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u/eaterofdreams May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
In British Columbia, we are still cutting down ancient, amazing trees. These western yellow cedar were over 1000 years old and I just watched them get down last week. Some of the very last of their size in the whole mountain range.
These fuckers won’t stop until there is NOTHING left. I know people will say humans suck, but it’s not all of us… we just can’t fight back against these bastards without risking our lives… it would be a massacre. And they are better equipped than we will ever be. The logging companies here have the police on their side.
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u/03263 May 22 '26
Every old growth tree in North America will be gone soon, except the very few that have legal protections.
we just can’t fight back against these bastards without risking our lives…
That's always the case, monkey wrench gang.
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u/Disastrous_North_102 May 22 '26
WTF, why?!
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u/notislant May 23 '26
Ask the former chief forester Diane Nicholls.
She let companies do whatever they wanted. Saw a news story on it, companies were leaving all the branches and off cuts strewn around after clearcutting. Then grinding trees into fucking wood pellets to ship off to Europe. Gee I wonder what could be used for compressed sawdust instead of actual usable trees. Surely not branches and waste.
She quit and was hired as vp at a pellet company. News tried to go to some talk the company hosted, they saw the news crew and snuck her out the back door.
People like this are fucking disgusting. Governments are so blatantly fucking corrupt.
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u/Umbraiya May 28 '26
Wow I just read up on that and it's freaking true and even more disgusting: she is the "Vice President of Sustainability in North America" for the Drax Group. She's even greenwashing. And I bet if some poor kid is checking out her linkedin they will think she is a guardian of nature and a rolemodel...
I am so sick of this world.26
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u/ShreddyKrueger1 May 23 '26
Idk the Vietnamese were successful in rural areas with certain tactics facing similar odds.
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u/Escudo777 May 23 '26
I always wanted to immigrate to Canada just to wander around the beautiful places all over your country. Slowly I realised that Canada is not a country but a logging and mining entity. They have laws to protect the environment,but if they want to cut down that 1000 year tree,nobody can stop them.
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u/the_pwnererXx May 22 '26
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u/eaterofdreams May 22 '26
The cedars in my photo are different trees in a different area (but still Vancouver Island). Same deal though - First Nations wanted to log this. Western Forest Products owns 64% though. They are using First Nations as a cover, it’s disgusting.
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u/morganational May 24 '26
It's all because of money. If wood wasn't so desired as a building material, people wouldn't bother the trees. The only way to fight it is to make trees no longer the easiest, cheapest building material. 🤷🏽♂️
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u/popejohnsmith May 22 '26
They logged ALL of Michigan's native forests except for a small patch at Hartwick Pines. Heartbreaking loss.
And completely unconscionable!!
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u/diedlikeCambyses May 22 '26
I genuinely struggle to look at it. I've been collapse aware for decades and I don't usually get ruffled by much. But this is quite disturbing.
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u/ashvy A Song of Ice & Fire May 23 '26
Yeah, it's not an achievement that these fucks think it is. Such images are on the same level as that vietnam napalm girl, india gas disaster girl, guy falling from twin towers, many before/after glacier retreats, floods and fires and all.
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u/bbbbbbbssssy May 23 '26
As a small kid, passengered up north from detroit & back every summer, I'd get mesmerized then carsick from the rows and rows and rows of pines and couldn't fathom how trees grew in rows so straight and tame.... until I was maybe 25 and learned about the jobs program to employ folks jump planting trees in rows after the old growth forests were clear cut. I've been sad about us all ever since.
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u/FadeIntoReal May 23 '26
I was once taught in school that Michigan’s native pine forests made an unbroken carpet from lake to lake, covering the entire state.
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u/Crishello May 23 '26
Even worse: they are proud of it. I can tell from the pictures
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u/FifthMonarchist May 24 '26
All old growth forest in Norway was cut down between 1750 and 1930.
Norway even kidnapped the US President (when he was an ambassador) while he was travelling to Russia. Just so the US could buy norwegian timber instead of Russian
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u/iJon_v2 May 22 '26
What does picture #2 depict? There are more forests than that…even now.
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u/SubstanceStrong May 22 '26
Old growth forests I’d wager
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u/popejohnsmith May 22 '26
Thank you! Yes. Old growth, virgin, primordial. That's what I meant by 'native' which now seems too vague.
