Central features of human evolution may stop our species from resolving global environmental problems like climate change, says a recent study led by the University of Maine.
Humans have come to dominate the planet with tools and systems to exploit natural resources that were refined over thousands of years through the process of cultural adaptation to the environment. University of Maine evolutionary biologist Tim Waring wanted to know how this process of cultural adaptation to the environment might influence the goal of solving global environmental problems. What he found was counterintuitive.
Waring further added, “And, like, as a species, humans are just stupid. Like, really fucking stupid.”
We really are limited as a species. The science has existed for decades, yet an overwhelming population either denies or chooses to ignore it. Plus Maslow’s hierarchy of needs - most of us are still focused on the basics of immediate survival. Our biggest problems are selfishness and short-sightedness IMO. Not sure how we could achieve global cooperation to solve climate change, if the threat of extinction isn’t doing it. Maybe if we were a hive-mind species lol. I like to imagine what advanced alien civilizations would think of us.
I mean, compared to what? If we don’t know of any smarter species out there to set some higher average baseline, how could we be below it?
Compared to smart humans. We have scientists and artists but for every one of them we also have three aggressive, primitive, hairless monkeys.
Only 3? I would have put it well into the double digits.
on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.
- Douglas Adams - The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy
Compared to what we need to be to effectively tackle climate change.
We can, we’re just choosing not to, so collectively as a species, yeah we’re pretty fucking dumb.
They essentially say that (better) international cooperation is required, and must be functional at the required (global) scale… and the other paragraph essentially cautions that “some might find it easier to take from neighbours”, leading to war, which is a proven and terrible waste of nearly all resources.
I would note that while we don’t have a global society, we do have a global information space (enabling different actors to understand the same data and to see a mutual failure as the end of certain actions, even if their viewpoint differs) - and we do have global trade. Arrangements where an economy making a transiton off fossil fuels, for example, enacts carbon use limits locally and simultaneously taxes carbon-intensive imports across its borders, would remove the biggest dis-incentive to transitioning - that of getting things cheaper by polluting somewhere else.
