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Earth has lost half of its wildlife in the past 40 years (2014)

theguardian.com

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Re: Earth has lost half of its wildlife in the past 40 years (2014)

#41

Post by belorn »

ericmcer wrote: post #21
CalRobert wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only a few people, I think. It's like we found the asteroid headed for Earth and instead of panicking, just shrugged. There are probably fifty times a day I feel a deep seated dreadxiety about something I'm doing. Wearing synthetic fibre. Finding out a soap has triclosan in it. Using a disposable nappy. Eating an avocado. Eating fish (appropriately enough, eating said synthetic fibres in that fish). And yet I have co…

My personal favorite version of this experience: Seven years ago I was working at trader joes and trying out vegetarianism for environmental reasons. A lady would come in every few weeks and buy just massive quantities of ground beef, like 30-40lbs in one trip. I finally asked her what all that beef was for and she replied "I feed it to my dogs". What can you even do? Thats probably the no-meat diet of 10 people bein…

If you want to change your diet for environmental reasons, I would recommend going for net positive rather than vegetarianism. It cost a bit extra, but products like honey (bee farming is generally seen as a net positive on the environment), fishing from overpopulated lakes, and meat/plants from invasive species are examples where additional commercial pressure would do wonders.

Invasive species in general often carries the problem that hunting them cost more than the population is willing to pay, so they are "allowed" to spread and cause havoc with the ecology. Overpopulated lakes generally stay such because the fish is seen as undesirable, often based purely on local cultural views. Vegetarianism do not address those issue and generally the veggies being grow are those that is already being grown beyond what would be healthy from a bio diversity perspective.

Re: Earth has lost half of its wildlife in the past 40 years (2014)

#42

Post by arvinsim »

CalRobert wrote: post #36
lostmsu wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get used to it. Everything comes to an end. All your favorite animals will, and humans will, and whatever comes after them. I highly doubt consuming meat today affects lifestyle of most humans in 50 years noticeably.

True, and given the heat death of the universe I'm pretty nihilistic, but I like to think there is purpose in even temporary goodness and beauty. A bell's ring will fade to nothing but their sound still brought joy, if only briefly.

Nothing wrong about being an anti-nihilist. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheAntiNihilist

Re: Earth has lost half of its wildlife in the past 40 years (2014)

#43

Post by dredmorbius »

CalRobert wrote: post #34
madez wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your actions are not meaningless. They are what one person can accomplish, and thats what everybody has to be content with when in doubt. If you make the world better by being less bad, then chances are you are already doing what one human can do. That is fine and enough for one human, by definition. When we aim for the stars we first must learn to walk, and be content with little steps for a very long time.

I just meant that my reduced negative externalities will be produced instead by an opportunistic actor. If half of Americans said "burning carbon is bad, I'll ride a bike instead" it would largely be making gas cheaper for the other half, who would then just buy bigger, heavier SUV's. This doesn't apply to all things, just cost-limited goods where the negative externalities aren't priced in. Plastic is basically free…

Pretty much this.

If you want to reduce the consumption of some thing, make it more expensive.

Paradoxically: increased efficiency reduces costs and so increases total consumption. This was noted by economist and engineer William Stanley Jevons, in the 19th century.

There are different ways of increasing costs, and not all necessarily involve prices (or taxes), though those tend to be the most effective and easiest ways to do so. Legal, social, and moral costs can also be imposed (criminalising use, making use anathema, making use taboo), but these take time to impose and have various side effects.

This is a difficult problem, and even recognising the dynamic is difficult. It's deviled ecolologists, economists, politicians, and others, for over two hundred years (and arguably, for over two thousand).

Re: Earth has lost half of its wildlife in the past 40 years (2014)

#44

Post by ebcode »

collyw wrote: post #27
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #26

What if say 200 years from now, we have a human population of 20 billion people where everyone lives like the current top 10% of people in the USA. There is long life-expectancy, very low childhood mortality. Low inequality. There are however no wild animals on land. Every land animal is either a pet, livestock, or in a zoo or preserve. Except for the limited species above, every other land species is extinct (but th…

I am reading your post wondering how that could happen. Wildlife disappearing is not the problem is merely as symptom of the problem - too many people.

I don't think it's the number of people that matter, but rather the behavior of those people.

It appears that humanity lived in balance (Lotka-Volterra style) with the rest of the inhabitants of the planet until the invention of agriculture, which is still relatively recent.