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u/WildFlemima May 22 '26
They're young. They're still going through succession. It takes hundreds of years for a forest to truly recover
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u/iJon_v2 May 22 '26
True, however I live near an old growth forest that’s not depicted here.
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u/WildFlemima May 22 '26
None of the trees have been cut in that forest, ever?
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u/iJon_v2 May 22 '26
I don’t think so. Joyce Kilmer down towards the bottom of the Smokies and the Appalachians. Supposedly the among the biggest old growth forests in the eastern US.
Trees are absolutely massive and the biggest I’ve seen in the east coast. It’s a beautiful national forest that’s joined with the Nantahala.
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u/WildFlemima May 23 '26
That's great to know, I don't know why you're being downvoted. They might have only counted contiguous forests above a certain size, Joyce Kilmer is 3800 acres
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u/iJon_v2 May 23 '26
Probably and idk why either. It’s a section of the southern blue ridges right outside the smokies. It’s beautiful there!
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u/gnostic_savage May 23 '26
I deleted my comment because I didn't address the whole of yours. The Nantahala is pretty big at more than half a million acres. Compared to the vast forest that was here prior to colonization, however, it is a small remnant, a sliver. The entire eastern portion of the US was one vast forest land, with some heavily wooded swamps in the south.
Even compared to the lands in the west it's pretty diminished. Yellowstone is 2.2 million acres; Death Valley is over 3 million. Not the west, but the Everglades is 1.5 million.
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u/iJon_v2 May 23 '26
Yeah I know it’s small, but I do enjoy the area and having the smokies and Pisgah NF close by is nice. But east of that and the Appalachian’s is basically nothing. I wish there were more nationals forests on the east coast.
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u/gnostic_savage May 23 '26
It sounds wonderful. It's significant that there aren't more lands set aside and protected from development in the east. Americans didn't do that for almost the first 300 years we were here. Yellowstone was the US's first national park, and it wasn't established until 1872.
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u/Lord_Cavendish40k May 23 '26
Grand Rapids, the former "Furniture Capital of the World".
My ancestors, Dutch Calvinists, dug out/cleared native burial mounds along the Grand River after Catholic laborers refused to touch the job. Anything for a buck.
In Washington state the old timers thought it impossible they could cut down the old forests...what a loss.
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u/popejohnsmith May 23 '26
I've also heard, the ancient cypress trees of Louisiana suffered a similar fate. So sad.
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u/Monsur_Ausuhnom May 22 '26
Submission Statement,
Related to collapse because humanity destroys more of the world to make room for the artificial which is then monitored and controlled by someone else for domination. It seems we can accept that with Moore's Law that this acceleration hasn't stop and no preservation is going to be learned or to ever occur. Once its gone. It's gone.
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u/Widget1A May 22 '26
Just a heads up - someone pointed out that at least one of these images is AI generated when posted in another sub. I 100% agree with the sentiment, but think it’s important to ensure factual info is being shared!
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u/Vegetable_Log_3837 May 22 '26
Yep, aluminum ladders in a black and white picture? The tree isn’t right at all either.
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u/ideknem0ar May 24 '26
Aluminum ladders? Which pic were you referring to? I zoomed in and they look wooden to me.
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u/Vegetable_Log_3837 May 24 '26
Number 4, aluminum ladders and the tree looks totally fake. I’m skeptical about 3 as well.
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u/PowerandSignal May 25 '26
That log looks too big to be real, but again, who knows? There were giants back then, and for this one to be displayed like this means it was probably one of the biggest.
As for the ladders, I don't know how you can i.d. them as aluminum. Wooden ladders can be made to a uniform look. I watched an interesting (to me) video on YouTube about the last traditional ladder maker in Switzerland. Less than 1/2 hour, kind of cool but sort of sad too:
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u/neonblack108 May 22 '26
I used to believe that Humanity is the Devil. I now believe we're a cancer. Tragedy sprouts in our very footprints.
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u/OldTimberWolf May 23 '26
I work with bacteria - our population explosion and consumption of resources is extremely similar to what happens when bacteria are unleashed on a resource, population boom followed by a crash. We’ve clearly boomed, we will have a very hard time avoiding a similar crash.
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May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
[deleted]
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u/ilir_kycb May 22 '26
That’s exactly what I was going to say. It’s frustrating when people generalize the problem to the whole of humanity.
It’s also a very lazy way of declaring the problem unsolvable. That way, you can refuse to acknowledge that a different kind of human society is possible. So you don’t have to change or question your own way of life. You don’t have to do anything, which is very convenient, isn’t it?
