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THis is bs misinformation. Why tf are you bs'ing about something so important. Log off

There isnt a bad or good side on nature, on nature what is good or wrong doesnt exist, that is just something that we, humans have invented

What about fungi

This video paid for by Monsanto food corporation

Wow, this has got to be without a doubt the stupidest most anthropocentric video I have ever had the misfortune of watching.

Such a utilitarian and grim take. Not everything is about how humans can use it and what we get from it. Ecologists often use such arguments because the public thinks only about their own asses and does not think of the greater picture. We are just one of the many species inhabiting the planet. Additionally, debunking these utilitarian arguments you forgot about a very important one - we still do not have a whole picture of many ecosystems and how do they function. Hence, removing/ allowing certain species to disappear may cause catastrophic effects that we cannot foresee. We saw too many examples of that in the past.

Some admittedly disparate thoughts I'd like to share: - This video made me appreciate my college biology professors even more than I already did. - It worries me that a person who claims the title of ecologist has such a seemingly narrow, anthropocentric point of view on biodiversity. I half-expected it to end with "We should defund enviromental protection programs in favor of things that boost the economy". - You need only look at the case of the Yellowstone wolves to see why removing creatures that don't directly benefit us can have devastating consequences on the environment and, eventually, humanity. - Biodiversity is like a game of Jenga. You can remove a couple of pieces and think "the tower really didn't need that to stay upright". But remove too many, or remove the right ones, and it all comes crashing down. The problem is, in most cases we don't truly know which pieces are the right ones. So we're playing Jenga while blindfolded, and if the tower falls, we fall too.

The entire part of the video where the narrator used words like "pulling their weight" I just heard the word capitalism screaming in my head and kept waiting for a compassionate nuanced take that the beaver for example isn't more important than the snaping turtle becuase of its ability to dam rivers. While this is a gift to the current way things are.. to judge the worth of a species of animals based on their ability to prove their worthiness of living on how hard they work to make the world comfortable for us is the final evolution of a capitalist mindset and continuing down this thread of energy leads to harsh unforseen circumstances. These animals that are evolving for billions of years along with us should be seen and loved as our earthly brothers and sisters. We should honestly be treating our human species with more love as well becuase the consequences of seeing animals as unworthy of life until proven to make us happier will be the same mindset that keeps humans killing and harming each other... heal one heal the other. It's the same energy that's driving this. I'm not done with the video tho so maybe he is setting up all the arguments first to discuss a broader way of seeing the world and it's inhabitants! I love you and hope you have a beautiful day on this planet. I hope if you are reading this you have food in your belly and freshwater to drink and safety to live and be at peace with yourself and all beings.

Note on the part about Marxism, Marxism is neither utopian, nor pro-agrarian, nor workerist. Nationalism has always been a force that can mobilize workers yet Marxism is staunchly internationalist, meanings Marxists acknowledge workers can be and have been wrong. Marxism explicitly rejects the notion of the idyllic peasant society so pointing out the Valley of the Wind is far from idyllic arguably fits the contours of Marxism as well. And Marx did not see communism as a utopia, only a potential resolution.

This video seems to miss the very obvious fact that even if humanity is only directly dependent on a handful of species, those species are further heavily dependent on a wide variety of other species, and then those species rely on even more other species. Even further is a good chunk of keystone species were only found out to be so *after they were already removed* and that is a problem that’s notoriously hard to unfuck. Saying “we don’t actually know what would happen if these species disappeared” is an argument to keep them around not let them die.

Minecraft music fit so well in this video!

Did not like this video. You're right to criticize that whole "We Are Nature" business, but your pearl-clutching about "eco-anxiety" is obnoxious at best and just plain stupid at worst. So much of what you say boils down to "well we don't know very much," yet you assert the need for confidence and assertiveness. Confidence in ignorance is, definitionally, stupidity. It is a good thing for us to be anxious about the apparent breakdown of complex systems we scarcely understand, and your call for "nuance" is pointless in the face of the clear need for action. And, surprise! Collective action is negotiated and accomplished through processes we generally refer to as "politics." Not that I'm particularly a fan of the state of politics at the moment, but it is frankly stupid to suggest that what we actually need is a few more decades of debate.

