Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn
1–10 of 277 posts
Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn
#2> "Doing so will require systemic shifts in how we produce food, create energy, manage our oceans and use materials,"
This is a hard political problem. The owners of the current means to produce meat/oil/etc. want to keep their fortune and to move them to renewable/plant-base/new-tech solutions make them lose that edge and creates real competition.
The problem with economy/ecology is that many people are addicted to easy money. We have the tech and knowledge (or we are close in some fields) to replace the problematic industries.
The change for the better is a matter of time and pushing politicians and big investors to do the right thing.
Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn
#3> "Doing so will require systemic shifts in how we produce food, create energy, manage our oceans and use materials," This is a hard political problem. The owners of the current means to produce meat/oil/etc. want to keep their fortune and to move them to renewable/plant-base/new-tech solutions make them lose that edge and creates real competition. The problem with economy/ecology is that many people are addicted to…
“... The owners of the current means to produce meat/oil/etc...”
Just as often as big operations contributing to this, it’s the mom or pop or children doing this in a subsistence manner. A contributing factor is encroachment due to local population growth.
Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn
#4> "Doing so will require systemic shifts in how we produce food, create energy, manage our oceans and use materials," This is a hard political problem. The owners of the current means to produce meat/oil/etc. want to keep their fortune and to move them to renewable/plant-base/new-tech solutions make them lose that edge and creates real competition. The problem with economy/ecology is that many people are addicted to…
We are addicted to high population density, making babies and helping get everyone to what we consider is the minimum level of consumption, which is exactly 2x higher than the Earth can provide sustainably.
At one point we’ll have to say “Earth can only feed X billion people if we want to have a medium pressure on our environment”.
Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn
#5I think the future is very grim for biodiversity. Even if we stopped destroying habitats tomorrow, many larger animals are already living in small, isolated pockets surrounded by roads, farms, and industry. Meanwhile, plants and smaller animals face intense competition from invasive species - often brought in by accident thanks to the constant flow of goods around the globe. We're probably headed for a pretty homogeneous global ecology - where "economically significant" or highly adaptable plants and animals thrive, while the others are relegated to zoos, national parks, or extinction.
Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn
#6I wish we spent more time talking about "habitat destruction" instead of "climate change", while understanding that climate change is the largest form of habitat destruction.
Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn
#7>New modelling evidence suggests we can halt and even reverse habitat loss and deforestation if we take urgent conservation action and change the way we produce and consume food.
I'm pessimistic with this claim. From my experience, if a productive process like agriculture becomes more efficient, we scale up output. The resources being used up, in this case land, won't be reduced. For an analogy, consider how adding more lanes to a busy highway ultimately means more people drive and congestion is just as bad.
What we need is more government protection of habitats. But it's hard for a government to directly and explicitly oppose economic opportunities.
Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn
#8> "Doing so will require systemic shifts in how we produce food, create energy, manage our oceans and use materials," This is a hard political problem. The owners of the current means to produce meat/oil/etc. want to keep their fortune and to move them to renewable/plant-base/new-tech solutions make them lose that edge and creates real competition. The problem with economy/ecology is that many people are addicted to…
We are addicted to high population density, making babies and helping get everyone to what we consider is the minimum level of consumption, which is exactly 2x higher than the Earth can provide sustainably. At one point we’ll have to say “Earth can only feed X billion people if we want to have a medium pressure on our environment”.
There's nothing wrong with population density. We'd do better to have people living in dense city centers instead of sprawled out into every corner of the wilderness.
Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn
#9I find it notable how indirect the author is about the “Why” in this story:
> New modelling evidence suggests we can halt and even reverse habitat loss and deforestation if we take urgent conservation action and change the way we produce and consume food.
> The British TV presenter and naturalist Sir David Attenborough said the Anthropocene, the geological age during which human activity has come to the fore, could be the moment we achieve a balance with the natural world and become stewards of our planet.
Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn
#10Ok, this is a crazy comment, but I have been playing Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 a lot and almost every piece of land has something, somewhere built on it. Farm, suburb, etc It's depressing but maybe it helps me understand that we are using
too much of earth. Do we really need endless farms?