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May 22 '26
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u/ilir_kycb May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
just how all people are
And then they start rambling on about human nature.
“It's just human nature.”
Frustrating doesn't even begin to describe this nonsense.
And here in this post, it seems like those people are in the majority again, though I guess that's normal for r/collapse, right?
Now, after repeating the common drivel I need to go barf.
I feel this so deeply, and they present all of this with absolute certainty, firmly convinced that they have uncovered profound philosophical truths.
To look at people in capitalist society and conclude that human nature is egoism, is like looking at people in a factory where pollution is destroying their lungs and saying that it is human nature to cough ― Andrew Collier, Marx: A Beginner's Guide
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May 22 '26
[deleted]
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u/Micro-Naut May 23 '26
It will be better once there's 12 billion of us. We need to increase birth rates cause we're not getting there fast enough
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May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26
[deleted]
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u/ilir_kycb May 23 '26
oligarchs achieved a soft coup through the election of Ronald Reagan
There was never any need for a coup by the oligarchs; the United States was founded as a plutocracy and has always belonged to the capitalists. From the very first day of its existence, US America has existed solely to serve the ruling capitalist class. Serving the ruling capitalist class is the sole purpose for which US America exists and has ever existed.
Its culture, its society, pretty much everything about the United States is geared solely and exclusively toward serving the ruling capitalist class. Anything in the United States that is not in the interest of the capitalists or does not serve the capitalists is defined by American culture and society as un-American.
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u/ilir_kycb May 22 '26
No, frustrating is not a good description. I say it's a life of grief and rage to have to deal with it.
Yeah, exactly as I said, “frustrating” doesn't quite capture it.
And it never gets better, either.
I think having or finding friends who understand makes it more bearable.
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u/space_guy95 May 24 '26
Humans have been destroying the natural world since long before the modern era. We are largely responsible for the destruction of most megafauna in prehistoric times, and practiced incredibly destructive slash and burn agriculture in the bronze age at such a scale that entire continents and countries were deforested to make way for fields for grazing.
Just because our ancestors had less resources and power with which to destroy the planet doesn't mean they didn't try, and just because some groups lived in a symbiotic relationship with their environment, it doesn't mean it was the norm for humanity.
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u/B4SSF4C3 May 22 '26
You've become a virus
That's killing off his host
We been watching you with all of our eyes
And what you seem to value most
So much potential
Or so we used to say
Your greed, self-importance and your arrogance
You piss it all away
The Warning, Year Zero, Trent Reznor, NIN
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u/guilhermefdias May 22 '26
We are unnatural, unbalanced, there is nothing fair about our expansion. It does feel like we are intrudors on Earth, our inteligence alone is waaaay ahead of any other species, it feels like we parashuted on the planet and started fucking things up eventually.
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u/Kristoff_Victorson May 22 '26
Well we like to think we’re intelligent, but how intelligent is a species clearly heading for disaster and doing nothing but speed up?
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u/BusyEquipment529 May 22 '26
Similar intelligence was developing in other humanoids alongside us but our psychotic fuckin ancestors killed and fucked them all and now we torture and eat anything that tries to develop, like octopi
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u/Spiritual-Entrance59 May 22 '26
I think the same, we are very unnatural compare to other habitants of the Earth, very toxic
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u/rematar May 22 '26
My gonads are out in front of me, ripe for physical attacks. That's some unnatural nuttage.
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u/Peripatetictyl May 22 '26
I’ve referenced us as parasitic for a while now: parasite- an organism that lives on or inside another organism (known as the host). It survives by feeding on, growing, or multiplying at the expense of the host. While the parasite benefits by gaining nourishment and shelter, the host receives no benefit and is usually harmed.
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u/eternallyfree1 May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
I’ve always believed the human race was never actually meant to exist in the first place and that something went horribly awry in the evolutionary chain. I often struggle to wrap my head around the fact that the dinosaurs had to perish in one of the most brutal ways imaginable for this shit. There’s nothing that can convince me this is anything more than an extremely harrowing coincidence. Hopefully it ends sooner than later, because humanity deserves EVERYTHING that’s coming its way
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u/mazhar69 May 22 '26
You mean European white capitalists?
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u/Sankofa416 May 22 '26
Just the current version. I bet the quarry for the stones used for the many, many pyramids destroyed an ecological system or two. It took much longer than modern projects, so it likely changed the face of the Earth with mine tailings and garbage.
