[mactavish88]

It's always odd to me how people tend to think that human-created ecosystems are "freakish" or "unnatural".

Humans evolved in the same environment as the ecosystems we're modifying. The buildings and cars and roads we make are made of materials we find on earth, similar to how birds build nests or ants make anthills. (Whether all the things we build are good and healthy for us and our environment is another story.)

My hypothesis has long been that this view of human activity as "unnatural" was actually born of the religious perspective that some religions hold that humans were implanted into the universe from the outside.

[542354234235]

I think it is a useful distinction for non-religious reasons. First is that humans change the environment more than anything else, by a large margin. As they say, “the dose makes the poison”. All species modify the environment they live in, but none are reshaping the oceans, every landmass, the air, the climate etc. like humans. Humans created multiple elements that never existed on earth.

Second, humans are conscious of the things we are doing. We can write articles about it and make choices about how we will change the environment in the future. We cannot discuss things with wolves in Yellowstone about how they are changing the area. The cinnamon trees in Hawaii can’t get together and decide how to share space with other plants.

And finally, always have at least three items when listing things.

[fallous]

Life has fundamentally changed the environment multiple times. The reason you live in an oxygenated environment is due to the waste produced by life.

[keithalewis]

I see what you did there.

[Biologist123]

Well done in getting this up immediately. Pieces like this BBC piece are either implicit or explicit propaganda to define “nature” as a world without humans. Even the word “freakosystem”, as novel as it is, sets up an implicit good/bad dichotomy.

Edit: If you on-board the assumption that all change is bad, you potentially open yourself up to a great deal of anxiety associated with that change.

[dodslaser]

While this is technically correct, there is an important distinction to be made that we are the only species capable of even understanding the ramifications of our actions on an ecosystem, and choosing to change our behavior to have less (or more) of an impact on the environment we are in.

Any species could drive another species to extinction, or carry them from one location to another, but no other species are actively choosing to do so.

[Ygg2]

It goes beyond that. Depending on ecosystem and size of settlements human leaving may actually decrease bio diversity. Think it was Bulgaria or Romania, but with rural places that had their populations die out, also saw decrease in bio diversity.

[loudmax]

Incidentally, this concept of modifying one's ecosystem comes up in Richard Dawkins' book The Extended Phenotype, which is a follow up to The Selfish Gene. One of the illustrative examples is beavers turning fast moving streams into convenient slow moving fisheries by building dams. The ecosystem the beavers built is "natural" in the sense that beavers are animals and it's in their nature to chew through trees. But presumably, at least some other animals were pushed to extinction when their habitat was modified by the beavers.

[lproven]

> It's always odd to me how people tend to think that human-created ecosystems are "freakish" or "unnatural".

While this may be true, it's not what this article is about, which is IMHO why it's a refreshing change.

[eloisius]

Was it George Carlin that joked something like “maybe the earth conjured up humans in order to put all this plastic in its crust for some purpose we don’t understand”?

[jemmyw]

Or to release the energy in oil and coal. When you get a build up of stored energy something evolves to use it up.

I'm not being serious, but it's an interesting thought.

[binarymax]

He certainly decried the use of “all-natural” labels for products, because “everything comes from nature!”

[Ygg2]

Maybe that's just the sidequest. The real quest is getting multi planetar.

[bix6]

I do think there is a difference when you can cause rapid global change. And most animals are benefitting their ecosystem in some way whereas we’re just extracting resources for the highest bidder 3000 miles away. Our ecosystems are struggling to replenish themselves because we lack harmony with nature. We live in an unnatural society that clearly cannot sustain our changes.

[declan_roberts]

This is what the headlines say but it's not true. For example look into regenerative agriculture. All of the small scale farms around me are moving to rotational grazing systems because they improve the pastures and fertility of the land over time.

[Lutger]

There are several competing, and sometimes complementary perspectives on what 'nature' means. Some include humans and their activity within it, others do not.

One thing you can ask yourself: if human activity and the impact it has on its environment is included in what you call 'natural', then what even does remain of the word 'unnatural'? What do people refer to, when they use that word? If you don't have any sensible explanation for it, then the whole thing collapses, yet evidently a lot of people really want to keep using the word nature and even seem to have no problem in making themselves understood when doing so.

[noja]

I think if you are short-terming your existence by destroying everything around you, that could qualify as unnatural.

[kgwxd]

> what even does remain of the word 'unnatural'?

Shame.

[denom]

With our consumption humans are drawing down on the ‘reserve’ that ecological services have built up.

Human activities lack the sophistication of an ecosystem that is in balance and cannot recreate the network of benefits thereof.

[perrygeo]

Your hypothesis makes sense. I'd call it "human exceptionalism" - the (wildly unsupported) assumption that we are separate from nature.

Religions that see humans and nature as part of the same system don't have this idea of "unnatural" landscapes. They have no concept of "wilderness". All landscapes are landscapes to which we both belong and shape through our actions.

[JR1427]

Humans have brought with them the ability to dramatically change ecosystems on timescales far shorter than usually seen without them (exceptions being volcanic eruptions etc).

These short timescales mean that the mechanism of natural selection and evolution do not have time to adjust ecosystems to changes, so they can collapse rapidly.

[gman83]

It reminds me of people who won't eat certain foods because it contains "too many chemicals".

[haswell]

Except we know certain chemicals are harmful, and we have no idea about the long term effects of many others. We also have a history of using materials we don’t understand and only stopping after it kills or harms enough people.

[bix6]

There’s a big difference between a real strawberry and a vat of chemicals called strawberries.

[TeMPOraL]

I agree strongly (except with the religion part - I suspect that being guilty for existing is a perspective that was thought of / rediscovered many times over the generations, regardless of religious tradition).

My takeaway from the article is: yes, we can adjust ecosystems, and no, they don't immediately wither and die, nor do they become boring monocultures. Despite popularly repeated memes, we aren't destroying everything we're touching or otherwise "playing god". If anything, this tells me we should study those ecosystems and learn from them, to become gradually more intentional about the changes we introduce.

[satisfice]

I also don’t see the value of the distinction. You could say that the idea that human-created change is unnatural is a purely artificial construct.

What does concern me is the collapse of natural (meaning tested over millions of years) biodiversity.

[BriggyDwiggs42]

I completely agree with disregarding the man/nature dichotomy, it’s complete nonsense. On the other hand, tool use and tool construction aren’t exactly the same as beaver dams, anthills, or bird nests because the particulars of the tool aren’t at all hardwired, which implies that the tool might have unexpected ramifications for the environment that would have otherwise been detected if the behavior had appeared over evolutionary timescales. A wariness towards self-conscious human ecosystem modification isn’t exactly unwarranted.

[throwaway290]

Humans are part of nature but if humans are also growing to have disproportionate impact on the rest of nature it kinda worth thinking about what's going on then