The only examples this article gives of irreversible damage:
homes destroyed by hurricanes: clearly and obviously reversible. Build new houses. Fin.
rising sea levels: reversible. Cool the climate, get more glaciers, lower sea levels. Obviously it’s more of a “100 years from now” solution, but it’s definitely a solution.
We are wildly far away from having the technology to do that. A single genome wouldn’t provide the genetic diversity for a sustainable population. We would need hundreds or thousands of genomes for each species to ensure that non-related individuals could mate.
And to those who say “well, the Earth will bounce back”: we’re much closer to the end of Earth’s ability to support life than to the beginning. Earth doesn’t have endless time to evolve new kinds of creatures. We could be doing damage from which Earth’s biodiversity never recovers.
That’s not a good argument… this is such a small blip, the earth has been much hotter and colder then now and will stabilize again before it’s eventually destroyed.
To me, the better argument is simply: Wouldn’t you like there to be humans or soem sentient beings that remembered you in the future? Maybe not you specifically, but the culture and art that you contributed to?
The only examples this article gives of irreversible damage:
homes destroyed by hurricanes: clearly and obviously reversible. Build new houses. Fin.
rising sea levels: reversible. Cool the climate, get more glaciers, lower sea levels. Obviously it’s more of a “100 years from now” solution, but it’s definitely a solution.
lives lost: yeah, that’s a fair point.
And also irreversible is The decline of biodiversity. Once a species is extinct it won’t come back.
Yeah, I’ve always wanted us to have a genetic Doomsday Vault, with the sequenced genome of every species. We can clone them from that.
We are wildly far away from having the technology to do that. A single genome wouldn’t provide the genetic diversity for a sustainable population. We would need hundreds or thousands of genomes for each species to ensure that non-related individuals could mate.
We absolutely have the technology, we just don’t have the money to gather the data. Or we haven’t chosen to allocate it.
Guess we’ll have to Jurassic park this shit but with Pandas
And to those who say “well, the Earth will bounce back”: we’re much closer to the end of Earth’s ability to support life than to the beginning. Earth doesn’t have endless time to evolve new kinds of creatures. We could be doing damage from which Earth’s biodiversity never recovers.
That’s not a good argument… this is such a small blip, the earth has been much hotter and colder then now and will stabilize again before it’s eventually destroyed.
To me, the better argument is simply: Wouldn’t you like there to be humans or soem sentient beings that remembered you in the future? Maybe not you specifically, but the culture and art that you contributed to?
Right, Earth will be here, life will find a way …… but cockroaches and jellyfish can’t read