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A third of North America’s birds have vanished

nautil.us

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Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#191

Post by hparadiz »

bmitc wrote: post #114
23B1 wrote: post #35

One thing I dislike the most about these problems – and the information/media/activism around them – is the "solutioning". Yes, we should recycle and reduce carbon emissions and learn to live in a more integrated fashion with earth. But the problem is so diffuse and requires substantive work against powerful forces (government, business, apathy). What I'd like to see more of, when presented with these sorts of proble…

Individuals cannot solve this. I leave trees up, dead or alive. I plant native plants. I remove invasive species. I only keep invasive bushes if they house birds. I don't spray for insects except around the base of my house, I don't kill off chipmunks, voles, squirrels, rabbits, etc. How can this compete with the dozens of neighbors in a half-mile radius that have removed in excess of hundreds of trees, big ones like…

In some areas humans actually increase the biodiversity. My area is mostly desert most of the time. We get our water from the California aqueduct. On my property I have squirrels, rabbits, and chipmunks. I've seen red tailed Hawks and Owls. Cats can't be outdoor here. I've already seen a cat's head discarded on my property. I have so many types of birds here all the time.

The open space here has a ton of animals and biodiversity but humans have actually increased the biodiversity. For example the squirrels on my property eat dates off my date trees. Date trees and eastern squirrels aren't native here but they do feed the hawks and owls. Bees are harvesting on my property constantly.

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#192

Post by prepend »

vhlhvjcov wrote: post #109
prepend wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you put the onus on the individual, powerful organisations will jump at the opportunity to absolve themselves of blame. Powerful organizations already absolved themselves. Check out the headline. Also, this doesn’t put the onus on individuals. Individuals aren’t responsible for the change, but they are powerful enough to do something. Doing something doesn’t mean doing everything.

The question to me is: what is the thing I should do? Where should I invest my energy? Time and energy are finite resources and taking political action to drive systemic change has proven results (see previous examples). I don’t know of any transformative movement against mass threat to human life that hasn’t relied on some form of top-down implementation to achieve its aims. Maybe environmental vegetarianism in the…

I’m able to focus on multiple items.

But let’s assume that I must choose one thing to focus my energy. Birds are better off with me working on a habitat in my back yard that maybe homes 10 birds over my lifetime, the next 70 years.

That will have a greater impact than any way I can influence top-down implementations.

But fortunately, I can both build a habitat, donate to environmental charities, advocate for improvement, and vote for political parties.

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#193

Post by pcthrowaway »

gerad wrote: post #85
kelseyfrog wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unfortunate state of things is that we've run out of the problems that we can solve and are left with the problem we can't solve. Our society/species is pretty terrible with problems that involve diffuse responsibility. Part of the problem is that we don't have social technologies equipped to handle diffuse responsibility, and another is that we have social agents who exploit this social bug to make money.

I’ve been reading Harari’s “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” recently. The book makes the point that the history of Homo Sapiens coincides with mass extinction - humankind has been disrupting and destroying habitats since it rapidly expanded out of Africa 300k years ago. Even before the agricultural revolution. It happens time and again throughout various geographies and histories, Homo Sapiens arrive somewhere…

> If people (particularly women) are educated and empowered enough, then it seems to drive down birth rates

Good luck selling that line when people like Musk are on record saying that it's better for the planet and for humanity to have more kids

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#194

Post by dylan604 »

23B1 wrote: post #163
bmitc wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I redid parts of my lawn last fall (first time ever doing so or even having the opportunity). I did about 30% of that new European microclover and 70% various fine fescues. Not sure if I feel it was a success or not, but the clover does make it look like a nice meadow. But the clover and fescue, if I let them grow, it gets so thick that I can't even mow it effectively. Do you just let the microclover fully take over…

It does have a memory of cut height, and I mow it with a reel mower once a week. WRT other things taking over the yard, it's been rainy as hell here past few weeks and so the weeds have deff. sprung up unaccounted for; I just spend a day weeding mechanically, using a weed grabber tool. Both count as my workout. Headphones + podcast = no gym membership required. You'd be interested to know that this month I'll be fini…

>I never have to mow,

to

> I mow it with a reel mower once a week.

Maybe you mean you don't use a 2-stroke engine to mow as the point you were making, but if not, what the huh? There's evangelizing, and then there's just being the crazy guy on the corner making stuff up that sounds like evangelizing. You're leaning towards the latter with these kinds of non-ambiguous contradictory statements.

