Let It Collapse
Nature's only hope is human depopulation
I'm tired of saying it, but I lost everything in Altadena's Eaton Fire earlier this year. Between replacing what can be replaced and mourning what can't, I can still remember everything was taken from us. Vintage furniture, collectibles, and memories are among those that sting the most. But there is something that wasn't necessarily mine, but which brought me tremendous joy in the years that I lived there: the birds.
Six months before the fire, I got very into birds. It started at the Kauai bird refuge on the north shore, where I spent hours watching the albatrosses and boobies soar about. I wouldn't say I'm a birder, because I don't like the list-checking aspect of the hobby. I just like the birds. When I returned home, I bought a bird feeder, and every day since, a few dozen birds would attack the bird feeder in the morning and evening. Finches, sparrows, all pretty common birds but nonetheless special.
Though we have a new bird feeder, the birds don't come that often. I have actually noticed more variety of birds in the Inland Empire, where we're currently getting through the bumbling recovery. We chose Rancho Cucamonga because we wanted to be away from the awful rebuilding. Seeing the trucks cart away people's crumbled lives, the RV encampments that have replaced neighborhoods, and the struggling businesses attempting to survive was not my idea of mental recovery. We do go back every week to meet up with friends, support some businesses, and survey the neighborhood.
This last visit, while taking soil samples of my neighbor's lot, I noticed plenty of surprises. I saw a California native gray squirrel, which I'd only rarely seen before. In a tree above was a kestrel, which I've never seen in the city. There was a sizable bone (a vertebrate, if I had to guess), on the front yard, leading me to wonder what bigger animal could have had a feast. In the ~10 minutes I had Merlin running, it registered 15 different bird species, about double what it normally would during my previous morning survey of the bird feeder. Recent news has highlighted coyotes and bears already reclaiming their territory, even forming a joint enterprise. No doubt these creatures were eager to explore without the threat of gutter cats roaming and terrorizing, or humans setting traps or mowing them down in their cars. My neighbor's yard, always an oasis, still was. Despite three months without rain or irrigation, her yard was still remarkably green. Even the passionfruit vine had plenty of fruits.
Peace in the absence of us
It was so peaceful.
Our emptiness was their peace.
In a short half year, nature without humans had already found a new normal.
Of course, nature's return is actually a signal itself that things are not right. They've only returned because humans burned what little habitat they've had left.
And the San Gabriel Valley isn't the only place destruction has led to rehabilitation.
The fortified border between North and South Korea is now one of only accidental wildlife refuges in the world. The DMZ has become a sanctuary for species that struggle to cohabitate with humans, including the endangered red-crowned crane, the Amur leopard, Asiatic black bears. In the absence of farming, roads, or development, non-human life has returned. The land doesn’t care why we left. It just needed us to leave.
In 2020, as cities locked down and highways emptied during the COVID-19 pandemic, nature returned to some cities. Skies cleared in Delhi and Los Angeles. Dolphins swam into empty harbors. Wild goats wandered through Welsh towns. Even coyotes, common in other southern California cities, started to roam as far as Marina del Rey. Hanauma Bay showed tremendous recovery, since reversed by returning tourists. It didn’t last long, but it was enough to show what’s possible when we pause.
When the Chernobyl nuclear disaster forced a mass evacuation in 1986, scientists feared the land would be biologically dead for centuries. Wolves, bison, moose, lynx, and eagles now roam the exclusion zone in greater numbers than before the meltdown. The radiation still lingers, but the absence of logging, hunting, traffic, and agriculture gave ecosystems room to breathe. Even the worst man-made disaster created the conditions for nature to heal, not because it was safe, but because it was finally alone.
When humans "thrive", the rest of nature falls apart. This is reality.
Last year, while passing through the Phoenix airport, I saw a sign that accusingly asked "Can we save the vaquita?" The vaquita is an almost extinct porpoise native only to Mexico. I hate to skip to the end, but there's zero percent chance we save an animal that 99% of the population hasn't heard of, 0.9% don't care about, and 0.1% who is actively trying to save cuter or closer animals. The vaquita is as good as dead, as are most of the remaining animals in the next 50-100 years.
Our track record is poor. We've practically holocausted the birds, between pesticides destroying their food source, deforestation destroying their homes, hunters shooting them for sport, or accidental poisoning while we try to kill some other species. We can't even let them roost on our precious eaves, setting up spikes that keep them from taking a rest.
Even when we pretend to do good, we do bad. Ask the native bees that have been sidelined to make room for your local honey.
Healing requires destruction
The Eaton Fire was destructive, but we are the destruction. Every car, every Amazon package, every AI prompt, every single-use plastic spoon that we don't even end up using, brings us closer to the tipping point.
The modern environmentalist approach is focused on hopeful solutions in the same failed vein as recycling (or the pitiful appeals to guilt, like the vaquita). Maybe we can reduce our impact incrementally via education and conservation. Maybe we can coordinate top-down solutions like "carbon credits". Maybe we can kickstart a grassroots initiative like the failed degrowth movement. Live with less, slow down consumption, shrink the economy, reconnect with earth; you know, all of the things that cannot happen in the modern American economy. I've tried putting it into practice. In rebuying my life, I've opted for fewer things, used where possible. But even that's not enough. Every package that comes probably kills some living organism directly, never mind the indirect impacts.
Degrowth is anti-us. It's counter to how we are conditioned to live, with consumption, speed and comfort. Even if it did catch on on a small scale, none of our modern economic and political institutions (including socialism, ironically), will shrink voluntarily. Most people are struggling, can we really ask them to go with less? The level of restraint and forethought required is foreign to modern society, and so the degrowth movement is a failed premise.
And so we'll continue with our current trend. We'll consume and consume and consume until the vaquita and ʻIʻiwi and black rhino and Florida yew all die, and old-growth forests are clear-cut to make room for Fart AI's data centers, and the last bird flies into a high-rise or wind turbine. We'll keep going until nature can't.
The only real hope is after collapse
I am confident now that the only hope nature, and consequently humans, have is in round 2 of this whole interface. We need to understand that round 1, our current state, will end in failure for both the systems we depend on, and ultimately, ourselves. Instead of dragging this miserable state on, it's better to let the terrible stampede of human desecration continue unabated and begin preparing for how we would approach our next chance.
Nature will recover as soon as humanity reaches the point of non-viability. Whether due to population collapse, environmental collapse, or even nuclear war, civilization will be destroyed, but other species will survive. They've done it this long with us actively and passively trying to kill them. Nature will rebuild. The humans who survive must remember the misery we've created for ourselves by disrupting the natural order of systems.
So let it collapse. When the Eaton Fire destroyed indiscriminately, life returned eagerly. That is the only true hope we have. Humans need to depopulate. Other species will again multiply, and order will be restored.
It’s not that I want collapse. It’s that I’ve seen what comes after—and it’s beautiful in its own way.