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Protect the last of the wild

nature.com

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Re: Protect the last of the wild

#11

Post by NeedMoreTea »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #8
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite apart from your well made point, just about everyone that "makes it" wants a home in the country with some land, probably some old forest. It's the location for so many leisure activities and holidays. Few want to retire in a city. We conveniently don't notice the decline of soils, of insects or other species. The arrogance that we can just keep on until humanity is in battery hutches everywhere and everything…

Everyone wants the facilities resulting from economies of scales and efficiencies that cities provide, such as entertainment options, access to various labor and product markets, selections of schools, hospitals, doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. At the same time, everyone wants to their own space to do their own thing and raise their family and a peaceful neighborhood where you don't have to worry about dealing with…

Everyone? Plenty only move to a city because they have to, to get work. Then Nothing to do with want in many cases. Perhaps even the majority.

There's not the same need for everyone to congregate in one place there was when your factory or shipyard needed 40,000 workers every shift. The internet should have enabled more local and rural enterprises to thrive, except that's not turned out to be the case at all.

Re: Protect the last of the wild

#12

Post by DennisP »

fractallyte wrote: post #3

I'd argue that humanity certainly requires huge tracts of wilderness for its long term survival. So far, we've successfully transformed diverse ecosystems into vast, but basic, mono-cultural 'deserts'. But - is it sustainable? In the century since the Haber process was introduced, the world has started to buckle at the seams from the results: huge population growth, with accompanying pollution (nitrates, pesticides,…

The one thing that gives me hope on this, is that lab-grown meat requires about 95% less land, energy, and water. If we can get it cheap enough we could put most of our farms out of business.

Re: Protect the last of the wild

#13

Post by hazz99 »

DennisP wrote: post #12
fractallyte wrote: post #3

I'd argue that humanity certainly requires huge tracts of wilderness for its long term survival. So far, we've successfully transformed diverse ecosystems into vast, but basic, mono-cultural 'deserts'. But - is it sustainable? In the century since the Haber process was introduced, the world has started to buckle at the seams from the results: huge population growth, with accompanying pollution (nitrates, pesticides,…

The one thing that gives me hope on this, is that lab-grown meat requires about 95% less land, energy, and water. If we can get it cheap enough we could put most of our farms out of business.

I seriously think lab grown meats will save the world, if we can pull it off in a commercially viable fashion.

Re: Protect the last of the wild

#14

Post by shinryuu »

hazz99 wrote: post #13
DennisP wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one thing that gives me hope on this, is that lab-grown meat requires about 95% less land, energy, and water. If we can get it cheap enough we could put most of our farms out of business.

I seriously think lab grown meats will save the world, if we can pull it off in a commercially viable fashion.

It's fascinating how human beings cling to old habits.

It's like we as a species couldn't go vegetarian by choice.

Re: Protect the last of the wild

#15

Post by lotsofpulp »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #11
lotsofpulp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone wants the facilities resulting from economies of scales and efficiencies that cities provide, such as entertainment options, access to various labor and product markets, selections of schools, hospitals, doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. At the same time, everyone wants to their own space to do their own thing and raise their family and a peaceful neighborhood where you don't have to worry about dealing with…

Everyone? Plenty only move to a city because they have to, to get work. Then Nothing to do with want in many cases. Perhaps even the majority. There's not the same need for everyone to congregate in one place there was when your factory or shipyard needed 40,000 workers every shift. The internet should have enabled more local and rural enterprises to thrive, except that's not turned out to be the case at all.

Those who want to go to the city only because they have to work fall under the "want access to labor markets" part of my statement. "Everyone" is an exaggeration of course on my part, but it still seems like a significant portion of the population, especially high earners, want incompatible parts of urban and suburban life.

I was commenting on the claim that "few want to retire in the city", which I agree with, but in old age you need access to medical professionals and other facilities that aren't economically feasible in rural populations, so even though people want the rural life, they don't want or can't afford to give up those other conveniences of more urban areas.

Re: Protect the last of the wild

#16

Post by omosubi »

I've been thinking about this quote a lot recently - "Canada, the most affluent of countries, operates on a depletion economy which leaves destruction in its wake. Your people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money." It's attributed to a canadian Aboriginal but could apply to any industrialized or semi industrialized country. Hopefully we save ourselves before it's too late

Re: Protect the last of the wild

#17

Post by DennisP »

shinryuu wrote: post #14
hazz99 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously think lab grown meats will save the world, if we can pull it off in a commercially viable fashion.

It's fascinating how human beings cling to old habits. It's like we as a species couldn't go vegetarian by choice.

We could, we just won't. People have been trying to promote that for the past several decades and meat consumption globally has just gone up. The book Clean Meat devotes a chapter to this; historically every culture has consumed more meat when they could afford it. Most people just like it.

We almost hunted whales to extinction for their oil. That didn't stop because we persuaded people to quit using oil in their lamps. It stopped because someone invented kerosene. Whaling was the fifth-largest industry in the U.S., and then in thirty years it was gone.

Re: Protect the last of the wild

#18

Post by mac01021 »

grondilu wrote: post #10
jarmitage wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Humanity doesn't need wilderness to survive and grow Can you back this up? I agree with the comment by fractallyte that wilderness is a necessity for long-term survival of humans. Also guaranteeing food and water without wilderness has never been attempted before...

It seems to me that the opposite assessment requires more justification. Ever since Neolithic, mankind has been domesticating most if not all species it consumed. And we've been deforesting like crazy. We're not hunter gatherers anymore, so our progress has consisted relying less and less on wilderness and more on controlled, artificial environments. I'm not saying that we don't need wilderness for deeper reasons (sa…

Absolutely not definitive, but the biosphere 2 experiments provide a data point.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2

Re: Protect the last of the wild

#19

Post by village-idiot »

shinryuu wrote: post #14
hazz99 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously think lab grown meats will save the world, if we can pull it off in a commercially viable fashion.

It's fascinating how human beings cling to old habits. It's like we as a species couldn't go vegetarian by choice.

We evolved as omnivores. We are a predatory species. We can’t go vegetarian as a species because we aren’t a vegetarian species.

Re: Protect the last of the wild

#20

Post by ivanhoe »

Problem here is that developed world has destroyed it's wilderness long time ago, used that land to produce food and resources, but now we demand that others don't do the same. Why don't we instead create a wilderness by giving up on our local agriculture land? Nature takes back the land very quickly and if you limit hunting and repopulate the animals you'll quickly have a full-blown wilderness back. It doesn't have to be Amazon or some place in Africa, Europe once was covered in forests end-to-end too.
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