Stop biodiversity loss or we could face our own extinction, warns UN • Hacker News Board

Re: Stop biodiversity loss or we could face our own extinction, warns UN

#101

Post by esarbe » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

It's incredible how many participants in this topic don't seem to grasp the delicacy of earth's ecosystem and see it as something that is easily replaced or that humans can exist without.

Let's not kid around; if the ecosystem of goes the way of the way of the dodo, humans will go along for the ride.

You might (or not) have noticed that humans don't exist outside of the ecological system that our plant harbors. We're part of this ecological network, we're fully, totally, non-negotiable dependent on it. Techno-utopian dreams (nightmares, more like it) of being independent of the 'natural' world are not going to save mankind; we're part of 'nature', we exist within nature, there's no existence for humans outside nature. We need an ecosystem that provides us with calories and oxygen. The only ecosystem in existence that is capable of providing that is the very ecosystem we're working tirelessly to dismantle and destroy. So yes; we might die out because of lack of resources. We very probably will. There's only so much damage that an ecosystem can take. And there are tons of signs that signal that our earthly ecosystem is reaching it's breaking point; - we've lost about a third of the arable land in the last forty years. - we've lost about 30% of bio diversity in the last twenty years. - we've lost almost 75% of insect biomass in the last thirty years.

The loss of insects is especially alarming; insects play a major role in all food webs on earth. The disappearance of 75% of insects (biomass, not species) has a catastrophic impact of everything further up the food chain. Yes, including humans.

We're currently working non-stop to destroy our ecosystem's capacity to carry animals in the upper food chain. Guess who's on top of that food chain. Yes, us humans.

Don't kid yourself; we're currently rushing full-speed ahead towards a full-scale ecosystem collapse. And don't fool yourself on our ability to create and maintain a man-made closed ecosystem as a replacement; we're not able to do that and we probably won't for many, many, many decades to come.

The only ecosystem we have to save our collective asses is the one we're currently punishing every day with our overproduction, overconsumption, with our fertilizers, insecticides, pesticides and waste.

It's so past high times that we - humans, as a collective - have a hard talk how much longer we want to exist as a 'civilized' species, with global trade, no struggle for survival, boundless capitalism.

Because if we keep going, we've got a dozen or so decades left. It's back to hunter gathering for the rest of mankind's existence after that.

If we leave enough prey species alive, that is. Otherwise that will be the end of mankind's short stint.

Re: Stop biodiversity loss or we could face our own extinction, warns UN

#102

Post by chillwaves » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 5:12 PM UTC

mchannon wrote: post #81

bamboozled wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once saw a great quote which was, "maybe food is too cheap". This is probably true, we could probably eat better quality, organic food grown in a more diverse way, it would just cost more. On the flip side, it would be more valued so we'd have less waste. I can't imagine the amount of "non-valued" food, fruit vegetables etc which end up in the bin.

Everybody here is ignoring yield per acre. RoundUp, for all its faults, drives the yield number up. More people (and particularly more cattle) are fed per acre when you use pesticides. If you banned the pesticides, it would do a lot of good, but now consider how many more acres would need to be farmed in order to keep the overall yields the same. How many acres would be cleared that would not otherwise be cleared? I…

Can just eat less meat and gain 10x efficiency.

Re: Stop biodiversity loss or we could face our own extinction, warns UN

#103

Post by colordrops » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 5:33 PM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #71

ah765 wrote: post #9

I agree with the big idea of conservation of biodiversity, but it really bothers me when these articles are using what seems like lies and fear tactics to convince me. 2 years? Why is it so urgent? The article doesn't explain. And "By 2050, Africa is expected to lose 50% of its birds and mammals," sounded really implausible to me. I had to do further research to determine that they are probably actually referring to…

Repeated hysterical predictions of human-level catastrophic events are the single largest impediment that environmental causes face -- because when they repeatedly fail to come true people update their priors accordingly. The worst part is that the people making the exaggerations think they are helping.

There are billions of people on the planet and there's no way to stop some of them from being hysterical. It would be a shame to fail as a species because we didn't like the way the message was delivered.

Re: Stop biodiversity loss or we could face our own extinction, warns UN

#104

Post by zeroname » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

strainer wrote: post #77

ramblenode wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First of all, "organic farming" is marketing BS. At least in the US, there is a "certified organic" label regulated by the USDA. https://www.ams.usda.gov/about-ams/programs-offices/national...

Its not just a label, its a regulated labeling term. Practically all food labelled as organic in US, EU and other regions has to be certified organic. This "marketing BS" idea is pure meme. https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/organic-labeling-s...

It's still marketing BS. Yes, governments certify and regulates marketing BS.

The part that makes it BS has nothing to do with regulation. Homeopathy and Chiropractic are regulated and certified in various ways, they're still BS.

Re: Stop biodiversity loss or we could face our own extinction, warns UN

#105

Post by tejtm » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 5:51 PM UTC

Illniyar wrote: post #55

dyeje wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The environment is a complex web of interdependent relationships between species and ecological processes. You remove enough relationships and it'll just collapse.

That's very vague. Collapse how? According to other comments we have already remove 60% of species, why wasn't that enough to cause a collapse. Other species take up the slack left by those removed.