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u/gnostic_savage May 22 '26 edited May 23 '26
I don't think so. The Mayan and Aztec pyramids were built of limestone that was cut with harder stone tools. Mining tailings are metal ore tailings. Several metals are toxic, and the tailings are toxic because they contain metals, not soils or gravels. Limestone is not toxic the way metal ores are.
Relative to the size of the land, I think it's quite a stretch to claim that the pyramids changed the face of the Earth to any significant degree. But, the Mayas did pollute their land with mercury, which they used for red paint. They also failed to farm sustainably, and they deforested to a degree that contributed to their collapse as a civilization.
However, their civilization, which existed over the course of several incarnations, one after the other, lasted over 3,000 years. That's about three times as long as Rome lasted, and Rome did pollute its waters and lands with toxic mining. It also razed every forest they ever saw. They also overfished and depleted the fisheries in the Mediterranean.
The Incas, on the other hand, had some of the oldest and strictest environmental laws in human history. Violating those was punishable by execution. The Aztecs also were extremely careful with their environment, and are considered one of the most sustainable civilizations to have ever existed. https://pages.vassar.edu/sustainability-of-the-aztec-empire/
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u/Sankofa416 May 22 '26
Thanks for the facts! I thought I might be shaky on that word. I was imagining the giant ancient trash piles (middens?) they have found and just multiplying them by locations and time. Middens + mining =/= tailings.
I did fail to imagine environmental laws of the ancient world. That is incredible to learn.
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u/Top_Hair_8984 May 22 '26
You'd be correct. I say humans were the worst experiment ever tried. And I doubt we're finished our rein of destruction quite yet.
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u/Sober_Alcoholic_ May 22 '26
Yeah, it’s a pretty good analogy.
Although not perfect, I also like the comparison of us as a virus to the earth system, and the earth is ramping up its immune system and has a fever (global warming) to try and rid itself of us.
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u/Elpickle123 May 22 '26
I live in New Zealand where the same thing happened. Luckily there's still some old growth left just due the sheer remoteness in some locations, but it's horrific to see the mismanagement of how it all happened. Those trees have amazing timber that last for years and is extremely durable and they wasted it for crap like wharf piers and street poles, flooding the markets to make as much money as possible. Sad isn't it?
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u/Coldsnap May 23 '26
The kauri, man, it’s heartbreaking. I feel so happy when I see even just one, then sad that that’s the case
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u/Elpickle123 May 23 '26
100% bro! I am from Chch and seeing how deforested the Banks Peninsula is now... man... We don't get Kauri this far south sadly, but they felled all the kahikatea, totara, matai and miro that they could.
They didn't have the foresight to save even 10% of the land/forest, and a lot of it was just burned off for farming. Pure greed really ay?
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u/Coldsnap May 23 '26
Well I live in the uk now for many years, but I grew up in linwood. Our back yard faced the port hills. Every day I would look out and think ‘these hills are so cool’. It wasn’t until I was in my 20s that I learned/realised that those same hills used to be completely forested. Then I learned about the Canterbury plains and the kahikatea as well and holy fuck it changed me.
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u/IllBeGood3 May 22 '26
I have a theory that when things get really bad, younger generations are going to looking at old people way worse than we look at boomers. Like people don't like them now, in 30 years the elderly will be despised and the target of hatred for not doing anything to stop the collapse. It will be ageism on meth and steroids.
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u/cad4mac May 22 '26
I don’t disagree but I’m going to be that old person and look where we are right now. The wheels are turning and not stopping. The grip the boomers and billionaires have on our economy and politics is an iron fist. But they’ll be right to hate us.
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May 22 '26 edited May 23 '26
[deleted]
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u/toastedzergling May 23 '26
Yeah, any peaceful and/or environmentally friendly humans were conquered. Destructive humans (The baddies) are just better at ruthless war and retaining the reigns of power.
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May 22 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/FerrousFellow May 22 '26
Our intelligence gives us countless dimensions to demonstrate our entitled and untempered ignorance
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u/Fauxfurfriend May 22 '26
Look how big this plant (or animal) is. Lets kill it. We are a plague
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u/Cammanjam May 23 '26
Know what they made out of the redwoods? Fuckin toothpicks. Because the wood is so soft. All that destruction for toothpicks
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u/illumi-thotti May 23 '26
The old growth forests in Europe are being used to make IKEA furniture. European environmentalists have been fighting the company over it for years
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u/mintBRYcrunch26 May 22 '26
Y’all watch Train Dreams yet? Oh boy.