I honestly don't get how this video can ignore a story repeated throughout human history. A story of us ignoring ecology and dealing with disastrous consequences. Introducing cane toads in Australia. Killing wolves, bison, and alligators in North America. Introducing mammals to the Galapagos and New Zealand. When we ignore ecology, the consequences are a lot bigger than our one mistake. Hell, even losing one species can be huge without looking at ecology. What about the gastric brooding frogs? To this day, we don't know how they did what they did, and their mechanism could have been of huge value to medical research. The thing with playing devil's advocate is that you have to present your opponent's arguments somewhat accurately, and you brought up all these theoretical things without actual examples that we have already seen. The closest you got was saying the beavers are a keystone species, but these comments are full of other examples where the consequences were far worse.

Capitalism is a disease on this world

This is a great set of arguments against current trends in green movements. Biodiversity is not a value in itself (especially the diversity of our natural enemies - parasites and viruses) and much of the science has been corrupted by basing itself on philosophically false/shallow ideas. These in turn often result in catastrophic consequences like Europe's energy crisis and Sri Lanka's huger crisis (caused by mandatory organic farming).

I broadly agree with your point: that many species aren't that important to the ecosystem, and this (taboo) fact is underrated, and that "sacred" thinking is bad for decision making. Note that when you mentioned flagship species, I don't think the jaguar (?) was a good example (of an overrated species) to show b-roll of during that part. I say this because predators (including big cats) seem more important than previously thought. It turns out predators are crucial for preventing overgrazing by herbivores. There are FAR better examples of overly-popular flagship species, that probably should've been shown during that message instead. Other than that quibble I liked the video.

The apes that got lucky?

The conclusion was so righteous. Props to you man

I wish i could like this multiple times but i cant so im gonna comment👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾!!!!!!!

For me this breaks down to lack of factual clarity leading weak philosophy and thus poor communication. As an idealist this makes me very sad. As a communications major i see an opportunity. 🫠💸

Appreciate u trying to think outside the box, but what r u even trying to argue that humans only eat this many animals and plants, and we don’t really need bees… how is an ecologist so naive about the harms of monoculture plantations?

What a sad, depleted world you are willing to accept all for a few humans to make money. As a working class person, screw you. I want more parts of the world to be rewilded. We humans haven't left much room for the animals to exist. That's a real shame. I want a world with real wilderness and an abundance of animals. I do not want a world of neverending cities and farmland and wood lots instead of forests. You would have the whole world looking like the east coast of the US or most of Europe. Yeck! Gross. Too many people spoil a place. Just because an animal is not making humans money or providing food does not mean that animal does not have value. All animals have intrinsic value and should be protected from our destructive actions.

When I was a child (a long time ago, granted) we were taught never to cite encyclopedias in research, and only use them as a basic orientation for a topic, and not a valid research tool. I guess people stopped learning this somewhere between 20 and 40 years ago.

This is insidious: "We environmentalists"! This guy is not a friend to the environment. He clearly wants to utilize what remaining natural spaces there are for economic gain. He obfuscates his aims by dressing them up as fighting climate change. This argument would have us cutting down forests so we could plant more 'beneficial' trees. Beneficial for who? Timber barons that get to clear cut the landscape and then seed a plantation forest; a dense mono crop stand that doesn't hold a candle in terms of beauty and awe to a natural forest? What is his argument left with if I don't value economic gain? If I don't care about, or if I actively despise, the idea of utilizing every spec of land to its fullest economic potential?Nothing. Furthermore, the concept of biodiversity as tool that can shift the requirements of conservation depending on 'the needs of the day' is a good thing. We live in a dynamic world, and the needs of the day constantly change. Biodiversity as a concept represents the following value: we would like as few species to go unecessarily extinct as possible. This video does not say it outright, but it disagrees with this value. When it comes time to design conservation policy, that is when we need stricter measures to determine 'the needs of the day.' We need biodiversity for when I walk in the forests of my childhood and there are fewer birds, and the salmon don't run as far as they used to, and the hum of bugs on a summer night is dampened. We need biodiversity for when it's time to argue with disingenuous folks like the maker of this video. This video implies that because our situation is already so dire, we must triage our remaining species and choose to save only those that bring us value. This is opposed to the values of biodiversity and of conservation writ large. Do not let this man fool you, what are we fighting to conserve if his vision of a sacrilized and commodified world is the result?

