dniemeyer99 said:
Basically, rather than trying to control mother nature, the farmer learned to use mother nature to their advantage. In the end, they were able to produce just as much food per acre as they did when they were using big oil machines.
I think this is the biggest part. Humans as a species seem to have this instinct to control nature. We don't like something, we try to eradicate it. We want to build a city, we level hills and valleys and pave the whole lot in concrete. We capitalize every available square foot of land, as long as it's cost effective. Instead of renovating older buildings, we largely demolish and re-develop the lot. There is a tendency to keep to the most convenient route possible, with a major influence of "out with the old, in with the new".
I quote Rachel Carson, "But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself." The Industrial Revolution was a large stray off of nature's path, and though we are too developed to return, we can become more in line with nature, and a very big piece of that puzzle is to divest from fossil fuels. The more we fight nature, the more we will suffer. I fear that there is not enough time to correct our course. Every minute, the world population increases by 148 people. We are at an estimated 7,182,712,000+ world population right now.
Per capita energy usage is on the decline through efficiency improvements (EVs being a decent portion of that), but overall energy use is still increasing. Since the most of our energy still comes from fossil fuels, we are contributing more and more to the problem every day. The best that we can do to at least stop the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere will be to limit population growth (which we know ain't going to happen) and stop using fossil fuels (better shot with that). Once we stop increasing atmospheric CO2, nature largely can take over and heal itself, though we will have to help along the way. CO2 absorption by plants is powerful enough that CO2 levels decline in the northern hemisphere's summer months. There is a lot of inertia with the atmosphere. It's taken us more than 100 years to increase CO2 by 120 PPM. We are changing the chemical content of the atmosphere much faster than any natural influence. The climate change train is rolling, will we be able to stop it?
Sorry to go on this treehugger rant, but it is what it is.
