Robert Laughlin has joined Freeman Dyson in the category of missing the point. His recent piece indicates a quite odd premise: let's not worry about global climate change because the Earth does not care what we do and will survive no matter what we do about climate change.
True on the "Earth not caring and will survive" but its not the point. We live in a bit of a 'sweet spot' in terms of a livable Earth for humans and that would be one of the big issues - not causing our own extinction and taking a lot of species down with us. Now human extinction via anthropogenic climate change is not likely but it sure won't make too many places more livable (ironically, parts of Canada may be an exception).
This reminds me of the similar arguments in the 1980s about biodiversity - 'hell, the Earth has seen many natural extinctions and most species are extinct'. Um, yeah. The old '99% of all species are extinct' saw was fine - except that's over a 3 billion year period. And the natural part, even the sudden ones, were all related to stuff like near earth objects blasting the planet. Either way, these are not things to be desired.
No comments:
Post a Comment