#The Hater Sparknotes™️

[chase-solidago]

When anyone says the planet is overpopulated, look them dead in the eye and ask them “Okay, so what do we do about it?”

They will hedge, squirm, prevaricate, but don’t let them weasel out of it.

Maybe they’ll land on “I don’t know! It’s a huge complex issue that might not have a solution!” Which is fair, imo.

But usually what happens is they suggest things that don’t impact them. “People should have less kids.” Ask: which people? How are you enforcing that?

Nine times out of ten, it becomes “Well, those people have too many kids.” Often, it’s the poor, or a particular race, or just generally the Global South. Conveniently, not the speaker’s family, race, or class.

This is the path Neo-Malthusian arguments follow. While I was talking about Douglass Tallamy, who advocates for this, I think this is deeply relevant to the cuts we’re seeing in the US government.

Generally, you can’t just say out loud “It’s morally right to kill all (insert class/race here) people.” They don’t like saying that directly. But pulling USAID, cancelling food and medicine projects for communities who need it? Well that conveniently takes care of the problem, doesn’t it? Same goes for revoking universal healthcare. If you can’t afford to see a doctor, then you might as well die. Same goes for medical research. If Black maternal mortality is high, that’s not a problem. It’s a convenient one-in, one-out! It’s not a coincidence that “effective altruist” Elon is leading this attempted-culling while producing as many “master race” children as he can.

I think most people who read writers like Tallamy don’t think twice about this, never reflecting on why it’s so fucked up. It’s worth taking the time to self-reflect on how we discuss things like this.

TLDR: if people start using ecological terms to describe human populations, it’s vital we push back. Scientific terms are often used to make unjust policy appear neutral

[chase-solidago]

One of the things I've found very frustrating about Douglass Tallamy's Nature's Best Hope (2019) is that he repeats a very old-fashioned perspective on the relationship between people and nature over time.

Nature, or broadly, the non-human world, is something you fight, something out to destroy you. Our genetics were passed down despite nature, not because of it.

Contrast, Kimmerer (2012):

Which of these two passages reflect a future where people and plants can co-exist?

A guy on bsky is losing his goddamn shit at me over this. "Tallamy is just telling history! What does that have to do with anything????" Both Tallamy and Kimmerer are deeply involved in some form of restoration, making changes to landscapes to make them reflect pre-settlement America. This matters because how you understand the past, defines the landscape you build in the present.

[chase-solidago]

So Douglass Tallamy is the new sainted hero of native plant gardeners, so I'm finally sitting down and reading his 2019 Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard and... yall......

FIRST OFF This chucklefuck wouldn’t know a history book if it hit him in the face. The literal actual factual inaccuracies range from Aldo Leopold's research, the history of landscape painting, to the overkill hypothesis. Worst of all, he cites Jared fucking Diamond, the racist popsci idiot who was out of date all the way back in 1998.

It’s cool how, in Tallamy’s America, Indigenous Americans only existed to drive mammoths to extinction. Colonization? Oh, that was just “a fight of man against nature”. Literally no mention of even the existence of Indigenous Americans. When they do get mentioned, they are all "gone", so why would they matter anyway? 🤡

Latest update: Was anyone going to mention that Tallamy is a neo-Malthusian antivaxxer? 😬 Apparently being pro-vaccine is the same as being a conservative climate denier, because people refuse to read """the data"""

Combine that with his “the answer to everything is private property” and you end up with some *serious* libertarian vibes

Like, I knew this book would annoy me, but this is some next level stuff. Full on preacher with alternative facts

[chase-solidago]

Are you prepared for my pettiest Tallamy complaint? Guy is wrong/thickheaded about, of all things, Star Wars.

The whole point is that the city-planet Coruscant, the Imperial/Republican Center, is fundamentally dependent on material from the Empire/Republic. Like, y'know, western big cities?

It's that delicious conflict, wherein the rulers who have all the control are actually fundamentally dependent on the resources and labor of the people they control.

Not a relevant metaphor right now at all, right 👀

[chase-solidago]

its very silly to focus on tallamy right now, but it's what counts as a hobby to take my mind off of how horrible shit is

[chase-solidago]

i have to commute an hour to work and I have to read (audiobook) Tallamy for work

so I'm making it everyone's problem

sorry not sorry

[chase-solidago]

wanna see my favorite "wait, 2019???????" passages?

One of the things I've found very frustrating about Douglass Tallamy's Nature's Best Hope (2019) is that he repeats a very old-fashioned perspective on the relationship between people and nature over time.

Nature, or broadly, the non-human world, is something you fight, something out to destroy you. Our genetics were passed down despite nature, not because of it.

Contrast, Kimmerer (2012):

Which of these two passages reflect a future where people and plants can co-exist?

A guy on bsky is losing his goddamn shit at me over this. "Tallamy is just telling history! What does that have to do with anything????" Both Tallamy and Kimmerer are deeply involved in some form of restoration, making changes to landscapes to make them reflect pre-settlement America. This matters because how you understand the past, defines the landscape you build in the present.