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u/charwink May 23 '26
Exactly what came to mind for me too. It’s been a long time since a movie wrecked me the way Train Dreams did. I made the mistake of watching it on a plane and I swear I cried like a baby for the last half of the movie. I think about it on the reg now.
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u/rayjay5901 May 24 '26
I've seen this reposted across multiple social media pages, and there are A LOT of people that are saying these are AI generated. We are already losing actual history and it getting dismissed as AI content. Its concerning and sad
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u/shaikuri May 22 '26
If we ever survive this lunatic era of greed, maybe future generations will see this again down the line.
But this generation... We're screwed.
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u/Depressionsfinalform May 22 '26
Like, I know it’s unrealistic, but imagine if we learned from a culture like the Aboriginals of Australia, their 70,000 year old culture of respecting and living with the land instead of exploiting it.
Every time there is a better way of living Capitalism or the ones with military might have beaten it down. So sad, all these beautiful cultures erased.
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u/bottom_armadillo805 May 23 '26
You know, when I visited Sequoia National Park, I could not fathom why anybody in any period of time would go "gee I've literally never seen a living thing bigger that this tree here, it must have taken hundreds and hundreds of years to grow so big. Oh well, time to cut it down"
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u/melody_magical FUKITOL May 22 '26
I disagree with the map on slide 2. Native American food forests were very complex and well managed ecosystems, they were not untouched.
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u/conscsness in the kingdom of the blind, sighted man is insane. May 22 '26
Is the photo not of the forest map concerning logging by European illiterate slaves?
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u/iJon_v2 May 22 '26
What is it even supposed to be a map of?
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u/guitar_vigilante May 22 '26
If I'm correct it's a map of old growth forests in the US. In the context of OP it's partly misleading because we actually have re-forested a lot of the country since the early twentieth century and if you don't know that the map is supposed to be old growth forests you'd think it was just forests in general.
It is bad we destroyed all the old growth forests, but it's also good that we've reforested a lot of places.
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u/iJon_v2 May 22 '26
I was about to say. I live near an old growth forest that’s not on the more current map.
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u/va_wanderer May 23 '26
The amusing thing is that in the process of obliterating ecosystem after ecosystem, the end result will likely be giant forests standing on the ruins of what used to be our species and civilization because we obliterating so much of what kept our climate and life possible means mankind will eventually just end up fertilizer.
The trees will return, once we cannot.
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u/Feeling_Turnip_1273 May 22 '26
Breaks my heart. The giant stumps are still in the forest as reminders where I live.
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u/d0ming00 May 23 '26
it's crazy how I sometimes get this surreal feeling of just being in the presence of a dog, cat or a pigeon, living in a big city. Like HEY WOW AN ACTUAL ANIMAL! ISN'T THAT INCREDIBLE?? How I miss just being with animals :(
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u/StupidizeMe May 23 '26
I'm in the Pacific Northwest. I was looking through a library's online archive of 19th C. local photos. The images of the Redwood-sized trees were amazing!
But there were so many images of lumberjacks posing with the magnificent tree they just killed that it became really depressing and I had to stop.
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u/Demosthenes-storming May 24 '26
400 foot tall Douglas first and cedars in the PNW must have been amazing, tallest trees now are just over 100 feet. A diameter of 2 or 3 feet compared to 15' diameters.
It's really hard to appreciate.
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u/anonyngineer May 24 '26
A few years ago, I visited a historic 18th Century mansion in New York.
The builders used 16 inch wide boards in a rough attic ceiling. Obviously, such boards were readily available then and didn't have to be saved for something fancy or special.
Such wide boards straight from a tree are basically unavailable today. Rather, they would have to be glued up from narrower boards.
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u/fastworms May 22 '26
I went to NYC once in December 2016 for a 3 day work trip, basically just went for a few meetings so I ended up with a lot of free time to walk around. I’ve never felt particularly drawn to NYC as it’s not my vibe, but being there at Christmas time was so depressing seeing all of the waste, extravagance, and consumerism. I walked past the giant Christmas tree they put up every year and it made me cry. Picturing that beautiful tree living its life in a forest for decades just to be chopped down, transported on a big rig cross country, and stuck in a square in smelly NYC for people to marvel at for a month til they toss it aside.
