@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago

Yea breed till extinction is natures way. Those reindeer on the island off Kamchatka.

I think the biological imperative to stop is the total doom it creates us all if left unchecked. Pretty strong motivation. I think the game musical chairs is closer to reality than symbiotic relationship, conflict being inherent in survival.

Community created cooperative protection.

[–] WoodScientist@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It is not human nature to consume and reproduce more than a ecological niche can support us and many peoples across the world live in balance with their ecosystems before Europeans invaded them.

https://link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-3-540-33761-4_62

Tell that to the mammoths.

[–] hide@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

For fifteen thousand years or more before the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, passenger pigeons and Native Americans coexisted in the forests of what would later become the eastern part of the continental United States.

A 2017 study of passenger-pigeon DNA found that the passenger-pigeon population size was stable for 20,000 years prior to its 19th-century decline and subsequent extinction, while a 2016 study of ancient Native American DNA found that the Native American population went through a period of rapid expansion, increasing 60-fold, starting about 13–16 thousand years ago. If both of these studies are correct, then a great change in the size of the Native American population had no apparent impact on the size of the passenger-pigeon population. This suggests that the net effect of Native American activities on passenger-pigeon population size was neutral.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon

[–] cheesybuddha@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

And there are many more cows alive today than there have ever been before.

Cows are absolutely thriving.

Because they are useful to humans. Yet all the pigeons living in the rain forests that we cleared to give cows more room are dead.

[–] hide@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

The Native Americans ate the Passenger Pigeon.

The passenger pigeon was an important source of food for the people of North America.

Archaeological evidence supports the idea that Native Americans ate the pigeons frequently prior to colonization.

They were not killed by deforestation, the European colonists killed them all.

What may be the earliest account of Europeans hunting passenger pigeons dates to January 1565, when the French explorer René Laudonnière wrote of killing close to 10,000 of them around Fort Caroline in a matter of weeks.

After European colonization, the passenger pigeon was hunted with more intensive methods than the more sustainable methods practiced by the natives.

Once pigeon meat became popular, commercial hunting started on a prodigious scale.

By the 1870s, the decrease in birds was noticeable, especially after the last large-scale nestings and subsequent slaughters of millions of birds in 1874 and 1878.

[–] Deceptichum@quokk.au 5 points 1 day ago

Professor Willerslev said: "Scientists have argued for 100 years about why mammoths went extinct. Humans have been blamed because the animals had survived for millions of years without climate change killing them off before, but when they lived alongside humans they didn't last long and we were accused of hunting them to death.

"We have finally been able to prove was that it was not just the climate changing that was the problem, but the speed of it that was the final nail in the coffin—they were not able to adapt quickly enough when the landscape dramatically transformed and their food became scarce.

"As the climate warmed up, trees and wetland plants took over and replaced the mammoth's grassland habitats. And we should remember that there were a lot of animals around that were easier to hunt than a giant woolly mammoth—they could grow to the height of a double decker bus!"

Humans did not cause woolly mammoths to go extinct—climate change did: study

Tell that to climate change.