congrats on the views! well deserved! there's an idea in quantum physics called the measurement problem that i'm not going to pretend like i truly understand but, taking from Wikipedia, "quantum systems have superpositions but quantum measurements only give one definite result". if human output is inherently unnatural, then how can our outlook ever comprehend what is nature. it is interesting how with AI's influence on the zeitgeist, there has been a lot more discussion around why we are progressing and less on how better can we progress. especially with the popularity of greenwashing, it's important to ask if what one is doing is actually helping.

bro does not know that every species is affected by every species and we are just another one of those species

Is this a result of the two half of our experience? There is the world around us, and then there is our perception of the world (the mindscape). The world is tangible but meaningless, and the mind is intangible but full of meaning (as far as I know). Both are essential. There could then exist a distinction between the part of the world that exists spontaneously (nature), and the part of the world that is a manifestation of our thoughts (cultural things).

Each living being experiences the world in their own unique way, and they often enjoy experiencing it. That's enough reason to protect them.

Not only is this edgy, it's also ignorant. Starting right at the beginning: we can measure diversity of species. We have alpha, beta, gama biodiversity, Shannon and Simpson's indexes, and a lot of statistical methods to measure all the things mentioned: diversity, richness, abundance, and so on. Even a biology undergrad like me knows that. It even has a Wikipedia page ffs. It was a disgustingly disingenuous way to start an "essay". And then to equate the importance of biodiversity to just "how important is nature/life to the economy" was just mindboggling, specially if you call yourself an ecologist. Just shows how, with an "intellectual" editing style and voice tone, you can actually fool thousands online. Be aware, people.

Jesus christ

Biodiversity is defined by a constant process of selection and conditioning. Biodiversity loss is a result of changes in the selection an conditioning of resources and systems in our world. Biodiversity provides strong systems resilience through entropy allowing flexibility. It allows it to maintain agency in it's population through a diversity of selective pressures on that population. Our web of life is the cohabitation of space by these various agents and modern natural life has been stabilized on that very cohabitation, and this allows us to maintain soil health and naturally process carbon in a way proven to be temporally stable through it's selection to this point in special evolution. It's resiliency through redundancy and it is the only way our natural world has been able to support itself to this point. This is fundamental to how systems function and recurs in ground up system such as modern AI in a variety of forms. If you have no pieces to build complex systems out of you have no complex systems. If your building blocks are so non-diverse that some incident that selects against their particular genera, they disappear. SEVERAL famines throughout history were caused by this. If we let our options get selected down to that last one, when that last option gets wiped out, we fucking die, that is how systems function.

Its been a while since I've seen a video this misguided. What's your point exactly? That we don't need biodiversity because we bred all the plants and animals we need? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. You're basically putting the cart before the horse. We didn't create the breeds we have, we took them from the natural biodiversity to begin with. Quit your brain farting, and leave this subject alone.

This is the first time I hear this perspective to environmental conservation on the internet. I talked about this with a friend some time ago. I called it 'Museum Conservation', which is the urge to keep a set of nature that doesn't really affect us. Main justification of this being emotional. Thank you very much for the video.

Several points (as someone who's not an ecologist): 1) Can't most species be considered intrinsically valuable though, and therefore don't need *any* scientific validation for their sociopolitical value? 2) The point about animals in myth is certainly false. There are fewer *more prominent* animals and plants in myths, but typically in a given culture there are all sorts of minor roles life forms play in myths, minor myths, legends, parables, art etc. that apply to all sorts of animals and plants. And these vary from culture to culture based on their location and period. Take for example the mythological role of animals in the Popul Vuh, just as a single Maya work (and excluding other art and lore in pre-modern Maya culture). Another salient point to consider here is the importance of diverse animal and plant species to culinary practices and crafts, e.g. in fishing villages that will use a wide array of species for food. 3) Keystone species surely must rely on other species to survive, not just species they eat but also species that do things like groom them, help protect against predators, or perform other ecological functions that allow that species to survive. 4) A major reason for flagship species being emphasized is also that their preservation requires the preservation of other species that they depend on ecologically in their habitats. I think your main argument makes sense, but I think that you place too much weight on it, as like I said in my first point, species are intrinsically valuable without need for justification.

