What if we screwed up the classification of fingernails versus internal organs and focused on the wrong things? The fact is that Earth is a huge, vastly interconnected ecosystem that is entering a long spiraling crash, due to us, and we aren't smart enough to figure out what is a support beam and what is a weathervane.
If you go far enough into this "what if" thinking, suddenly it's not clear if the ecosystem is collapsing. After all, how would we know? Maybe we screwed up the classification?
I propose that perhaps we do know enough, and the problem is that at social / economic level, we fail to prioritize what needs to be done.
> I propose that perhaps we do know enough, and the problem is that at social / economic level, we fail to prioritize what needs to be done.
We could quibble about the first part (for one, species are disappearing faster than we can study them, so there is really no way to be sure we know fuck all about how things work), but the second part is clear. We aren't prioritizing anything but economic growth. We can't even conscience using less energy, like e.g. the amount of energy (per capita) our parents or grandparents used. Like leaf blowers. FFS, unless you are a lawn care service, most people could get by with raking.
The biggest issue in North America imo is that our cities and build environments are all wrong. Suburbia, oversized homes, big oversized SUVs, no serious transit option - all require massive amounts of energy. And as a pretty hard core libertarian and capitalist, I'd say this situation arose mainly due to government incentives (cheap land via interstate highway system, cheap mortgages and tax credits, etc).
