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jhasse wrote

There are more reasons for being anti-GMO and anti-nuclear than being anti-science.

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sudo wrote

If by "anti-nuclear" you mean "There are safer ways to produce electricity than nuclear power - we should only use nuclear when all those other clean methods aren't feasible, and only in areas that aren't prone to natural disasters that could cause a meltdown of the plant," then I wouldn't call that anti-nuclear. That's a perfectly reasonable thing to say.

If you're anti-GMO, though, you most certainly are anti-science.

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jhasse wrote

we should only use nuclear when all those other clean methods aren't feasible

There's another alternative: Don't produce more power.

If you're anti-GMO, though, you most certainly are anti-science.

Why? It's also quite a political topic, regarding patents etc.

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sudo wrote

There's another alternative: Don't produce more power.

But we will have to, at some point, dismantle the old fossil fuel power plants. If we don't replace them with something else, then everyone in that region will go without electricity. That will mean no refrigeration for food, no electricity to power the life-saving machinery in hospitals, no traffic signals, telephones, computers, or any other thing you can think of. If that power can be produced with solar panels or windmills, excellent. If no other form of clean energy is feasible for that region, then nuclear power will work.

Why? It's also quite a political topic, regarding patents etc.

Then say you are anti-patent, or anti-DRM (or whatever its equivalent for genetic engineering is called). If I told you I hated coffee, but I really meant that I only hated coffee mixed with cream because I'm lactose intolerant, then I would be responsible for the misunderstanding. Anti-GMO means someone is against GMOs as a whole.

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jhasse wrote

If we don't replace them with something else, then everyone in that region will go without electricity.

Actually if we remove nuclear power plants, the first thing to happen will be that electricity prices will go up. That will result in consumption going down. Maybe enough so that we can go without nuclear power plants.

or whatever its equivalent for genetic engineering is called

That's the thing: I don't know a term for this, that's why I would say I'm "anti-GMO". But I get what you mean :)

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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zorblax wrote

"harms the planet"? What does that mean?

Mass agriculture definitely reduces the 'health' of the biosphere -- where 'health' is a measurement created by humans -- but the biosphere isn't an entity, it has recovered from worse before. Not even the worst scenarios of nuclear war could wipe out life on Earth.

Basically, sure, agriculture as it's currently practiced 'hurts' the biosphere. But trying to restore the biosphere to some 'natural state' is a futile exercise. We'd be better off trying to find ways we can retain species diversity and eco-regions than try to re-wild areas that will never be the same again.

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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zorblax wrote

What other option is there? Killing ourselves? Trying to go back to once was will never work, the past is long long lost, and mass extinction is inevitable at this point anyway.

The Apocalypse will never come. Humans are too adaptable, and evolution is too adaptable. Any collapse is by nature temporary.

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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zorblax wrote

There is no other option

Actually, there is: keep living.

You have such a superficial pessimistic view about the world! Your pessimism completely fails to take in the big picture.

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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Defasher wrote

"You're being pessimistic. Sure billions of people are going to starve, thirst or drown to death. But maybe a few rich people will survive in their underground bunkers!"

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zorblax wrote (edited )

Sure, or that people generally adapt rapidly to environmental collapse(you can look at Egypt or Iraq for good examples), or that we have no idea if the manmade extinction event will be short-term or long-term, or that we can't know what technological innovations will come in the future which might alleviate the problems.

Basically, you make a lot of assumptions about the world that aren't necessarily true, and are only confirmed by your negative view of the present.

Oh, and about "the apocalypse": People have been waiting for the end of the world for as long as people have existed. Sometimes they've even pronounced the end times, often because their particular civilization was falling apart. So far they have all been wrong.

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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zorblax wrote

"save the environment" of course not. There's not even anything to save, even in the best possible case it is irreversibly changed. What they can do, though, is blunt the impact.

Those people did not have scientific evidence

Sometimes they did. Sometimes they had really bad famines and diseases and storms. Usually they could see the evidence right before their eyes, without the need for scientific investigation.

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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zorblax wrote (edited )

You mean that global warming causes them?

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EdgyIndividualistBuffoon OP wrote

If by feeding 7 billion people you mean "harms the planet"...

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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EdgyIndividualistBuffoon OP wrote

Ah, so you advocate killing a portion of the population to save the rest? My god.

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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EdgyIndividualistBuffoon OP wrote

So what is your solution to '7 billion people harming the planet'?

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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Lenny wrote (edited )

This. These people act like scary anprims are going to genocide humanity, when humanity has already genocided themselves. You're just not denying it.

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EdgyIndividualistBuffoon OP wrote

If primitivism is something that's going to happen to all of us, something out of our control, then what's the point of labeling yourself a primitivist? It's not a conscious action, it's just a state of being you foresee being forced on every human on the planet.

