alt Hacker News> until the planet burns down.
Common misconception. We won't kill the planet even if we tried to. Wed make it too hard to sustain billions of humans, sure. But they are very different things
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This is a good distinction because its a common idea but its based on a conflation: human civilizationhealth and planet health. Planet health is hard to even think about apart from humans but the planet in no way “needs” us.
Sure, and the planet survived the Permian-Triassic extinction event. Cold comfort to 70% of the terrestrial vertebrate species at the time.
You say that, but run away greenhouse gases can sterilize the entire planet, like Venus.
We won't kill it, but we can try to burn it. Conflagration comes to mind.
Like a burned out brick building, a burned down planet is still there, but still also burned down. Of course it doesn't 'disappear'
The planet will still be here even if it burns down. After London burned down, there was still London. It was just burned down.