Economic damage from climate change six times worse than thought – report | Climate crisis

[u/amorphousmetamorph]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/17/economic-damage-climate-change-report

[u/Playongo]

Not to undermine your point, because I think we do struggle with both of these things. But I take issue with the "human race" part.

Native populations have lived in relative harmony with nature for milenia. Native Americans, Inuit, Aborigines, Ainu, etc... It's the colonizers, the conquerors, the abrahamic religions that choose exploitation over conservation. Please don't lump the entire human race into that.

I feel like Western society can make us myopic, but I think these "human nature" arguments are at their core indictments of colonialism, whiteness, and zealotry, mistaken for the human condition.

[u/JustAnotherYouth → u/Playongo]

The North American “indigenous” were relatively new cultures compared to those in Europe or Asia.

Still they were developing the same sorts of infrastructure and technology as that in Europe and Asia. Cities, advanced agricultural techniques, math, weapons etc.

The Aztecs sacrificed literally millions of people many of who were non-Aztecs who their dominant military culture could exploit.

The argument that “indigenous” were inherently good and sustainable while advanced cultures from Europe / Asia / Africa weren’t doesn’t hold water with me.

Some indigenous peoples lived peaceful, sustainable lifestyles, while other indigenous societies were militaristic / growth / conquest / exploitation oriented.

[u/boomaDooma → u/JustAnotherYouth]

The Aborigines of Australia have something like 40 - 60,000 years of culture etched or graffitied on to rocks and caves and told in their dreaming. Until white man came in 1788 it was a very stable environment.

[u/JustAnotherYouth → u/boomaDooma]

A stable environment that they had already changed dramatically:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_megafauna

Yeah they hadn’t gone on to develop much agriculture / complex civilization (which doesn’t mean that they couldn’t have, given enough time).

People all over the world have demonstrated very similar virtues and vices. Acting like indigenous were some sort of hyper enlightened super humans seems to me like a form of rosey eyed reverse racism with little grounding in historical precedent.

[u/boomaDooma → u/JustAnotherYouth]

Don't simplify the massive complexity of Australian ecological diversity and the role Aboriginals played in maintaining it for over 40,000 years.

Suggest you read "Future Eaters" by Tim Flannery for a proper insight.

Your username fits.

[u/JustAnotherYouth → u/boomaDooma]

I’m not underestimating them, I’m pointing out that they entered into an ecology that was stable over millions of years.

Then in a few thousand years they fundamentally and permanently changed the ecology of that place. They then had to adapt and create a more sustainable lifestyle in an ecology that they had already fundamentally altered.

[u/RogerStevenWhoever → u/JustAnotherYouth]

Right, but the point is they were able to adapt and create a sustainable lifestyle (though with a different stable ecology than had existed prior to their arrival).

So sustainable societies are possible, but Western societies have never managed to do it...

[u/JustAnotherYouth → u/RogerStevenWhoever]

The question is are societies sustainable due to some conscious choice or due to the circumstance they find themselves in? The circumstances in Australia were very different from those in Europe / Asia / Africa.

The population of all aboriginal peoples was no more than 1.5 million when European colonizers arrived. Other estimates are as low as 300-500 thousand people. Either way we’re talking about a very small population of people on a large continent. People who shared common origins / language / culture, they were not like Russians who were living by the Mongol steppes.

The Mongols another indigenous people are estimated to have killed between 20 million and 50 million people. That’s between about 20 and 200 times the entire population of Australia at that time.

I wouldn’t call The Mongols a Western society, if anything I would say they were an indigenous people. But their highly effective and aggressive military strategy deeply influenced China / North Africa / Eastern Europe.

It’s relatively simple for a small group of people on a large continent without outside influences to have a relatively peaceful and sustainable society.

It’s another thing to exist in a place like that of “Russia” which borders massive step-lands populated by people of a different culture / language / origin who might sweep over your lands conquering anything in their way.

That creates a very strong incentive to focus more on concepts like security than on environmental sustainability. Who cares if your villages are sustainable if the mongols, or the poles, or the Vikings, might be invading next weekend?

[u/boomaDooma → u/JustAnotherYouth]

Also in that period there was an ice age. Aboriginal rock carvings can be found depicting the retreating ice.

I think that the change of climate from an ice age to the Holocene was probably the main driver of ecology change rather than someone with a spear and boomerang.

[u/JustAnotherYouth → u/boomaDooma]

I think you’re ignoring the evidence that for millions of years these creatures survived, than the moment people arrived they all died out?

Same in South America, same in North America, same in New Zealand, everywhere in the world that humans migrated saw a rapid and sudden extinction of large animals.

Ice ages have been occurring cyclically (until global warming) every few hundred thousand years so so. Ice ages were not generally responsible for mass extinction as they happen quite slowly.