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Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn

bbc.com

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Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn

#231

Post by throwaway894345 »

acituan wrote: post #193
ncmncm wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just about everything humans do is an exogenous intervention on markets, one way or another. And markets respond to them, via the cited market forces . The notion of the "free market" is a toxic fiction. Any market that works for its participants is intricately curated.

> Just about everything humans do is an exogenous intervention on markets, one way or another Markets is simply the name for a particular collective of human interactions in response to pricing signals based on supply and demand, it is not a separate entity of its own. Taxes are exogenous in that they distort the equilibrous price points. That is not saying that it is always bad, because markets do fail. > The notion…

Can you elaborate on multiagenct cooperation? I grant your abstract point that markets are hard, but carbon taxes specifically are pretty straight forward and we can see that Europe has no disastrous consequences in their implementation. Further, we know to a very high degree of confidence that continuing our carbon subsidy will have disastrous consequences. A carbon tax is the simplest and most elegant solution.

Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn

#232

Post by mixedCase »

tuatoru wrote: post #40
Aunche wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just about the capital owners. The actual people chopping down rainforests for palm oil plantations are formerly impoverished farmers. You can stop corporations from buying from them, but you're hurting these poorer communities the most.

> The actual people chopping down rainforests for palm oil plantations are formerly impoverished farmers. The people chopping down rainforest and planting oil palms are dispossessed , former farmers. The people making them do it are wealthy and politically well connected who arrange to have their land confiscated.

Are you sure the word is dispossessed here? Were those farmers working on their own land, and then had it taken away from them by force without payment?

Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn

#234

Post by throwaway894345 »

bodono wrote: post #218
throwaway894345 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxing carbon is just removing the carbon subsidy that we currently enjoy because it isn’t sustainable. If we decide we want to subsidize India’s pollution or whatever, we can still do that. Anyway, you don’t have a market at all without government and you don’t have a government without taxes so appeals to taxes being an intrusion aren’t persuasive IMO.

Google 'black market'.

I'm not sure what point you're making. Even if the tax leads to a small black market for unregulated pollution, the legitimate market would remain regulated and thus our society would reap enormous environmental benefits. Moreover, the effort to thwart the tax constitutes a cost in and of itself, albeit the cost would necessarily be lower than the tax (to the extent that it's not lower, there is no incentive for a black market at all, which is also a real possibility)--this increased cost of pollution will also deter pollution just like the tax itself. Note that we tax lots of things effectively: gasoline, cigarettes, etc, and in none of those cases have a significant portion of the legitimate market moved to a black market--those taxes are quite effective. Lastly, Europe already has its own carbon taxes without the (rather silly) hypothetical consequences raised by critics in this thread.

Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn

#235

Post by aporetics »

tomhoward wrote: post #203
aporetics wrote: post #191

Fascinating to see how these comment threads debate the relative facility of different diets, and even armchair evolutionary biology... while conveniently avoiding the critical topic: the choices we continue to make are defacing the planet, destabilizing ecologies, and exterminating other species at a scale that is hard to imagine. We’re all ok with this? So, why is it so hard, when confronted with facts about the co…

The answer is similar to the one for those who retort to the suggestion that taxation should be higher with: "if you love paying tax so much why don't you just send a big cheque to the government?". In both cases, it is that an individual's actions don't move the needle. Even a low-to-mid double-digit percentage of the population's actions don't move the needle that much. So, to address your accusatory question: no,…

My question is not accusatory, though I did frame it quite specifically, so maybe it feels confining. But, in reading your response I’m not sure what question you’re answering. I didn’t ask why people don’t behave differently. I asked the question that comes before it. Why is it hard to think about the meaning of your actions?

In a way, your response does answer it: you said people see that their actions won’t be effective unless they are a coordinated with other’s on a scale that can make a difference. I think that’s the same as saying: your actions are meaningless in themselves. What an interesting idea. But I’m sure you don’t feel that way about everything.

A better analog than people sending the Federal Reserve more money than they owe to the IRS would be voting: does your vote not matter unless it is the decisive one? Which vote is decisive? Is the meaningfulness of a vote or of voting found only in its effectiveness?

