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Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans

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211–220 of 447 posts

Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans

#211

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Humans are more important by far. This idea that a cow’s life is as precious as a human’s life is the worst type of misanthropic thought. There is a hierarchy and although we shouldn’t torture living things, giving them “1 bad day” is totally ethical when used to endure and pleasure. I admit we don’t live up to that standard necessarily, but we should strive for it. Ideally everyone that wants to is eating happy anim…

> Humans are more important by far. From the perspective of which species? Does might make right? For intra-human relationships as well? Could anything evil happen as a result of embracing this outlook?

The human perspective. There are extraordinarily few chickens participating in HN comment threads.

Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know about you but I'm quite happy to be alive and reasonably healthy I think the important thing to contemplate is that this might be at the expense of other people, living or yet to be born. Not that we've done anything wrong – just that the circumstances that make this possible for us might preclude it for others. > nihilistic platitudes like "how is there still an ecosystem?" are completely baffling to…

> I think the important thing to contemplate is that [being happy to be alive and reasonably healthy] might be at the expense of other people, living or yet to be born. Not that we've done anything wrong – just that the circumstances that make this possible for us might preclude it for others this is called the natural order of things. nature is competition. this is all self-evident. all of our ancestors innately und…

> this is called the natural order of things

The natural order of things is only important inasmuch as it is a stable, desirable order. Lots of things we don't like happen in nature: starvation, disease, rape, murder, torture, isolation, immense pain. If these things happen to us we don't blithely say, "Ah, the natural order of things. It's all good!"

People want to preserve the natural order because they like the things they find in it. These things make them happy. Also, they like security. The natural order has persisted, with occasional mass extinctions and other disasters, for quite some time, so splitting off from the natural order into something that holds no promise of stability and security doesn't seem like a good choice.

But to the extent possible people who value nature and stability of existing ecosystems are still picking and choosing for themselves from what nature offers. No disease, please. Delayed senescence, please. No freezing to death or drowning. Less tooth decay.

And I suspect you don't adopt a throw-up-my-hands-and-let-shit-happen philosophy in your own life. You look both ways before you cross the street. You don't eat every mushroom you see. You stop walking when you come to a cliff edge.

So basically "[being happy to be alive and reasonably healthy] might be at the expense of other people, living or yet to be born. Not that we've done anything wrong – just that the circumstances that make this possible for us might preclude it for others" is just applying this same foresight and judgment more broadly. The qualitative difference is that it is not selfish. It is the difference between "I shouldn't step on this landmine" and "I shouldn't place a landmine where someone else will step". Why do this? Again, the same old reason: other people's happiness makes you happy; other people's sadness makes you sad.

When we want the natural order, it's only by accident.

Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or perhaps Agent Smith mistook an S-curve that hasn't started to level off yet for unfettered exponential growth. > Generally, developed nations have seen a decline in their growth rates in recent decades ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth#Population_g... ) Or perhaps he was just evil and had a hatred of humanity that he was justifying with whatever reason pleased him.

But has their resource consumption per capita leveled off? Population numbers aren't the scary thing about our CURRENT population. What's scary is that China and India, which is almost 3 billion people, want US-levels of resource consumption, and they are full steam ahead in doing so. Oh, so the curve will tail off around 11 or 15 billion? Who cares. Each billion is 3x the population of the US, and they all want our…

India is right below replacement levels and China is well below. I find it interesting that Americans are currently consuming that many resources-- it would seem to me it's unsustainable if everyone can't do it.

Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is the individual animal that is the fundamental unit. Not. This is a very common mistake among people that does not understand ecology.

You can call me a heretic for questioning His Majesty The Ecologist, but the emperor wears no clothes and percentage of aggregate biomass is the most meaningless metric I've ever heard to study mammals.

Your opinion about monarchs and underpants has been carefully registered by our royal lackey penguins

Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are more important by far. This idea that a cow’s life is as precious as a human’s life is the worst type of misanthropic thought. There is a hierarchy and although we shouldn’t torture living things, giving them “1 bad day” is totally ethical when used to endure and pleasure. I admit we don’t live up to that standard necessarily, but we should strive for it. Ideally everyone that wants to is eating happy anim…

> Humans are more important by far. From the perspective of which species? Does might make right? For intra-human relationships as well? Could anything evil happen as a result of embracing this outlook?

Meat tastes delicious and is packed full of healthy things we need to live. Sone animals would eat us when given the chance.

I think it’s important to not treat animals like humans precisely so we don’t treat humans like calorie sources.

Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans

#216
post #199

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If you're body building or doing serious exercise, it can be hard to get the protein your body needs to recover and build muscle on a strictly vegan diet. I've tried it and it's difficult.

Hard to get the protein? That's the oldest excuse in the book. Debunked endlessly. Simply not true. https://www.peta.org/living/food/vegan-bodybuilders/ https://www.reddit.com/r/veganbodybuilding/ https://www.reddit.com/r/veganfitness/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/comments/8y4noz/vegan_... https://www.theveganlink.com/resources/30-vegan-recipes-for-... https://plantbasedfaqs.com/protein-in-beans-vs-meat/ And…

> Since I bet you don't want to only eat beans, you'll probably want to take a pea protein supplement to replace the whey supplement. These cost about the same, but vary depending on location. Also, a vegan diet will be higher in carbs and lower in fat, unless you supplement with a lot of protein powder and eat a lot of nuts.

Your own source admits that it is difficult to get enough protein in a vegan diet without supplementation. I'm on a medication that increases my insulin response, and I can't eat 400+ grams of carbohydrates a day just to get ~100 grams of protein without both getting fat and putting myself at risk of pre-diabetes.

> https://www.theveganlink.com/resources/30-vegan-recipes-for-...

Many of these are just carbohydrates. One of the recipes is literally just overnight oats, others are full of bread, grains and other carbohydrates with little to no protein at all.

Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans

#217
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Humans are more important by far. From the perspective of which species? Does might make right? For intra-human relationships as well? Could anything evil happen as a result of embracing this outlook?

The human perspective. There are extraordinarily few chickens participating in HN comment threads.

On a planet filled with millions of species, is it ethically defensible to consider these matters from the perspective of just one?

Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans

#218
post #109
post #25

Going off on a tangent, but the scale of production is very hard to grasp. I'm probably not the first person to observe this, but I once did some napkin math about steel production, and what I realized kind of blew me away. About 1.9 billion tonnes in 2020. Like with billions of dollars, I have no intuition for such numbers. Context is needed. Global steel production just before WW I was about 70 million tonnes. So p…

I made a website to help visualize American meat consumption in terms of animals slaughtered per second. It’s pretty insane and I think does something to help communicate just how large such industrial operations truly are. https://zach.ws/meat/

I know it is not liked but I will say it that I am really proud to be a vegetarian.

Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans

#220
post #59

The sad thing is that 100 years ago humans and livestock accounted for around 5% of the biomass (all zoomass, not land mammals only), 95% being the wildlife. Now the numbers are reversed. We've stolen the land from the wildlife and dedicated it to a few species we consider edible (agriland is more than forests now, and 75% of it for animal agriculture). Is anybody surprised that we're living in the anthropocene, defi…

Reminds me of George Carlin, "The earth will be fine..."

In what sense will the earth be fine?

Is it the sense that people care about or is it a rhetorical trick to make people feel good about not caring?

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