One nice bit in CivBE about the Great Mistake - is just one line, given upon reaching one of Harmony affinity levels, iirc. It reads: "I wonder what life was like on Earth when the whole atmosphere was breathable?".
You see, nuclear conflict can't render Earth athmosphere not breathable. The only thing which can do it - is massive dyout of Earth photosynthetic organisms, including most of algae in the ocean (and the ocean is some 71% of Earth surface, you know).
Nuclear conflict can't kill algae in the ocean any much. What can? Pollution, of course. Even now, world ocean is already changed its acidity - there is over 30% increase of amount of acidic agents in the ocean, which already caused nearly half of world corals to die - and corals are important basis for lots of ocean life.
Millions tons of plastic (and especially dangerous "micro-plastic") - is already causing trouble for ocean life in all four major Earth oceans. It persists in ocean water for many decades, fragmenting more and more, thus blocking more and more sunlight and entering all sorts of food chains.
Oil spills in the ocean are common. Only few big "catastrophic" ones are heard by general public, like recent BP spill in the gulf of Mexico. In reality, there are dozens large ones every year - some from super-tankers, some from shore drilling and oil extraction operations, some from tar sands operations, etc.
Industrial agriculture produces runoff of toxic chemicals, which ends up in the ocean; probably millions tons of it every year.
Etc etc. But of course, this is "only a start". If you'd give modern industrial civilization two or three centuries of present-day "business as usual", quite possibly it'd manage to destroy vast majority of photosynthetic organisms on Earth. And this is exactly what would make, some time later, whole Earth athmosphere unbreathable: humans need minimum 12% of oxygen to breathe, and free oxygen is only produced by photosynthetic organisms; without (most of) them, free oxygen will deplete (oxydation processes around the globe are massive) rather fast.
Bottom line: gentlemen, regional nuclear conflicts and geo-engineering - are only two of specific, obvious trouble-makers that modern civilization is likely to produce. There are dozens more - well less known, - of which few above is only a small part. Root cause of all of those, though, is exactly "we" - humans, as i said above. Rust Cohle seems to agree, as demonstrated by the previous post.
P.S. I agree with Rust Cohle when he says it'd be good to deny our programming. We need this, yes. But i disagree that the best thing to go when doing it - is to go extinct. Instead, i think in very best case, we humans must try to create another form of sapient beings: beings which can self-reproduce, evolve, develop their intellect and culture, and shape matter even better than we humans can. But those beings should not be alive; they should not be "animals". We are intelligent animals, and as i explained above, this duality is at the root of our (and Earth's) problems. This duality should not be. Ergo, sapient beings should ideally be not animals; not even living beings. Note, one must realize what "living" and "life" is here; as defined in 1970s by some of best biologists, "life is a chemical process made of bio-elements (Carbon, Nitrogen, Phosphour, Hydrogen and few others) within water solution (every living cell is liquid inside), which process is ongoing through the path of increasing complexity and is driven, ultimately, by energy of the Sun". This is what life is; and beings which i am talking about - are non-organic automates, self-replicating and self-developing, initial version of which is created by humans and is given potent enough sensors and artificial intellect. Those beings would not have all the dead-weight of human instincts and desires and needs. For good or for bad, those "robots" are the way to keep intelligent beings in existance, long-term; it'd be a shame if intellect would disappear when we humans extinct, after all. And i am not the first - by far - to realize how stable and efficient artificial evolution may in fact be; see, for example, "Invincible" by Stanislav Lem, he describes his "Necro-evolution" rather well in the 2nd half of the book. Granted, he doesn't make it to look pretty, but his book generally comes to the same conclusion: non-living beings who can evolve and are intelligent - should be "allowed" (i.e. shouldn't be "destroyed" or "prevented").
You see, nuclear conflict can't render Earth athmosphere not breathable. The only thing which can do it - is massive dyout of Earth photosynthetic organisms, including most of algae in the ocean (and the ocean is some 71% of Earth surface, you know).
Nuclear conflict can't kill algae in the ocean any much. What can? Pollution, of course. Even now, world ocean is already changed its acidity - there is over 30% increase of amount of acidic agents in the ocean, which already caused nearly half of world corals to die - and corals are important basis for lots of ocean life.
Millions tons of plastic (and especially dangerous "micro-plastic") - is already causing trouble for ocean life in all four major Earth oceans. It persists in ocean water for many decades, fragmenting more and more, thus blocking more and more sunlight and entering all sorts of food chains.
Oil spills in the ocean are common. Only few big "catastrophic" ones are heard by general public, like recent BP spill in the gulf of Mexico. In reality, there are dozens large ones every year - some from super-tankers, some from shore drilling and oil extraction operations, some from tar sands operations, etc.
Industrial agriculture produces runoff of toxic chemicals, which ends up in the ocean; probably millions tons of it every year.
Etc etc. But of course, this is "only a start". If you'd give modern industrial civilization two or three centuries of present-day "business as usual", quite possibly it'd manage to destroy vast majority of photosynthetic organisms on Earth. And this is exactly what would make, some time later, whole Earth athmosphere unbreathable: humans need minimum 12% of oxygen to breathe, and free oxygen is only produced by photosynthetic organisms; without (most of) them, free oxygen will deplete (oxydation processes around the globe are massive) rather fast.
Bottom line: gentlemen, regional nuclear conflicts and geo-engineering - are only two of specific, obvious trouble-makers that modern civilization is likely to produce. There are dozens more - well less known, - of which few above is only a small part. Root cause of all of those, though, is exactly "we" - humans, as i said above. Rust Cohle seems to agree, as demonstrated by the previous post.
P.S. I agree with Rust Cohle when he says it'd be good to deny our programming. We need this, yes. But i disagree that the best thing to go when doing it - is to go extinct. Instead, i think in very best case, we humans must try to create another form of sapient beings: beings which can self-reproduce, evolve, develop their intellect and culture, and shape matter even better than we humans can. But those beings should not be alive; they should not be "animals". We are intelligent animals, and as i explained above, this duality is at the root of our (and Earth's) problems. This duality should not be. Ergo, sapient beings should ideally be not animals; not even living beings. Note, one must realize what "living" and "life" is here; as defined in 1970s by some of best biologists, "life is a chemical process made of bio-elements (Carbon, Nitrogen, Phosphour, Hydrogen and few others) within water solution (every living cell is liquid inside), which process is ongoing through the path of increasing complexity and is driven, ultimately, by energy of the Sun". This is what life is; and beings which i am talking about - are non-organic automates, self-replicating and self-developing, initial version of which is created by humans and is given potent enough sensors and artificial intellect. Those beings would not have all the dead-weight of human instincts and desires and needs. For good or for bad, those "robots" are the way to keep intelligent beings in existance, long-term; it'd be a shame if intellect would disappear when we humans extinct, after all. And i am not the first - by far - to realize how stable and efficient artificial evolution may in fact be; see, for example, "Invincible" by Stanislav Lem, he describes his "Necro-evolution" rather well in the 2nd half of the book. Granted, he doesn't make it to look pretty, but his book generally comes to the same conclusion: non-living beings who can evolve and are intelligent - should be "allowed" (i.e. shouldn't be "destroyed" or "prevented").
