Part of me can see how much nicer our world might be without any humans in it. Ecosystems could find their own equilibrium, unhindered by industrial pollution. Species could expand again and diversify, free of competition from the endless growth of factory farms, freeways, and parking lots.
It would take much time, centuries or even millennia, for the sky to regain its natural clarity, the forests to regrow, and the rivers to run clean. Even longer than that, probably, for all of the plastic eventually to degrade and disappear.
But someday, someday… the Earth would once again be a beautiful place.
It’s a lovely vision, and yet I’m torn. Because to get there means the suffering and death of billions of people. I wish there was a way to prevent that.
Love both of these insights and I think It would be great if we could fix it. I just don't think that, for various psychological reasons, we will.
Which is why I have to go with the argument that the sooner we go extinct the better. Perhaps we will create and consume something that will that will make us infertile and that will be the cause.
This book was written in 1982 but, even so, outlines the psychology of #collapse really well: 'Overshoot, The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change' by William R. Catton, Jr.