The transitions that led from agriculture to walled cities to city-states to modern nation-states all occurred within the past 10,000 years or so. Whereas the oldest known human fossil is something like a million years old. Divide that 10,000 by the million years our species has been on this planet, you get 1%. So for 99% of humanity's time on the planet we probably behaved a lot like most of the other land mammals.

Something happened that led to the changes in our behavior, and we are now facing the consequences of our collective actions for the past thousands of years. It looks like we'll need to change even more before it's too late.

Re: Earth has lost half of its wildlife in the past 40 years (2014)

#46

Post by CalRobert »

tmnvix wrote: post #33
ciconia wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really want to make a change, leave the city and go live in the countryside. You'll be able to consume less, grow your own food and be closer to nature.

In most cases I think that would necessitate owning a car. I think not owning a car and living an urban lifestyle is a better tradeoff for me at least.

Cities are more sustainable for most people, by definition really. Homesteading with high biodiversity and a cargo bike might be good too, but probably not for ten billion people.

Re: Earth has lost half of its wildlife in the past 40 years (2014)

#47

Post by collyw »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #28
collyw wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am reading your post wondering how that could happen. Wildlife disappearing is not the problem is merely as symptom of the problem - too many people.

We have much more people on earth than we had 500 years ago. We probably have much less wildlife than before. However, people now on average live longer, healthier lives than before. As humans, we are much, much better off than we were 500 years ago. Wildlife as a whole is probably worse off than it was 500 years ago. Thus, it is not an impossible scenario to have humans thriving, but wildlife in serious danger.

> As humans, we are much, much better off than we were 500 years ago.

That's very subjective and depends on what you are measuring. Sure we have less conflict, less people in absolute poverty, but we also have more people in slavery than any time in history.

Re: Earth has lost half of its wildlife in the past 40 years (2014)

#48

Post by CalRobert »

madez wrote: post #38
CalRobert wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just meant that my reduced negative externalities will be produced instead by an opportunistic actor. If half of Americans said "burning carbon is bad, I'll ride a bike instead" it would largely be making gas cheaper for the other half, who would then just buy bigger, heavier SUV's. This doesn't apply to all things, just cost-limited goods where the negative externalities aren't priced in. Plastic is basically free…

> I just meant that my reduced negative externalities will be produced instead by an opportunistic actor. I don't think this is true. Humans are deeply social and copy each other. One can easily see this with young humans, but I didn't fully appreciate this with adult humans before I saw it myself. When I turned semi-custom-vegan, I did hear that it is kind of pointless because animals will still be slaughtered for o…

When I cycled to work in LA people seemed more keen on terrorizing me on the roads, or joking about killing me in the office, than on copying me.

Re: Earth has lost half of its wildlife in the past 40 years (2014)

#49

Post by nojvek »

lostmsu wrote: post #30
CalRobert wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only a few people, I think. It's like we found the asteroid headed for Earth and instead of panicking, just shrugged. There are probably fifty times a day I feel a deep seated dreadxiety about something I'm doing. Wearing synthetic fibre. Finding out a soap has triclosan in it. Using a disposable nappy. Eating an avocado. Eating fish (appropriately enough, eating said synthetic fibres in that fish). And yet I have co…

Get used to it. Everything comes to an end. All your favorite animals will, and humans will, and whatever comes after them. I highly doubt consuming meat today affects lifestyle of most humans in 50 years noticeably.

On the counter. What if it does. What if after 50 years, humans really hate their predecessors and carry shame like the Germans do for Hitler.

Just sayin!

Re: Earth has lost half of its wildlife in the past 40 years (2014)

#50

Post by nojvek »

lostmsu wrote: post #29
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #26

What if say 200 years from now, we have a human population of 20 billion people where everyone lives like the current top 10% of people in the USA. There is long life-expectancy, very low childhood mortality. Low inequality. There are however no wild animals on land. Every land animal is either a pet, livestock, or in a zoo or preserve. Except for the limited species above, every other land species is extinct (but th…

Why wouldn't it? Certainly better, than attempts to artificially limit population.

I’d highly recommend visiting Serengeti or the Masai Mara.

100’s of kilometers of wilderness where animals freely roam about and do their thing without human competition is a very surreal sight.

If the mara+Serengeti or the barrier reef disappear from the planet, I wouldn’t want to live with joy anymore.

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