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#195

Post by WalterBright »

wombatpm wrote: post #134
jeffbee wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Bird-friendly yard" is probably the most counterproductive of these. Habitat loss is far and away the biggest problem that birds face. Anyone having a yard is the problem. People must learn to congregate in compact development forms and leave the land for the animals, if they care about having animals. Probably the only easy life change individuals can do is not eat meat and not buy ethanol. That would return tons o…

I’m in the Midwest. I noticed a big drop off in birds when westnile virus came through. Dead birds in the middle of the yard was a dead giveaway. Don’t see crows anymore. But when I was a kid I never saw hawks, now I can usually spot 5 or 6 when I’m out during the day. Makes me wonder what the baseline count should be.

A couple weeks ago there were 5 eagles circling overhead where I live.

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#196

Post by Sai_ »

tnias23 wrote: post #132

Like almost every other goddamn problem we face, the solution is boring as hell: campaign finance reform. If politicians actually represented their constituents, they would be able to effect the policy changes required. But they don’t, because campaign finance is broken, allowing the richest, most blood-sucking elements of society to have the biggest influence. If you have the opportunity to vote for someone who beli…

> represented their constituents

How would they know what the views of their constituents are?

They'd require either require exhaustive, expensive but representative polling on every topic or wait in call back mode - the constituents with the most to lose or gain will call back and help them form an opinions.

The first is impossible and actually goes against the notion of representative democracy and conscious indifference. The second is the current way of doing things.

Is there a better way? Maybe technology can be leveraged to scrape public FB, LinkedIn, and other social media posts on a subject to (hopefully) get a balanced view on a subject.

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#197

Post by awongh »

vhlhvjcov wrote: post #92
23B1 wrote: post #35

One thing I dislike the most about these problems – and the information/media/activism around them – is the "solutioning". Yes, we should recycle and reduce carbon emissions and learn to live in a more integrated fashion with earth. But the problem is so diffuse and requires substantive work against powerful forces (government, business, apathy). What I'd like to see more of, when presented with these sorts of proble…

I agree with the sentiment but a couple problems with this approach 1. When you put the onus on the individual, powerful organisations will jump at the opportunity to absolve themselves of blame. Look at recycling and how it was pushed by the plastics lobby or the idea of a “personal carbon footprint” that was pushed by oil companies. There is a fact that these are systemic problems, that require systemic solutions.…

Re. #1 it drives me nuts when I see articles with titles like “Did you know that almond milk uses X gallons of water to make?” as if the onus is on me to understand the calculus of almond vs. cow milk vs. just pouring plain water on my cereal.

If we look at every issue an article like that wants to point to they all have mostly systemic causes, big Ag pushing factory dairy farms, heavy water subsidies for almond growers on land that otherwise wouldn’t support growing almonds, etc.

I hate that in the name of “conserving the earth” there’s this sort of endless game of shame and blame. Switch from cow milk to almond milk, not good enough. Recycle plastic, oh but you need to be aware of which plastics you’re recycling. You can switch to reusable containers. Oh but don’t buy aluminum, the carbon footprint for producing it is too high.

If we just decided to regulate one thing, like the diesel fuel container ships use, that would have a bigger effect than any of those environmental “tips”.

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#198

Post by nerdponx »

klipklop wrote: post #76
23B1 wrote: post #35

One thing I dislike the most about these problems – and the information/media/activism around them – is the "solutioning". Yes, we should recycle and reduce carbon emissions and learn to live in a more integrated fashion with earth. But the problem is so diffuse and requires substantive work against powerful forces (government, business, apathy). What I'd like to see more of, when presented with these sorts of proble…

The point isn’t to have you save the birds, it’s to get you to give up certain freedoms to a group that claims they can save the birds.

What freedoms are those?

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#199

Post by thebooktocome »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #180
dmvdoug wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with your voting solution is that the Supreme Court has constitutionalized the issue. Getting money out of politics in America is going to require a constitutional amendment.

How has the Supreme Court constitutionalized the issue?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC and the penumbra of supporting decisions since then.

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#200

Post by EGreg »

krainboltgreene wrote: post #77
leeoniya wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pollution, habitat destruction, and climate change are not all different things. i guess you can blame all the above on a single root cause, though: human over-population. we just don't have plagues and famines like we used to; we're really good at killing everything that we don't like. i see my neighbors dousing their lawn with weed killer and pesticides every season, followed by grass nutrients! then burn 2gal of g…

> human over-population in no way is this the root cause, in any real scientific analysis. it is literally just the rallying call of right wing politics.

First of all, left-wing politics is the one advocating for less kids.

Elon Musk is like “there’s no problem, guys, keep on having more kids!” and he himself did.

Right wingers are pro life, and many religious ones advocate not even using condoms.

Left wingers are the reason women now have so much education and careers that they postpone having children til their 30s.

Anyway, the amount of resources and garbage is proportional to how many humans are on the planet. I don’t see what Elon Musk is so worried about “population collapse”. For an otherwise smart guy, he seems to be very mistaken about this core issue. Maybe he thinks we can escape to Mars and start over LOL

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