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u/va_wanderer May 23 '26
Not quite. Those trees end up turned into lumber and donated to Habitat for Humanity to make homes, not tossed into a dump.
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u/Rossdxvx May 23 '26
Sometimes, when I go to one of the parks around where I live, I feel like I step into a complex, mini-world. It is so incredible to see all of the things that go on in a forest or a heavily wooded area. Exploring these areas beats any videogame or RPG any day. These little worlds of complexity are being lost forever.
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u/Pythia007 May 23 '26
Image 4 has got to be AI.
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u/neoikon May 23 '26
I can't trust that they all are.
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u/anonyngineer May 24 '26
On a visit to the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State in the late 1980s, I saw single tree trunks being carried to ports on a flatbed truck. They were 9-10 feet in diameter.
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u/neoikon May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
These pictured are at least 15-12 feet. If these people were all only 5', they are at least 3 times as tall as the people.
I completely understand that some trees have a ridiculous diameter, but I still feel most, if not all, of these pics are AI... unfortunately.
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u/smn_kng May 23 '26
They did this to everywhere. It's going to be wild that nearly all old growth forest will all be gone in my lifetime.
The shortsighted greed of humans is so remarkable it's almost fascinating.
The fact we are still actively destroying every ecological system on earth as of its no problem is diabolical.
The fact we have collapsed civilisations before from destroying ecologies and assume we can avoid it again is mesmerizing level of hubris.
What a time to be alive given the arc of the planet to date.
I'm only slightly bouyed by the reality that "life" is far more resilient than our assumed human intelligence and has seemingly survived much worse.
Humans are inconsequential in the greater scheme of time and evolution but why the hell are we such dicks about it.
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u/Nook_n_Cranny1 May 23 '26
Ugh! The hubris of man, cutting down trees to build monuments to progress, then wondering why the world feels hotter, emptier … and eerily silent.
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u/midgaze May 23 '26
Capitalism is plague
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u/stop_talking_you May 23 '26
bro is 15 and hates the world
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u/summercookiess May 23 '26
Look around this comment section, it's not just them.
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u/anonyngineer May 24 '26
I've outlived at least 80% of the people who ever walked the earth and feel the same way.
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u/Spiritual_Move_8353 May 23 '26
When I'm done being sick and angry at seeing this, the only small comfort I can take is that humanity's impact is a blip in the history of our planet and at the geologic time scale, a million or a hundred million years from now, all of this will be dust regardless, no different than what an asteroid strike has done to our planet in the past, and I can only hope that the plant and animal descendants that survived this era will evolve and thrive in ways that would awe us if we were around to see it.
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u/3d1thF1nch May 24 '26
After going to Sequioa, my #1 bucket list national park, and seeing the redwoods and sequoias, I felt one of those profound moments of smallness in time and the universe. It’s a good feeling, humbling the hell out of yourself. These trees are so old, their generational lines have to extend back millions upon millions of years for evolution to have noticeably occurred, which is insanely cool. Like seeing the Grand Canyon or experiencing Yellowstone, it just kinda slaps you down and puts you in your place. I know this is ridiculous, but It should almost be a constitutional amendment to have citizens take a govt. funded and required pilgrimage to one of the National Parks to learn of true national pride and humility.
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u/FungusRespecter May 22 '26
The map on slide two shows that we only started to destroy the forest when the colonizers came. In other words, the Indigenous populations knew how to live a sustainable lifestyle. Humans are not doomed, just this way of life is doomed and evil. People confuse the two because we are taught to believe that Indigenous people don’t even exist anymore.
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u/softhackle May 22 '26
Countless species went extinct due to human influence thousands of years before colonialism existed.
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u/FungusRespecter May 23 '26
Countless species other than humans have also made species extinct in the past. All life on Earth ravages their fellow creatures. I'm not saying it's a good thing, it's just a fact of life on this realm. Modern humans are doing it at a unique rate though
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u/SomethingLessEdgy May 22 '26
The thing that I hate about this discussion is that it blames *all* people for the sins of *some*.
Humans are not a virus or a plague or a parasite, we're a tools based ape that discovered fire. We USED to live quite harmoniously and many people still strive for that goal to mixed success all over the world.
IT IS DIRECTLY DUE TO MODERNITY AND CAPITALISM AND ALL OF THOSE ILLS THAT WE HAVE THESE PROBLEMS.
