The ecological damage the northeastern US has sustained in the last two centuries eclipses what’s currently happening in the Amazon or in most other places that receive international attention, but it never gets discussed because a lot of it happened generations ago, and because “there’s still forests left”. Like mf if it weren’t for the mass abandonment of farms in the late 1800s and the implementation of environmental regulations post WWII, the landscape here would look like Britain or the Mediterranean islands or some other completely anthropogenically altered hellscape. Nearly all of our forests were felled and most of the swamps filled in during the first few decades of the 19th century. The wolves, rattlesnakes, and mountain lions were hunted to extirpation. The bears were driven into the most remote mountains. The passenger pigeons were hunted to extinction. The construction of canals further destroyed natural hydrologies. Thankfully, many forests have regrown, but they are nowhere near what they were in pre colonial times. The chestnuts are all gone courtesy of chestnut blight. The elms are mostly gone due to Dutch elm disease. The ashes, hemlocks, and beeches are projected to become functionally extinct this century due to emerald ash borer, hemlock woody adelgid, and beech leaf disease, respectively. The white oaks are slow to reproduce and grow and haven’t recovered in these new forests. And climate change threatens the cold loving sugar maples and yellow birches. I shudder at the thought of what our forests will look like in a hundred years. Just invasive shrubs, vines and thorns that nothing eats and that don’t produce anything? Perfect habitat for ticks, which btw are exploding in number and now spread red meat allergies. Losing all these trees isn’t a loss that the ecosystem can take on the chin, they ARE the ecosystem at its lowest level. Everything else exists downstream of the trees.

And the terrible thing is, the damage which is still ongoing basically can’t be stopped. Global trade makes the spread of invasive species inevitable, and industrial pollution from 60 years ago still floats around in our waterways. More than half of all plastic ever produced has been made since 2001. Any river or lake in a populated area of this part of the country is full of Cold War era PCBs and heavy metals, pesticides, agricultural runoff, etc. I’m not familiar with any studies, but I wouldn’t be surprised if over 90% of the aquatic biomass is gone, or at least been replaced by invasive zebra mussels, gobies, and introduced (but naturalized) alewives and trout from out west.

Municipalities are more concerned with maintaining economic growth & encouraging development than preserving remaining wetlands, woodlots, etc because those things don’t produce value and we live in a system where everyone’s lives would become superhell if the big numbers ever went down.

“🤓 👆erm actually, we’ve gotten quite good at mitigating the impact of human behavior on our environment and the technology to create a sustainable future already exists, it’s just that the elite’s chokehold on the economy prevents it from being implemented” dude there may be more humans than RATS on earth. It will never be sustainable to keep 8 billion omnivorous large mammals alive in industrial society.

The collapse of the industrial system would be the most merciful thing to possibly ever happen and the continued existence of all life and of human freedom might actually depend on it.

Thoughts?

I don't see this reported enough. I think it's an issue that combine late stage capitalism, climate change, and just general human destructive behavior.

WE HAVE BEEN BREATHING BAD AIR FOR A MONTH. The API in Kuala Lumpur ranges from 100 to 200 daily. You can't see our many skyscrapers anymore. Just rough shapes on the horizon.

The haze in Southeast Asia is bad. It leaves a carbon footprint you can detect from outer space. And now it's spreading to other Indonesian islands. There are protests evolving to riots. Indonesia routinely burns forests and peatlands to clear land for agriculture, or reset plantations, but the El Niño has exacerbated the situation and it's all now out of control.

Our cat Torta is an old cat with breathing problems. She finally passed after much vet attention. I am so sad and my boyfriend is very angry. I don't comment on the Indonesian government, but the Malaysian government? That's supposed to look out for us?

They said that there will be no legal action nor will there be a diplomatic note. They don't even do anything. During COVID we had free masks and health subsidies. Now it's really truly nothing. No aid or help. Public schools for children closed but there is no work from home order. Nothing.

And they say it's going to get worse when El Niño peaks. There was hope that the Monsoon season would bring about heavy rain and help with the haze. All it does is bring forth toxic rain and the sky gets hazy again after several hours. Truly dystopian. What did our cat even do to deserve this?

EDIT:

When we first got WiFi at our new apartment, my boyfriend made a joke. He said Torta doesn't even know what WiFi is.

And Torta didn't know there is the haze. Torta didn't know why she often struggled with breathing. When we got her checked out the first time, the vet said she was a very polite cat.

Her chair is still waiting for her. There's a dent, there, in the middle.

Lol, sure, we'll definitely get right on that....

So posted on the world news thread originally, I found this extremely interesting and alarming. Particularly in the setting of how recent Russian data centers were impacted and so many alleged changes happened along social media this is very concerning.

Today I saw a man screaming and acting crazy in the subway. My reaction was the same as usual: start filming him. My reasoning was: this is for my own protection, because if he sees me doing it, he won't attack me.

And as anticipated, when he saw me filming, he chilled down.

But now that I'm safe in my home, I started to wonder... At what point did we collectively stop caring about each other?

I remember 20 years ago, if I heard someone screaming in agony, my first instinct was to help. Nowadays it's like we almost feel like they're breaking a silent pact of swallowing everything up. If I suffer this society in silence why can't he just do the same?

Foucault talked about the panopticon. A circular prison design where a single central watchman could observe all inmates, but the inmates could never see into the tower.

Let's analyse some of its characteristics:

• Permanent Visibility: The subject is always visible to the eye of power, creating an asymmetric gaze where the authority sees everything but remains unseen.

• Internalized Surveillance: Because individuals never know exactly when they are being watched, they must assume they are being watched at all times. As a result, they consciously police their own behavior.

• Automatic Power: The actual presence of an observer becomes unnecessary. The architectural system itself sustains the power dynamic, turning the inmate into the warden of their own mind.

What do all this things remind you of? Your phone.

Back in 2000 we thought it was going to be something like Big Brother, a huge dome, a voice that talks from the sky, survelince cameras... But no. It's not an external source. It's ourselves, each individual who form the fabric of a society where the powerful don't even need to watch us... We all watch eachother