Its several layers deep in abstractions, which leads to some serious contradictions and faulty logic chains. Climate Change is probably the most current and obvious example, but we've got a host of instances in which we misappropriate or squander natural resources in a way an orangutan could not or would not. From the volume of trash production to the concept of financializing capital construction, we generate enormous amounts of excess capacity and waste very rapidly and then simply displace it onto distant habitats in order to keep it out of sight and mind.

When we talk about a distinction between natural and human activities, a lot of what we're describing is the artificially rapid pacing and the subsequent over-consumption of our behaviors. No orangutan could deliberately accrue the kind of ecological debts that a human child incurs without even thinking.

[–] reverendsteveii@lemm.ee 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

we generate enormous amounts of excess capacity and waste very rapidly and then simply displace it onto distant habitats in order to keep it out of sight and mind.

In fairness, the other apes also tend to walk a little bit away from their nesting sites before they poop. The reason there aren't great big mounds of orangutan poop visible from space is probably more due to the fact that there aren't 8 billion orangutans all pooping at the same time than anything else.

[–] Malfeasant@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

And now I'm picturing 8 billion orangutans all pooping at the same time. Thank you.

[–] reverendsteveii@lemm.ee 1 points 7 months ago

If you want a picture of the future, imagine 8 billion orangutans all pooping— at the same time

George Orangutanwell - Nineteen Eighty Fur

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The reason there aren’t great big mounds of orangutan poop visible from space is probably more due to the fact that there aren’t 8 billion orangutans all pooping at the same time than anything else.

The vast majority of human waste is generated by a fraction of that 8 billion. The Sentinelese Islands aren't causing climate change.

That's not even to say that primitive man wasn't an ecological force. A great part of the Holocene Extinction came about during the Hunter-Gatherer phase of human existence. But mass migrations and displacements of native species aren't unheard of in prior epochs. The bigger problem came with post-industrial development, wherein our share of "poop" ballooned from 320 pounds of fecal matter to 2000 pounds of excess plastic waste per capita. Its this 7x increase in volume of junk that's causing us problems, not the short term jump in the number of subsistence farmers in central Asia.

[–] reverendsteveii@lemm.ee 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The vast majority of human waste is generated by a fraction of that 8 billion

to what end do they generate all of this waste?

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

National recreational travel and industrial-scale armed conflict.