It's like he just assumes the billionaire class is going to swoop in and protect him and everybody he loves due to his obviously superior genes and massively over-developed brain.
Correct me if I'm wrong but "extinction" is not a "force" of destruction right? Extinction is the result of destruction, it's a state of being not an actor
The answer is the intuitive one: We absolutely need to be worried about what humans are doing to the planet. But we should be worried about the transformations we’re causing and all the destruction of ecosystem services that they entail, not because extinction is inherently bad, but—first and foremost—because these transformations might well destroy us.
What a pointless waste of time and energy to write this article. "Extinction isn't bad unless, of course, we're eating at the very foundations of human existence, in which case it is in fact bad."
Also his pinned tweet is a link to an article claiming global warming would have been worse under socialism.
I must be doing something right if an article I write prompts the climate denialists to accuse me of eugenics, the degrowthers to accuse me of being a Big Oil shill, and the Hamasniks to do their usual thing. (Note that the article on extinction does not at all reference Isr/Pal)
The same person who is for mass extinction is against Palestinian armed resistance.
He wrote People's Republic of Walmart. I want the people of the global south whose homes will be underwater soon to be allowed to execute him and Matt Huber.
I would say most of the time Leigh's takes are correct, but some of his opinions are definitely questionable (particularly on Palestine as you've pointed out). He is very, very well read, and his book Austerity Ecology is pretty much the definitive guide for eco-modernism. He's highly educated, and presents some unorthodox opinions on climate change (he is - strangely - quite optimistic about our ability to curb it, and backs up everything he says with evidence, which I appreciate)
Phillips wears his antagonism on his sleeve throughout, referring to Transition folk, degrowthers and the wide spectrum of the Green/alternative economics world as "anti-packaging jihadis", "degrowth militants", "green Mr Magoos", and "an army of tattooed-and-bearded, twelve-dollar-farmers’-market-marmalade-smearing, kale-bothering, latter-day Lady Bracknells"
I'm gonna go with a thanks but no thanks on Austerity Ecology
this person can be right about humans not needing to worry about how many insects are going extinct (our ability to calculate that statistic is a product of the same neuroses that makes our unstoppable drive to consume the entire earth continue forward forever) AND be wrong about everything else.
Ohhh, so humans etching that HS-boundary* in fossil records is so that our crab or chicken descendants in 10 or so million years will marvel at the biodiversity boom happening in their time??
We must be the kindest species ever, so selfless!
I hope no one and nothing remembers us.
*the homo sapiens boundary can be identified by the distinctive concentration of plastics & PFAS, as well as a sharp fall of biodiversity in the sediments above it
Look, tech bros are disruptors and they're good at it. We're talkin' trillions and trillions of dollars - okay? Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Elon Musk. So they can disrupt the climate. They can do that. There will be some losers. But that's how things work. That's life. Pun intended.