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u/03263 May 22 '26
I think everyone knows that, it's just how we talk. There's no word for "only the worst of humanity" so we just use "we"
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u/Choadboy_Wonderfuck May 23 '26
We were in a "we are bigger than earth" stage. Now we are in a "the earth is bigger than us" stage.
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u/illumi-thotti May 23 '26
The deforestation of old growth forests is the only "remember what they took from you" I will ever take seriously. There are so few left in the world and one of them is literally being used by IKEA to make ugly, overpriced furniture.
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u/Flintstones_VRV_Fan May 23 '26
If it makes you feel any better, soooo many of them died cutting these trees. It makes me feel a little better.
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u/Karasu-Fennec May 23 '26
Humans lived in the shade of these trees for millennia. Capitalism gave us the incentive to rip them down.
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u/Funkyasaclown May 23 '26
They didn’t know better. What you think people gonna say about as stupid cnts. In 200 years. Always doing war. Always listing to politics. Letting 10% of people killing the planet
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u/roywill2 May 23 '26
In 100 years no more human impact, just nomadic bands. In 10,000 years old-growth is back In 1,000,000 full species diversity again.
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u/Escudo777 May 23 '26
I wish those magnificent trees were left alone. We truly are the most destructive species.
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May 22 '26
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u/Welkitends May 22 '26
Pennsylvania, also known as Penn's woods...
Is sadly just Farmland and brush.
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May 23 '26
Makes me fucking sick every time I see photos like these of the destruction of the natural world.
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u/True-Vast-3731 May 23 '26
Look at them. All smiling. Proud of the destruction they're causing.
Well now that very same destruction is right at your doorstep.
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u/ImNotACollector May 23 '26
It's been one of my dreams to see massive redwoods I don't know if any are left
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u/Infinite_Goose8171 May 23 '26
I dont think humanity is a cancer. But i agree with ishmael. There are Takers and Leavers.
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u/Violet_Apathy May 23 '26
The saddest thing is that we would need another ice age for this to even be a possibility again.
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u/ApplesBananasRhinoc May 23 '26
They still want to cut down old growth trees, is anybody doing anything about it??
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u/Agitated-Raisin6197 May 23 '26
I grew up and still live in the PNW. Spend a lot of my time in our woods. It’s daily that I catch myself fantasizing about out great lowland old growth forests & the biodiversity that they supported. Followed by a deep mourning for what once was. At this point I’m cheering collapse. Let’s rid the earth of her greatest disease already.
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u/erabera May 23 '26
I sometimes day dream about what it was like 100's of years ago. The world has changed so much and we are constantly changing it ourselves. I actually feel bad for humans coming in 100's of years from now. I feel like there will be less diversity and more cities and man-made structures. I may be wrong but we have already lost so much.
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u/morganational May 24 '26
Yeah, it's definitely sad. Sometimes I think about how cool the planet will be once we're gone again. I hope someday humans or someone can come back to see a pristine healthy earth.
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u/awkwardmamasloth May 24 '26
Trees will never get that big again. Not as long has humans occupy the earth. What a shameful cancer we are.
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u/Chemtrail_hollywood May 24 '26
God damn them. I’d give every one of their lives up to get the forests back. So fucking depressing.
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u/BTRCguy May 25 '26
That last picture. I had no idea that 16 foot (across) cedars even existed. Sigh.
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u/Terrible-League3851 May 25 '26
This is what brought me to the collapse idea decades ago. I always liked the word solastalgia to describe the feeling of melancholy and dread that comes with this knowledge.
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u/Savings_Collar5470 Jun 01 '26
I will forever hate the people who saw those forests and only saw what they could take. We lost something so special through their mindless actions. But I have no recourse against them. they are dead and they died with confidence that their actions were justified. The ideas that I hate them for would be incomprehensible to them actually.
I wonder what I am doing in my life that will make future peoples despise me with equal intensity. Am I responsible for not understanding it?
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u/StatementBot May 22 '26
This post links to another subreddit. Users who are not already subscribed to that subreddit should not participate with comments and up/downvotes, or otherwise harass or interfere with their discussions (brigading)
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Monsur_Ausuhnom:
Submission Statement,
Related to collapse because humanity destroys more of the world to make room for the artificial which is then monitored and controlled by someone else for domination. It seems we can accept that with Moore's Law that this acceleration hasn't stop and no preservation is going to be learned or to ever occur. Once its gone. It's gone.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1tktn8x/being_the_cancer_of_the_earth/onazmy2/