> Throwing stuff away was the normal way of life before modern civilization arrived
What? Absolutely not. Things were precious and labor was cheap back in the day.
Anything that could be repaired was. Ever heard of "darning socks"? Yeah - no one would do that today, but it was common 100 years ago.
> just like defecating wherever you find convenient
Lol.
People found out pretty quickly that you have to give a crap about where you give a crap or people get sick and die. This is 2000 BC social technology.
> The wonder of modern civilization gave us so much power to produce stuff that it's no longer feasible to just "throw away" stuff we don't need.
BS.
The earth is big. Really big. Stupendously big. Conceptually it's trivial to make a landfill large enough for anything we will make in the next 100 years with space left over.
We don't do this because it's cheaper to have small landfills closer to cities, but that's an economic limitation, not a technical one.
The wonder (and horror) of modern civilization is that this kind of thinking is obsolete. Pregnant women are advised not to eat tuna, caught anywhere, because we managed to pollute the entire ocean with mercury. We're producing so much chemical fertilizers that we create more biologically available nitrogen than the rest of nature combined. And of course we're warming the planet itself.
Even ancient Americans, with their stone tools, managed to exterminate virtually every large animal in the Americas.
> Conceptually it's trivial to make a landfill large enough ...
Conceptually it's also trivial to stop global warming. We just have to stop making any more CO2 (and maybe suck up a bit from the air). Doesn't mean it's easy in practice.
>People found out pretty quickly that you have to give a crap about where you give a crap or people get sick and die. This is 2000 BC social technology.
What? Absolutely not. Things were precious and labor was cheap back in the day.
Anything that could be repaired was. Ever heard of "darning socks"? Yeah - no one would do that today, but it was common 100 years ago.
> just like defecating wherever you find convenient
Lol.
People found out pretty quickly that you have to give a crap about where you give a crap or people get sick and die. This is 2000 BC social technology.
> The wonder of modern civilization gave us so much power to produce stuff that it's no longer feasible to just "throw away" stuff we don't need.
BS.
The earth is big. Really big. Stupendously big. Conceptually it's trivial to make a landfill large enough for anything we will make in the next 100 years with space left over.
We don't do this because it's cheaper to have small landfills closer to cities, but that's an economic limitation, not a technical one.