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sudo wrote

Fucking everything harms some form of life on the planet, in some way. Some animals eat plants - that harms the plants that get eaten. Some animals eat other animals - that harms those other animals. Sometimes they eat them to extinction. Sometimes natural disasters or changes in climate cause extinctions (even far before humans existed). The only way to make sure that no life is ever harmed is to get rid of all life on Earth. Oops, but that would be harming life, wouldn't it?

Life has survived massive changes in the biosphere before, and it can do so again. To say humans shouldn't even engage in agriculture because it would mean chopping down some trees is profoundly stupid. Either we harm the trees, or we harm ourselves by having massive starvation. If you think that a human's life isn't more valuable than a tree's, then I shouldn't waste my time reasoning with you.

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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sudo wrote

What's your point? We obviously are not against nature

My point is that pretty much anything humans do will harm some other form of life in some way, and, even if humans reverted to gathering food and doing absolutely nothing else, life would still be harmed by natural causes. So, if natural life will be harmed anyway, why harm ourselves as well?

To say that the entire planet(including humans) is less valuable than human life... is "profoundly stupid"

Agriculture doesn't put the entire planet at risk, though. I don't see why you're saying this.

to say that we would have mass starvation as a result of not exploiting plants is "profoundly stupid"

How the fuck else are people going to eat, then? If humans could photosynthesize, then that'd be great, but we can't. We have to eat something, and eating plants and fungus is less shitty than eating animals. If you think you can survive without eating anything, go ahead and try it. See where that gets you. I can't believe I have to explain why eating food is necessary, fuck.

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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sudo wrote

Again, what's your point? Primitivists are not against nature. We must kill things or gather things to eat. That's quite obvious. We are against disrupting a natural equilibrium and dominating the food cycle

Already been done. You want to go back? That'll require large amounts of the population to die, because 7 billion people won't be able to get by on gathering (plus, suddenly switching to gathering for 7 billion people would be very disruptive to the current natural equilibrium).

Does burning gasoline put the entire planet at risk? It may not seem so while driving a single car, but the accumulated action certaintly puts the whole planet at risk, and doing so less hurts only slower than it would have otherwise

Granted, but we're talking about agriculture. Does the sum total of all current agriculture put the planet at risk? No.

Hunting, gathering. Doing what puts us on the level of a sustainable environment. I can't believe I have to explain how to get food from the wilderness. Even right-wingers know that hunting is a thing, although they use technology which puts them at incredible advantages when they do it

That's not feasible or sustainable for 7 billion people. Plus, the entire reason why we moved away from hunting and gathering in the first place is because it's far too unpredictable. There's a drought, and plants aren't growing as much in the forest? Not as much of a problem with agriculture - use irrigation. The species you're hunting is dying off, so there's not enough food? Well, now your tribe will start dying off, too. To make an analogy, the reason why agriculture is superior to hunting and gathering is the same reason why planned economies are superior to the free market - because humans have some level of control over what's produced (and when we're talking about food, that's the most important thing to get control of). It's too late to say that we shouldn't develop agriculture, because it would destroy ecosystems - we've been doing it for several thousand years now. The damage has already been done. The problem, really, is overpopulation. The solutions to that are to implement birth control measures, and to research how to set up a sustainable society on other worlds in the solar system.

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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sudo wrote

Correct

Then let's try to avoid that. The deaths from climate change will be bad enough.

It absolutely does. It creates water shortages, envelops land which was lived in by animals, kills countless insects with pesticides, corrupts the soil, is potentially invasive, etc.

So, like I said before, it can destroy a local ecosystem. But not the entire planet.

Using up Earth as a burner, huh? Interesting and predictable plan. What birth control measures do you have in mind?

If socialism wins, we wouldn't be using it as a burner (it has already been "burned"). A socialist government wouldn't allow a planet to be destroyed for profit. If we achieve global communism before colonizing other planets, then there wouldn't be any reason to recklessly pollute other planets, as we have done Earth. And how could we? All other planets in the solar system are extremely hostile to Earth life as it is - we could hardly make them worse. Whether or not we can make them better remains to be seen.

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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sudo wrote

Why? I would prefer freedom sooner than later

...Because we don't have to mostly die off. Just don't dismantle agriculture, and we stay alive.

Local ecosystems effect their surrounding ones, and those effect their surrounding ones, and so forth. The agriculture you are purporting is a global one, not a local one. Not that it matters

Then the world would have ended by now, since we've destroyed more than one ecosystem already. You're over-estimating the impact it would have.

Government; what a romantic ideal which will never come to fruition. Follow your leader towards the money, because that's what government is, the hierarchy that upholds money and profit

So, you don't understand socialism, then.

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