Yes thank you for this clarification. Apologies for my being imprecise. Most of the reading I have done has been related to plants and the use of pesticides to intervene.
I 100% agree with you. You absolutely "can't resolve this kind of debate by simply saying "foreign bad" or "foreign good"
Imagine we discover an alien planet with no predators. Should we allow ecological merging, with reasonable expectation of large biodiversity loss. The problem is, the alien planet doesn't have a pesticides industry propped up around saying "foreign bad"
But I have no idea, and am not qualified to answer that hypothetical.
The book referenced actually provides numbers on this. Invasives out competing local species is a rarity according to the studies referenced in the book.
Kind of, the idea is that no species would be invasive if we didn't create the ideal place for it to thrive. Invasives mostly thrive in disturbed areas and don't actually displace natives. The book I referenced goes into way more details, but in most cases invasives actually help repair damaged ecosystems. They are often pioneer species in the disturbed areas.
The bugs are not at fault here. The people who created the environment for them to thrive are.
Edit After Downvote: I get it - They were a major nuisance to you. Lanternflys weren't a one time thing. This has happened before - remember stink bugs? This has happened many times and it is going to get worse. Please don't shoot the messenger.
When I see this article and the state announcement, I think of the Robert Pirsig Quote: "If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding."
As someone originally from Pennsylvania - PA seems especially excited about invasive species. The spotted lantern fly was a big nuisance. Everyone talked about it. The spotted lantern fly and even this pear tree are not the enemy.
Invasive species thrive in ecosystems that we create. You don't want spotted lantern flys? You don't want thorny pear trees? Maybe ask who is defining the term "invasive species" and why they are defining them as such? Anyone thinking about cutting down your pear tree. Read "Beyond the War on Invasive Species: A Permaculture Approach to Ecosystem Restoration" [0]
P.S. Thoughts: This might be the case for software engineering, but might break down in other domains and should be applied carefully elsewhere.
For example recycling plastic is your responsibility - but what if your city burns plastic recycling? What do you do? Do you continue to buy plastic blame the companies for using it and the city for burning it? Why should the individual be penalized?
This seems more gray to me, like yeah okay I'm going to reduce the amount of plastic I buy in that case. And there are alternative like paper. In programming it feels more black and white. There is map and it serves a single purpose.
By the logic of the original article, you should hyperoptimize your code. The problem is. If everyone writes `for` loops instead of using `map`. When map eventually becomes more efficient there's all that garbage code out there that has to be refactored.
It comes down to return on effort. We only have so much effort to put at solving this problem. You maximize your return on effort by having a clear separation of responsibility. In this case the individual's responsibility is to write code to the latest spec. The institution's responsibility is to make the code written as efficient as possible.
A single website saving .000000001 ppm of carbon (exaggerating) is just never going to be worth the effort. But a compiler improvement on all websites running javascript. Now that's totally worth it.
I'm sure this is really well intended, but the individualization of environmental guilt is a major problem. [0]
Where I agree with the article is to use tools like lighthouse and write code that uses the language properly. It is absolutely individual's responsibility to do this. The responsibility of making code efficient (dare I say "green") lies in those writing the browser engines/compilers.
This is a good critique of low-code/no-code in general. The root problem I see of "Unfortunately, when we frame the problem space that way, we have allowed our tools to think for us." is that in reality there are just not enough qualified software engineers out there.