I like to think that the Hawaiian practice of using native bird feathers for large and elaborate cloaks might let us pursue de-extinction through DNA extraction and cloning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBAhu_%CA%BBula
Just think about how many individual birds' feathers contributed towards making these. And we know plenty of the yellow feathers are from the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō bird which was declared extinct. The Kauaʻi Akialoa was also declared extinct and they had yellow feathers too. There could even be feathers from species that went extinct before being cataloged by science. There is so much potential in this area, yet I don't know if there are any proposals to attempt DNA extraction or try to examine feathers and determine which species each came from.
Edit: This is food for thought and I'm in no way advocating we do any less to prevent extinctions today. I just like having the hope that future generations might be able to bring a few species back.
I love that the answer is always more technology will save us. Whether it's carbon removal advances or cloning, we just look towards future advancements instead of cleaning up our act.
I understand that expecting some sort of big shift in how we live is not feasible, it's just a shame.
> I love that the answer is always more technology will save us.
The solution to extincting the whales for whale oil was petroleum. The solution to denuding the landscape of trees was coal. The solution to coal is natural gas, solar, nuclear power.
The only alternative to technology is to shrink the human population by about 95%.
You do realize that the switch from whale oil to petroleum caused a massive, orders of magnitude increase in human footprint and ecological destruction? Had we not discovered petroleum, or had it not been there, human civilization would have plateaued or even declined, right after the extinction of these beautiful animals, because we would have absolutely hunted them to extinction unless they were protected. We would have been forced to live in balance with available resources.
The arc of whales would have followed the arc of so many other natural "resources" that are produced or even consist of living beings. There are several native hardwoods that are either effectively extinct or impossible to obtain because they were mined out.
No, we stumbled on a vast reservoir of energy buried under the ground and we've been draining that reservoir as fast as possible. We'll transition off petroleum about the time it becomes economically infeasible to extract and burn it, and not a second sooner.
By all means, bring on solar, nuclear, wind, whatever. They are just more reservoirs to tap to run this machine. Just so we can dig up, slice up, chop up, burn down, and chew up another order of magnitude of the biosphere. Because money and grandkids and ice cream.
We are too many and too greedy, and this planet has finite resources. "Technology". Always magical technology. Well until technology can grow a watermelon in a lightbulb, we are gonna keep munching away at this planet until the biosphere collapses around our ears.
The extinction of animals caused by humans has been ongoing and increasing since the stone age. There's no way that not having petroleum would have stopped it.
> this planet has finite resources
No matter is being destroyed or is escaping the planet, aside from a solar system probe now and then. Energy can repurpose and reconfigure existing resources.
Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe, and no industrial process we have destroys it. If released into the atmosphere it will escape into space, but it still exists. Right now we have no reason to venture out into space to acquire helium because we still have vast reserves here, but if we had sufficient demand to justify the expense then we could.
When you hear about a helium shortage, that's not a shortage of Helium on Earth, that's a shortage of Helium in the strategic helium reserve, which has been a source of extremely cheap helium for decades and made helium extraction uneconomical. When the reserve eventually runs out, and the price of helium subsequently increases, helium extraction will resume.
No amount of "cleaning up our act" will undo damage already done. The solution is always technology because that's what technology is - solutions to problems. Changing behavior can allow you to avoid a problem, but only technology will fix a problem you've failed to avoid.
I think what OP was implying is that the solution is always posited as in some future technology just on the horizon. We will save the day in the final act of the trilogy, this is just the empire strikes back, right?
Except that's not where our solution to this problem lies. We have all the technology we need to be carbon neutral today, namely in the form of nuclear power. In fact, Nixon planned on 1000 nuclear power plants operating in the U.S. by the year 2000. The reason why we don't have that reality today has nothing to do with technology, and everything to do with behavior and choices we've made. We chose to protest nuclear power, we chose to close down power plants that were generating electricity carbon free, we chose to do this because we decided that it was nuclear power that was the enemy of ecology, in the face of this misinformed public politicians found it easier to keep their jobs by walking back plans for nuclear power than to educate the populace.
Decades later today, we find ourselves forced to sleep in this bed of coal and natural gas, but we ignore that this is a bed that we ourselves willingly made by choice, and continue to maintain by choice using bullshit excuses such as cost or time or profitability to bury any practical alternative (in a society where for the first time since the invention of currency, government mints can generate money out of plain air no less).
> I think what OP was implying is that the solution is always posited as in some future technology just on the horizon.
That shouldn't be surprising. New problems present themselves all the time and it then takes X amount of time to develop a technology solution to them.
I wasn't trying to imply we can just "let it be" because we can undo it later. I actually follow Hawaiian Ecosystem conservation and I do what little I can to help. But I understand where you are coming from. Simply consider my original post hopium.
>"Hawaii has got to be a really fascinating and challenging case study for conservation vs. consumerism."
Indeed, and it is actually something I personally struggle with. The situation is actually much more dire than people realize. I myself am actually part Native Hawaiian and it is so disheartening to see fellow locals actively protest conservation measures. I do what I can to testify in public meetings but local pushback on things like ungulate eradication or land use laws are intense.
I don't want to dismiss them entirely because the concerns come from a real place, but those reasons are all economic in nature. And, you end up in the unenviable position of being a relatively privileged person telling a disadvantaged community they can't have the economic advancement they want. It is genuinely difficult.
Just think about how many individual birds' feathers contributed towards making these. And we know plenty of the yellow feathers are from the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō bird which was declared extinct. The Kauaʻi Akialoa was also declared extinct and they had yellow feathers too. There could even be feathers from species that went extinct before being cataloged by science. There is so much potential in this area, yet I don't know if there are any proposals to attempt DNA extraction or try to examine feathers and determine which species each came from.
Edit: This is food for thought and I'm in no way advocating we do any less to prevent extinctions today. I just like having the hope that future generations might be able to bring a few species back.