Or be with someone of the same gender as ye'self?

Or just don't be a crazy *** freak?

Humans are one of the best species in my opinion, along with the Beaver.

This thread makes me want to play Stalker: Call of Pripyat very good game.

Uhh.... duh. Thank you Captain Obvious. We would be totally confused without you being here to tell us that "save the planet" should really be "reverse our culture of wanton and negligent consumerism resulting in an accelerating negative impact on the environment that we depend upon to survive". But hey, since the slogan is wrong we might as well pollute ourselves into extinction, eh smart guy?

This is an internet forum for games. Are you really worried about a large portion of the people here successfully procreating?

we can only hope.

on topic. there are more people than radioactive waste, so yes that is true.

I laughed much harder than I should have. You don't often make me laugh Frodo, but when you do, I crap my pants.

In any case, a human caused problem not being quite as bad as humans are as a collective whole, especially when you include human caused problems, is somehow surprising? I am extremely confused.

I'm flattered.

Well thank god, I was worrying you would take offense for a second!

Laughter

This place is a hell hole and I'm not sure I want to be around to watch it get worse.

So much optimism. You're welcome.

Nuclear waste is worse for me than people.

could be relevant...

https://unitedcats.wordpress.com/2007/05/29/major-biological-discoveryinside-the-chernobyl-reactor

Right, radiation eating mushrooms. You just can't stop life

Holy crap. Ghouls, man!

There's a theory that radiation is actually vital to life. There have been tests done where organisms are subjected to different levels of radiation. Natural, low-level radiation, or even radiation slightly above the norm, produced the best results. Where researchers reduced the radiation to less-than-natural levels, the organisms' immune system suffered.

Radiation isn't this ooga-booga! thing it's been made out to be. It's not even cumulative (at low levels, at least, for sure), as has previously been supposed. A little bit seems to be good for you.

Just covering my bases.

Also, sunlight is radiation.

Nobody is better, it's called civilisation. If you'd rather live in some incredibly regulated society where there are severe restrictions on gathering resources and what can be used and so-forth go ahead. Never bought into any of this "humans are the real monsters" crap before and certainly won't now, resources need to be gathered and cities built; it's what life is about.

Nature is wonderfully resilient, and that goes for resilience against human encroachment, too. I have no patience for misanthropic sentimentalism. The human population is thriving due to stable food supply and medical advances, and thank god for that. As is the way of things, it will probably reverse someday, then all the environmentalists can rejoice as people die around them.

The answer isn't 42? Are you sure?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/10479872/Dust-to-Dust-a-man-made-Malthusian-crisis.html

http://www.theherald.com.au/story/1848433/the-ocean-is-broken/

but in the end...

http://guymcpherson.com/2013/01/climate-change-summary-and-update/

Ouch, that sounds painful Can I just promise not to have any kids?

About the matter at hand... I said once that I would only consider it a true success for the human race if we last to the http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm. It sounds like that isn't happening, even if we did manage to settle in other planets before ruining our chances in this one, wouldn't we be exporting our failed models and methods to them? Wouldn't our basic instincts and biology just make us diverge into a myriad of tribes spread through the galaxy, hell bent on domination over each other, damning planet after planet until none remain?

I do not doubt there will be plenty of life on this planet long after we are gone, there have been many "crisis" through the Earth's history which dwarf our current one. The problem is that, as biology goes, when a species goes extinct, it's extinct forever. We are a fluke in evolution, maybe the only one ever, and it feels kinda disappointing if it turns out that our "superior intelligence" is ultimately detrimental to survival.

If anyone wants to complain that this planet is going to hell - just remember what happened in the early 1900's. We had a viral epidemic kill half a million people in the United States. Organized mobs roamed American cities, dealing with the illicit liquor trade - they were far more violent than the drug gangs we see today. We had two world wars, and all the people that died in either of them. We had the Great Depression, and a comet hit Russia leveling hundreds of square miles of forests, in a region that was thankfully unpopulated at the time. Then of course we had the dust bowl - we lost huge tracts of agricultural lands to soil erosion, and the past fifty years has been devoted to replenishing that soil.

Now we're in the 2010's - so far we haven't seen any World Wars. Nobody has lobbed any nukes at another person so far. We've been afraid of viral epidemics, but the worst we've had to deal with is some [censored] parents not vaccinating their kids. Russia is now acting like an advocate for peace, pushing countries to give up their chemical weapons arsenal - really funny if you think about the second half of the last century. Population growth is grinding to a halt, and our big problem in the future is actually going to be people not having enough kids - yeah, Japan has a huge problem with population, in that it's not growing. It's starting to shrink, because people aren't having enough unprotected six. The same has been happening within the United States for over a decade, and we've only kept our numbers growing through immigration.

What we have to worry about now - is just not screwing up so bad that we all die. One thing we can always count on is human greed, and the people in charge of the U.S., Russia, and China wouldn't want to see all those pretty stores owned by wealthy campaign donors go down in a pile of radioactive smoke. China's more peaceful than it's ever been, because they depend on the rest of the world to keep their economy growing.

Okay then, maybe we should live in a world were we're all on strictly controlled government-issue rations lest our selfish destructive nature in catching fish and growing crops to eat hurts the poor Earth.

That's not necessarily the case - we just need to produce food and materials in a more sustainable way. We used to make food dyes for children's candy by mixing heavy metals like lead, mercury, and chromium with other stuff - obviously a bad idea. We used to save money by having children work in factories and coal mines - obviously a bad idea. We used to harvest wood by clear-cutting entire forests - obviously a bad idea. That isn't to say that all regulations are good (there are some downright crappy ones out there), or that the government always has a place in every little issue.

We just need to get used to thinking a little more long term than we have been - it won't be as cheap (but then again, advlts cost more than children when it comes to coal mining), but it can be done, and I'm quite confident that we can maintain our quality of life in such a way that doesn't destroy our children's and grandchildren's future. We just have to be kind enough to think beyond ourselves and our immediate wants - long term thinking is important.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/jan/04/observerspecialbritainsschools.medicineandhealth health wise. WW2 rationing was hardly fun but it was a lot healthier than the over-processed crap we tend to eat nowadays.

You mean Half-Life 2?

You mean like, if we managed to get human colonies out there in space, we would be doomed to fight galactic wars among each other as galactic human warlords all vie for control over huge sections of the galaxy?

But what of the Human Federation and stuff like that, like what we see in 'Star Trek' or 'Mass Effect'? None of that? Just us eternally battling each other out for control over space rocks and whatever raw goods they have?

And that is only if we don't completely ruin our chances here on Earth?