But that’s still not a good enough analog. The points that you and other commenters have made all point to the need for collective, coordinated action. I won’t dispute that; but if we’re talking about effectiveness and not meaningfulness (or, again, do you think they’re the same thing?) then the dynamic of collective action is fundamentally a social dynamic: people are neither provoked by nor affirmed by what they see the people around them doing. If you made visible, ethical choices (as I’m sure you do) you find that a friend or colleague is starting to make similar choices. The visibility encourages others. Maybe the very same arguments about the futility of action make it all the more critical.

I should be explicit about one other thing. I may be wrong, but my assumption in asking my question about how thinking about the meaning of your actions is hard is that that thoughtfulness is what will change your behavior.

Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn

#236

Post by tresCommatoso »

akiselev wrote: post #209
tarsinge wrote: post #201

The key quote is that 94% of the drop is in Latin America and the Caribbeans. For example in France forests are increasing since more than 100 years [0]. So discussing diet is interesting but eating les meat in the developed world will do nothing for the obvious big problem: Amazon deforestation. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1122699/forest-area-surf...

The amount of land covered by forest says nothing about biodiversity and general wildlife. Replanting forests doesn't bring back all of the species who disappeared along with their habitat. Brazil is the world's biggest beef exporter, including to the EU, and the majority of deforested land goes to grazing, not agriculture.

Its one cow covid away from beeing out of buisness.. meat seems like a very fragile investment

Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn

#237

Post by abrichr »

feralimal wrote: post #228
tpnCC wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If U may tell, which specific imminent 'dangers' did not come to pass?

I'd have to watch the film again (no thanks!) to provide more detail, but it was a tirade of fear. Eg: No snow on Kilimanjaro? but: https://glacierhub.org/2018/04/04/greatest-snowfall-on-kilim... 20-foot rise in sea levels caused by melting ice caps? shutting down of the ocean conveyor? Hurricanes are getting stronger? Pacific Islands drowning?

Hurricanes getting stronger:

https://www.livescience.com/climate-change-hurricanes-strong...

Islands drowning:

https://www.businessinsider.com/pacific-islands-stunning-pho...

Ice caps melting:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warmin...

Oceans rising:

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html

Ocean conveyor slowdown:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutdown_of_thermohaline_circu...

(Courtesy of Google.)

Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn

#238

Post by mtalantikite »

seanwilson wrote: post #117

50% of habitable land on earth is taken up by agriculture, 77% of which is used for meat & diary (including the crops grown for livestock to eat), which contributes only 18% to the global calorie supply because of the inefficiency of animal products: https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets I wonder how much of an impact it would have to return the land used by meat & diary to nature (40 million k…

It’s super frustrating to hear people defend their meat eating as if it has no impact on the world. Or that it’s a requirement for health or it’s the reason why we evolved (both of which don’t seem to be true). It’s one of the easiest and most straightforward changes a person can make to have a positive impact on the environment and their own health.

In many ways it reminds me of addiction, with people reacting in the same way any addict would in defense of their toxic habit. The path out of the addiction takes some initial thought and sustained effort (and even a bit of mental and physical withdrawal), but the other side isn’t that hard to get to in this case. Isn’t having compassion for the environment, the animals, and each other worth it though? If you look at it deeply you begin to see how much unnecessary suffering it causes in the world due to how interdependent everything is.

Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn

#239

Post by jewelry »

tuatoru wrote: post #40
Aunche wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just about the capital owners. The actual people chopping down rainforests for palm oil plantations are formerly impoverished farmers. You can stop corporations from buying from them, but you're hurting these poorer communities the most.

> The actual people chopping down rainforests for palm oil plantations are formerly impoverished farmers. The people chopping down rainforest and planting oil palms are dispossessed , former farmers. The people making them do it are wealthy and politically well connected who arrange to have their land confiscated.

How should those people living in the wild area get better life (education, medication, etc) for their next generation?

Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn

#240

Post by klyrs »

tarsinge wrote: post #201

The key quote is that 94% of the drop is in Latin America and the Caribbeans. For example in France forests are increasing since more than 100 years [0]. So discussing diet is interesting but eating les meat in the developed world will do nothing for the obvious big problem: Amazon deforestation. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1122699/forest-area-surf...

Forests in France are on the rebound because colonial powers outsourced their rapacious practices to the colonies. As old colonial powers loosened their grip on the colonies, the influence of globalized corporations remained to leverage and exacerbate local corruption and the vast imbalance of wealth and power.
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