Is the Earth angry at us?

[Carbon]

I wouldn't try to convince anyone I was anything resembling well-informed on these issues, and, to be clear, I'm not suggesting that fracking in somewhere like Ohio is directly causing earthquakes on the Pacific coast. That being said, in the back of my head after hearing about the many pitfalls of hydraulic fracturing, then hearing about all these earthquakes, I just see this planet bucking us off if we get too out of line.

If we want to stay around as a species for a long time we're going to soon have to figure out how to live in harmony with our planet and still advance as a people. If we don't and really screw this place up then we'll just end up like millions of species before us with new interesting beings strolling around in our place (once the dust settles). Just as we as individuals must try not to waste our potential greatness, I hope for the sake of humanity that we as a species don't wear out our welcome and instead achieve things in excess of our wildest dreams.

That's the end of my late night rant. Happy living everyone.

 

[djonkoman]

personally I don't believe in the earth itself being a being, so from that point I disagree. but, I do agree that here on this earth all life lives together in a certain balance, and we are out of balance. a classic example is something like populationgrowth, if you look at animals, a newly introduced species in an area first grows exponentially in a J-curve. but then, it reaches the limits of the size of the population the area can sustain, and it turns into an S-curve, the growth now only is enough to play even with the deaths.

also, you can look at the opoulations of a redator and it's primary prey, and you'll see peaks and falls, whenever the preypoplation is at a peak, the predatorpopulation starts growing, thereby causing a fall in the preypopulation, making the predator decline again, prey can grow again and so on and on.

as humans, we are still in the J-curve. we made the sustaining capacity of our environment a lot bigger when we invented agriculture, but now we are started, or have already reached, the limits.
we have 2 options, either we increase the capacity again, we have tried this with modern agriculture, but modern agriculture only works out in the shortterm, in the longterm we need something sustainablem something that keeps giving us enough food for eternity.
so unless we can increase our land-area, for example colonising other planets, wich I think we won't be able to quick enough, we have to halt the growth of our population, and go to sustainable practices that give maximum profits/harvests without becoming unsustainable.
we have to go into the S-curve.

but not only agriculture needs to become sustainable again, the same goes for all our needs, like power/energy. fossil fuel is finite, and so not sustainable.
sun, wind, water can all be sustainable, if the devices used for creating the energy are sustainable. (not made from limited elements that can't be recycled)

I think this is the next big step we have to take as humanity, we can procastriate it but that'll only lead to more misery before finally managing the shift.

 

[WatTyler]

as humans, we are still in the J-curve. we made the sustaining capacity of our environment a lot bigger when we invented agriculture, but now we are started, or have already reached, the limits.
we have 2 options, either we increase the capacity again, we have tried this with modern agriculture, but modern agriculture only works out in the shortterm, in the longterm we need something sustainable something that keeps giving us enough food for eternity.
so unless we can increase our land-area, for example colonising other planets, wich I think we won't be able to quick enough, we have to halt the growth of our population, and go to sustainable practices that give maximum profits/harvests without becoming unsustainable.
we have to go into the S-curve.

Going by the course of humanity so far that's not guaranteed, although it's logical that the earth has to have a finite carrying capacity, ultimately.

The counter argument is that population determines agricultural methods, rather than agricultural methods determining population.

Necessity is the mother of all invention, and when faced with pressure humans have come up with new ways to sustain themselves. For all our ills we're ingenious and that's been a key concept in our survival- past experience says that we will find a way. All those extra brains of an increasing population focused on solving these problems will manage something somehow, through the development of new methods or technology. GMO is perhaps to be the most recent major development in food production- but we won't fully adopt and explore that until population pressures really force us to. But we will be forced to the end IMO. Of course it's unlikely that this won't be at the expense of other ecosystem components though, but although sad that's nothing new- for our whole existence we've shaped the ecosystem, and we ARE a part of it. The point at which we modify it to beyond where it can provide the ecosystem services essential to human survival is the key question, I guess, and whether mankind will be able to think his way out of that. Who knows what potential exists.

 

[Carbon]

personally I don't believe in the earth itself being a being, so from that point I disagree.

I don't mean to suggest this. The title of the post was more figurative than literal. Our planet is a concentrated ball of moving elements and is alive in that sense, but not necessarily in the sense that a plant or animal is.