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Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

theguardian.com

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Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#71

Post by barrkel »

newnewpdro wrote: post #40
Jesus_Jones wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They deny science, but also fact-based decision making and inconvenient facts.

This should be expected when your population is still predominately religious. Religions condition people to believe fiction as fact.

I'm afraid I believe that culture that values expertise and scientific decision-making is just that - culture, embedded in people's minds and functioning in a very similar way to religion as a default mindset. Most people who are cheerleaders for science believe scientific "facts" without evidence too. They are not looking at the source data and verifying p-values, discounting cherry-picked studies, etc.

Actual critical thinking takes a lot of effort and most people don't continually question their assumptions. I don't think it's possible to bake that into education. Thus we need to inculcate a decent set of assumptions via educational indoctrination. And this, on its surface, is indistinguishable from religious indoctrination, even if it has the best of intentions.

The fragmentation of national narratives certainly has a part to play as well. Increasing divergence in shared narratives reduces political will for the right kind of indoctrination, while the divergent narratives fight culture wars against one another for control of their kids' minds.

Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#72

Post by briandear »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #60
sverige wrote: post #2

I don't know of any studies to prove it is true, but I suspect that the US Midwest (in particular) has had a similar decline. Anecdotally I can say that there are certainly far fewer insects here than there were in the 60s and 70s when I was growing up, and also that there seem to be far fewer birds. I wonder if we'll stop dumping this stuff into the environment before it's too late. It would require a whole new way…

I wonder if many people today remember Silent Spring : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring The main point of the book was that the use of pesticides (specifically, at the time, DDT) had an impact on the entire ecosystem, not just the agricultural pests they were targeting. If I remember correctly, spring was "silent" because you couldn't hear the animal sounds anymore -including birds' song.

Silent Spring is interesting because most people miss the nuance of that book — a nuance that was critical to enacting smart pesticide policy — a smart policy that didn’t not include “total” bans. Here’s a doctor elaborating:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-rachel-carson-cost-million...

Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#73

Post by bambax »

adrianN wrote: post #56
bambax wrote: post #50

What's so infuriating in France is that farmers are basically sacred: nothing can be said, let alone done, to curb their behavior. They benefit from all kinds of advantages: they don't pay taxes on fuel and don't pay for water (water in France is very expensive for everyone else except farmers), have all kinds of special conditions and fiscal deductions, and that's in addition to the direct payments they get from the…

The alternative seems to be importing a lot of food that has been grown in countries that might care even less about the environment.

No, the alternative is changing agriculture, regulating it and helping it be more environmentally friendly, and not alleviating environment taxes on fuel and water. Tax pesticides, too.

Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#74

Post by lostlogin »

lumberjack wrote: post #70
briandear wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the alternative is importing food from countries who have a competitive advantage in agriculture, such as the United States — thus improving the economic condition of the 98% of French who aren’t farmers. Also, your theory holds no water: France still manages to import vast numbers of cheap Chinese consumer goods which are often produced under extraordinary bad environmental conditions. So if the idea that France…

Go talk to Venezuela about competitive advantage. They purposefully neglected their native food production in favour of food imports from abroad. Now they cannot source enough USD to import enough food and they are fucked. Food is a national security issue. You cannot become dependent on other countries.

And yet being protectionist isn’t great either and leads to situations exactly like the one discussed here. Obviously the Venezuelan situation is a bit more complex than described and while being able to support ones self is important, pouring money into losing sectors is wasteful. Some pretty big countries aren’t self sufficient for food and most countries aren’t self sufficient for everything. TLDR get on with your neighbours and as many others as possible.

Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#75

Post by pvaldes »

Pesticides are a big problem, but is more complex than that. The real conservation of migrating species is a tricky problem. You can do your best effort to save birds in France or Germany just to provide hunters in Malta or Lebanon with plenty of birds (Is estimated than 2.6 millions of migrating birds including many european protected species are killed each year just in Lebanon for example). Is the drama with the vanishing european turtle dove and shrikes for example.

https://conservationaction.co.za/recent-news/stop-killing-le...

Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#76

Post by anon1385 »

briandear wrote: post #72
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if many people today remember Silent Spring : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring The main point of the book was that the use of pesticides (specifically, at the time, DDT) had an impact on the entire ecosystem, not just the agricultural pests they were targeting. If I remember correctly, spring was "silent" because you couldn't hear the animal sounds anymore -including birds' song.