In addition to collapse, climate change, etc which would be relatively predictable, there would also likely be a potent feed back mechanism in the form of global war bringing the extinction tipping point closer much more quickly than we are prepared to cope with.

Re: Stop biodiversity loss or we could face our own extinction, warns UN

#106

Post by zeroname » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 5:54 PM UTC

strainer wrote: post #96

toasterlovin wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s marketing BS in the sense that organic food still uses pesticides. I guarantee you that fact would be shocking to most consumers of organic foods.

That "in a sense" is just making light of what is literally a falsehood and which introduced a string of them in the source comment: "It doesn't have any properly defined meaning ...." Organics pesticide use is much more selective and heavily controlled than standard regulations[1]. Your notion that most consumers of organic food have unrealistic expectations ( with no survey to support that ) is really just a statem…

If the meaning is so "properly defined", then why do we have a self-described organic farmer in this thread, who says pesticides are off the table for him?

Who decides which pesticides are okay, what is the criterion that everyone can agree on? Why are there differences across countries, if there is a proper definition of it?

By the way, you can slap a "gluten free" label on table water and it'll be marketing BS, but at least "gluten free" has a properly defined meaning.

Re: Stop biodiversity loss or we could face our own extinction, warns UN

#107

Post by xg15 » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 5:55 PM UTC

mchannon wrote: post #81

bamboozled wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once saw a great quote which was, "maybe food is too cheap". This is probably true, we could probably eat better quality, organic food grown in a more diverse way, it would just cost more. On the flip side, it would be more valued so we'd have less waste. I can't imagine the amount of "non-valued" food, fruit vegetables etc which end up in the bin.

Everybody here is ignoring yield per acre. RoundUp, for all its faults, drives the yield number up. More people (and particularly more cattle) are fed per acre when you use pesticides. If you banned the pesticides, it would do a lot of good, but now consider how many more acres would need to be farmed in order to keep the overall yields the same. How many acres would be cleared that would not otherwise be cleared? I…

> More people (and particularly more cattle) are fed per acre when you use pesticides.

This feels like saying we absolutely need multiple GB of RAM to display a website because how else would Angular work otherwise?

If the increased yield per acre is used primarily to support todays industrial-scale meat production, maybe we should address the latter first. The way meat production works today seems to have almost exclusively downsides: It's a moral bankruptcy considering current state of research in animal consciousness, it's a health hazard for consumers, it's an inefficient way to consume proteins and as you note, it monopolizes vast parts of crop production.

Re: Stop biodiversity loss or we could face our own extinction, warns UN

#108

Post by carapace » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 5:56 PM UTC

Permaculture (Applied Ecology) - we can provide food and CARBON-NEUTRAL fuel for ourselves without wrecking Nature.

A "Permie" farm is more productive than any other mode of food production. By setting up ecosystems that consist of a preponderance of human-usable crop species you can grow multiple times the amount of food-per-acre of conventional agriculture (even with GMOs and pesticides, et. al.) After the initial set-up very little labor is required.

Permie farms foster biodiversity.

"Permaculture Behind `Greening the Desert` with Geoff Lawton" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q41b05ku9U Salt desert to figs in two years.

Toby Hemenway - "How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and the Earth, but Not Civilization" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nLKHYHmPbo

"Alcohol Can Be a Gas!" http://permaculture.com/ Small-scale alcohol fuel production integrated with a Permaculture farm. You can grow your own energy. The economics are totally different from large-scale industrial ethanol production. You can start this in your backyard and be driving your converted car from your own home-grown carbon-neutral solar energy within a few months. Faster if you scavenge feedstock. Farmer Dave used to have an arrangement with a donut shop to ferment their old leftover/scrap dough.

Re: Stop biodiversity loss or we could face our own extinction, warns UN

#109

Post by cm2187 » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 5:58 PM UTC

tejtm wrote: post #105

Illniyar wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very vague. Collapse how? According to other comments we have already remove 60% of species, why wasn't that enough to cause a collapse. Other species take up the slack left by those removed.

In addition to collapse, climate change, etc which would be relatively predictable, there would also likely be a potent feed back mechanism in the form of global war bringing the extinction tipping point closer much more quickly than we are prepared to cope with.

Don’t forget Ebola, the loss of fertility because of smartphone radiations and an inpending martian invasion...

Re: Stop biodiversity loss or we could face our own extinction, warns UN

#110

Post by WalterSear » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 6:19 PM UTC

mchannon wrote: post #81

bamboozled wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once saw a great quote which was, "maybe food is too cheap". This is probably true, we could probably eat better quality, organic food grown in a more diverse way, it would just cost more. On the flip side, it would be more valued so we'd have less waste. I can't imagine the amount of "non-valued" food, fruit vegetables etc which end up in the bin.

Everybody here is ignoring yield per acre. RoundUp, for all its faults, drives the yield number up. More people (and particularly more cattle) are fed per acre when you use pesticides. If you banned the pesticides, it would do a lot of good, but now consider how many more acres would need to be farmed in order to keep the overall yields the same. How many acres would be cleared that would not otherwise be cleared? I…

It's meat that's driving the need for high yield, and large crops. Most agriculture is driven by meat production.

The solution is obvious, straightforward, and would be relatively easy, but human nature makes it hard to discuss, let alone implement.