this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2025
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[โ€“] bobbyguy@lemmy.world -2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

no it wont, not really, hypothetically lets say every human on the planet disappeared, how would that happen? lets assume a global nuclear exchange, every major population center or military base is now destroyed, the ash, dust, and smoke from the explosions would blanket the upper atmosphere with clouds of particulates so thick it would block out almost all sunlight, the planet would enter a decades long global winter that would wipe out all plant life along with anything that would rely on sunlight in any way, after the clouds clear we would be left with bacteria and maybe some deep sea life then life would begin to take back the planet maybe even another intelligent civilization, one catch though, humans have already used most of earths easily accessible materiel, metals would degrade or rust, all of the oil we extract today would have been impossible to extract 100 years ago so no more plastics, and the real endgame, in about five billion years the sun will expand and destroy the earth along with all of the known life in the universe.

the way i see it, right now humans are the only hope for life on earth (from a long term perspective) instead of all terran life dying with our planet, wouldn't it be better if our biosphere inherited all of those lifeless worlds around other stars, wouldn't it be better if we could outlive the mortality of our world?

the argument that all humans should die for the betterment of nature is flawed and unethical in practice, and it makes me sad that so many people think it would be better to die than to face our own mess.