This is the fastest climate change in earth history. (IPCC 2019) Most species will not survive

I do not have an ecological background, but a design background. I am interested in ecological process in particular. This is a form of energy which could be harnessed to achieve certain things. I am interested in how our various "cultural" things could finally come together with "natural" things, instead of being opposed. I like permaculture for example, for exploring this. Another metric for measuring ecologies is "wildness". This is not directly related to biodiversity, but there is a link. I would like to know what would happen if we left room for the unpredictable nature of wildness, rather than transforming the world into something that is entirely ordered. There is humility in doing this; I think it would be good for people. Again, ironically, by not trying to control nature, there is the possibility that it could perform services for us, even if these cannot be measured (such as enhancing our experience of the world. Very important!). Maybe we are very involved with wild things, but if it still respects the process of things, why not. I also believe that nature will be fine no matter what we do. In a lot of ways, the system as it exists is already perfect. We are not breaking fundamental rules of the universe by doing what we do. We are only doing our best. But I am interested in changing our attitudes. What if we continue to do destructive things but did it with a deep sense of respect and love. Would we even still do them? Of course, destruction is inevitable, but it should still be done with respect. Often times the most respectful thing to do is feel guilt and other things, and know that this is ok and doesn't mean the world is broken. Especially for us as animals, we are alive because of destruction, we aren't plants or something. I think that "nature" is ironic, and answers questions with other questions. It leads back to a non-answer, maybe that is the point. All the more reason to preserve it. These are the questions that I currently have that I have not yet been able to find answers for.

Biodiversity crashes have happened before, always during mass extinction events. It takes 15 to 30 million years for the earth to recover. I'm not gonna be around that long, I'd rather fix it now.

Biodiversity is not a single heart price of the planets biological systems, it's just one of many important markers of functionality. To focus solely on it alone would be like only recording blood pressure while someone's dying of bone cancer.

I was not ready for Disc 13 to play

a facile, undialectical argument that undermines itself almost immediately. not surprising for a human. even the way you understand the ways in which the biosphere presents itself as 'for-us' misses this brute fact of ecological reality - it's not. our metabolism replaces biodiverse, resilient ecosystems with fragile, brittle plastic feedback loops between a few dozen livestock fauna and food flora. the former reproduce and transform - the latter collapse and vanish. the uncomfortable truth you can't seem to face is that we are megafauna, and all that biodiversity is necessary for big mammals to exist, at all. your entire framework of valuation is upside down and obsolete. the biosphere does not need us. we need it.

well this is a psyop.

I think that we will engineer diversity soon, for better or for worse. We will make bacteria and protista and viruses and fungi etc.

You're talking about #moneylaundering. These stats you're throwing around is how people like #LarryFink plan on laundering all their trillions.

The stats about today couldn't have happened without the same level of diversity having been present in our past. You don't get humans and beavers without some diversity. And to even things out, my argument against biodiversity is that exploiting the diversity of other species as a means to guarantee your species' future, especially considering the constant death and suffering of evolution, has questionable ethics. Similarly to how theological debates sometimes question why a benevolant creator would use millions of years of death and suffering to get to whatever we are or wherever we're going.

Uh…huh. Who are you? What are your credentials? Because you sound like an oil industry schill.

Humans are hard wired for animistic compassion, what is missed is the beautiful

Biodiversity is easily quantifiable and very VERY simple. number of species in the area ÷ total number of individuals in the area = biodiversity index This is very direct. I dont know why you would say its such a broad and subjective concept????

But please, what is the _exact_ song you used in your vudeo, by C418?

Based.