Can the destruction of the planet be distilled down to this?

[SHRED]

We, as a human species, could have become an "agricultural-based" species well beyond just growing food.

We didn't go that route.

Instead we chose to become an "extraction-based" species.
Mining, drilling, and devastating deforestation.

[PubliusEnigma]

1. Chlorophyll? More like Bore-ophyll!!

[Irish_Dem]

2. Why did we chose this route? What human traits account for the path taken?

How did we get to this point?

[MFM008]

4. G R E E D

and men in charge that havea micro-penis

[Irish_Dem]

5. Bingo, spot on. (My lemonade spewed on keyboard when I read your comment!) NT

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. I think industrialization, which requires "extraction,"

was inevitable because agriculture is inherently unreliable. If there's a drought, or too much rain or too much cold or plant diseases or locusts or whatever, the crop is lost. There had to be some way of developing a reliable means of survival even if the crops failed. People invented things at first to improve agricultural production (e.g., metals for plows), which led to more extraction of natural resources, and so it went.

[The_jackalope]

6. The ERoEI of extraction is faaaar higher than agriculture.

Once part of humanity became convinced that growth and expansion was in their best interest, extraction became inevitable. This is because metals make rapid expansion possible through the use of weapons. Once that part of humanity began to expand outward using metal weapons, the fate of every new non-extractive society it bumped into was either to adopt the same practices or cease to exist.

This all began to happen in about 4000 BCE. See James DeMeo's "Saharasia" hypothesis, which I find deeply explanatory when it comes to the origins of the growth imperative, patriarchy (patrism), hierarchies and the violence associated with it all. It all seems to go back to climate change in a wide swath of land from the Sahara into the Caucasus.

Modern society seems to be the product of climate change. Ironic, no?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5.9_kiloyear_event
http://www.orgonelab.org/saharasia.htm