The Sunflower star die-off and heat related disease were posted on the Holocene extinction thread Jan. 29 and Jan. 30 posts # 238 & 239. This is my world and I have been watching for several decades as things degrade. We had a very similar starfish die-in the 82-83 El Niño and the 97-98 event. The starfish did recover but as the oceans continue to warm they will eventually hit thresholds that remove them from the nearshore ecosystem and their losses will cascade in sad and damaging ways. Heat, rapid ecological transitions, disease ,death, and truncated ecosystems.
There are terrestrial parallels , insects, birds, reptiles , amphibians, either directly threatened by heat resulting in stress and disease or affected by the loss of their primary food supplies because heat change when insects bloomed and when migrations and nesting of birds arrived at their nesting sites.
This is my world , the oceans, riparian farmland animals that I have known for my entire life .Vanishing before my eyes. I raise farm animals and I deal with them when they are sick. We don't have the knowledge , ability or skill sets to Doctor our wild environs. Most people are so damn removed from nature they never even see what is happening . They have no empathy for those things they haven't lived with, they feel no pain. The vanishing insect populations are a good example. Even those few people who happen to notice that the bug splats on their windshields have disappeared couldn't really give a crap. Dulled by their fancy machines, the glowing computer screens, their myopic politics, or just their stupidity. Nature will repay us for our vanity , heat and changes in hydrological cycles will deliver old vicious opportunistic scourges upon us too as our synthetic monitory utopia transforms into hell on earth.
Technology is death my friends because is removes us as active participants in our living world. Those who survive with know again the stars at night, will know again the terrible tolls of childbirth and childhood disease but the planet will again have a chance at healing from a species emotionally unprepared to deal with their strange sad attempts at taking the reins of gods.
I am angry too Zizek , no swearing, no personal attacks . Rage against the machine ! Sadly I am guilty too in my comforts , we all are . It defines tragic but your generation Zizek has been captured more than mine by this computer screen , know that too.