Silent Spring is interesting because most people miss the nuance of that book — a nuance that was critical to enacting smart pesticide policy — a smart policy that didn’t not include “total” bans. Here’s a doctor elaborating: https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-rachel-carson-cost-million...

DDT was never banned internationally for use in malaria control. The idea that it was is a falsehood spread by lobbyists. Maybe you meant to post a different link, but the one that you did post is a terrible and misleading article. This article goes into some of what actually happened and the disinformation campaign:

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/rehabilitatingcar...

Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#77

Post by saalweachter »

briandear wrote: post #66
adrianN wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative seems to be importing a lot of food that has been grown in countries that might care even less about the environment.

No, the alternative is importing food from countries who have a competitive advantage in agriculture, such as the United States — thus improving the economic condition of the 98% of French who aren’t farmers. Also, your theory holds no water: France still manages to import vast numbers of cheap Chinese consumer goods which are often produced under extraordinary bad environmental conditions. So if the idea that France…

This is one of the rare issues where there is sensible middle ground.

I'm a big fan of agricultural subsidies (you want food to be produced in wild excess of demand for a number of reasons), but you can still regulate agricultural practices to eliminate ones which are unnecessarily environmentally destructive for marginal gains in production.

Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#78

Post by gepi79 »

briandear wrote: post #66
adrianN wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative seems to be importing a lot of food that has been grown in countries that might care even less about the environment.

No, the alternative is importing food from countries who have a competitive advantage in agriculture, such as the United States — thus improving the economic condition of the 98% of French who aren’t farmers. Also, your theory holds no water: France still manages to import vast numbers of cheap Chinese consumer goods which are often produced under extraordinary bad environmental conditions. So if the idea that France…

France has every competitive advantage with regard to soil and climate and technology. And the USA (notably California) is an example for bad toxic wasteful agriculture.

Besides: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/09/netherlands-is-world-n...

Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#79

Post by avar »

lumberjack wrote: post #70
briandear wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the alternative is importing food from countries who have a competitive advantage in agriculture, such as the United States — thus improving the economic condition of the 98% of French who aren’t farmers. Also, your theory holds no water: France still manages to import vast numbers of cheap Chinese consumer goods which are often produced under extraordinary bad environmental conditions. So if the idea that France…

Go talk to Venezuela about competitive advantage. They purposefully neglected their native food production in favour of food imports from abroad. Now they cannot source enough USD to import enough food and they are fucked. Food is a national security issue. You cannot become dependent on other countries.

Food's certainly a national security issue, but this has almost zero relevance to the French farming subsidies being discussed here, or similar subsidies in most other countries.

Those subsidies are just enacted to serve entrenched farming interests, usually because rural voters have a disproportionate say in national politics.

If a country was designing a food subsidies policy that was truly concerned about national security they'd do things like maintain a strategic buffer of cheap canned goods, and certainly wouldn't be subsidizing expensive to produce calories like French cheese other animal products which are highly inefficient per produced calorie.

Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#80

Post by Dylanfm »

bambax wrote: post #50

What's so infuriating in France is that farmers are basically sacred: nothing can be said, let alone done, to curb their behavior. They benefit from all kinds of advantages: they don't pay taxes on fuel and don't pay for water (water in France is very expensive for everyone else except farmers), have all kinds of special conditions and fiscal deductions, and that's in addition to the direct payments they get from the…

I've been hearing about some good things happening in France too (and many further afield).

Bec Hellouin is a productive, healthy farm in Bretagne which follows permaculture principles. They've been taking part in studies to see how viable organic market gardening can be. Asking if 1/4 acre is enough to provide a job for 1 person (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8alcGWNyX8&t=7m35s). Read more about them here https://www.fermedubec.com/english/ and the studies are linked to from this page https://www.fermedubec.com/la-recherche/les-rapports-scienti... (in english down the bottom).

There are also some good farms practicing agroforestry, an example later in the video linked to above.

The examples are such a small drop in the ocean, but from Sepp Holzer in Austria to Ridgedale in Sweden, momentum for restorative agriculture will grow. Hopefully swiftly, but that's also dependant on government policy.

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