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Cthulhu_10/11/20241 replyview on HN

I mean sure, with issues like plastics, global warming, ozone layer hole, melted polar caps, extreme weather events, bug collapse, etc etc etc, life will find a way. It's not a "final" extinction event per se, nor one as catastrophic as the meteor strike from back when.

But we are living in a mass extinction event. Billions of crabs died. Bug population has collapsed. Biodiversity has nosedived.

Humanity hasn't suffered yet in terms of total population, but that's because we're able to adapt our environment accordingly. That said, we will see famines and scarcities in our lifetime. Hell, we already do, but it mainly presents itself in day to day life (in "the west") as some products going out of shelves (the UK having supply problems due to brexit / long border queues) or prices spiking (e.g. produce from Ukraine). But worldwide we will see more of that.

As for (micro)plastics, IIRC we've yet to determine the full impact. But we know these nurdles break down into microplastics over time due to UV exposure and the like, but they don't disappear completely and find their way into everything. We'll only know the full impact looking back in a few hundred years.


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