Comment by southernplaces7

Fucked? You do know that nature has been moving animals around in all sorts of invasive ways for much longer than we've been here to contribute. It's nothing new or globally catastrophic. The pythons are a contextual problem to some species, but otherwise, meh. The world and its ecosystems are quite a bit more robust than some people give them credit for, at least enough that lots of pythons in a new place don't lead to "the planet is fucked".

conception 3 days ago

When people say “the planet is fucked” what they mean is “the stable systems we rely on for civilization on this planet are fucked”. The planet is a giant ball of nickle and iron with some dust and mites on it. It of course will be fine.

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southernplaces7 3 days ago

Yes but we shouldn't be depending on "stable systems" for civilization on this planet. Firstly, because that's a recipe for a brittle little civilization and secondly, because such stability is in any case a myth. Nature itself is subject to catastrophic transformations by its own dynamics, and among these is the phenomenon of species transplantation and invasion.
The supposed equilibrium and "balance" of nature that many environmentalists harp about are fabricated human myth with little bearing on reality.
Also, curiously, we could theoretically owe our entire modern existence as living things, to a particularly giant example of nature randomly facilitating the invasive expansion of one type of life at the cost of many others.
That's right, i'm talking about the Great Oxidation Event
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event

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hoseja 2 days ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Pleistocene_extinctions
Ain't no civilization done this.

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o11c 3 days ago

The problem is that nature abhors monocultures. And when the monoculture collapses, there's no guarantee that actually-useful species usefully survive.

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riffraff 3 days ago

But nature doesn't care about usefulness, that's a human concept. The planet will always be fine, it's humankind which is screwing itself.

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