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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

#31

Post by ashtonkem »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #23
mc32 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“... 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.

Indeed. Madagascar is a slow-motion environmental catastrophe because every family has many children and each of those children eventually needs to slash-and-burn rainforest in order to plant enough rice to sustain themselves. Also a lot of tree-felling to make charcoal, because for whatever reason Malagasy villagers cannot afford e.g. kerosene to cook with. The result is the steady eradication of all those cool lemu…

And without significant investment by those with resources, asking them to preserve the environment is a direct ask for them to go hungry or cold for the sake of the environment. This is an ask that 99.99% or more of the human population will absolutely ignore.

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

#32

Post by jl6 »

philips wrote: post #14

How are people on Hacker News changing their behavior around food and energy consumption? And besides individual action what community action have you taken? Personally I have found myself on a similar path to Peter Kalmus[1]. Before having kids I did what I could: didn’t own a car, commuted by bike, composted, minimized fashion/tech consumption, etc. On the other hand my career required significant plane travel for…

I adopted a mostly plant-based diet. It’s very effective in terms of impact reduction, and most people can do it easily with minimal lifestyle sacrifice (compared to things like giving up flying and driving and aircon).

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

#33

Post by Aunche »

Hokusai wrote: post #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…

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.

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

#34

Post by Swizec »

tuatoru wrote: post #25
laurent92 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”.

Second reply: Impact = Population * Affluence * Technology. The problem is not rising population, it's rising affluence and inert technology. As people earn more, they consume more in general, and more of environmentally harmful products like meat, cars, and plane trips in particular. Meanwhile we're not improving core technologies quickly enough. We make buildings using Portland cement. Cement making is responsible…

> Cities are badly designed for pedestrians.

Eh every large city I've been to that isn't in US or Canada is extremely pedestrian friendly. To the point of being actively nicer and easier to navigate by foot than by car.

Even NYC and SF are way faster to navigate by foot/bike than by car. I've stopped using Uber in SF because it's faster (and cheaper) to get places with a rented bike.

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

#35

Post by xg15 »

monktastic1 wrote: post #24
vharuck wrote: post #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 m…

Sounds like Jevon's Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox "In economics, the Jevons paradox occurs when technological progress or government policy increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (reducing the amount necessary for any one use), but the rate of consumption of that resource rises due to increasing demand."

Thanks for the pointer and definition.

"Increasing demand" seems pretty funny when we have whole industries dedicated to artificially generating demand (e.g. marketing and advertising) and when the ultimate quality metric for a country is it's GDP - so both business as well as government will do whatever it can to keep demand from going down.

Sometimes I feel we're sitting in the bus from Speed (that will explode if it goes under 50 Mph) and just realized we're headed towards a roadblock. So now we're paradoxically trying to come to a full stop and not go below 50mph at the same time and wonder why it's not working.

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

#36

Post by nverno »

11235813213455 wrote: post #19
philips wrote: post #14

How are people on Hacker News changing their behavior around food and energy consumption? And besides individual action what community action have you taken? Personally I have found myself on a similar path to Peter Kalmus[1]. Before having kids I did what I could: didn’t own a car, commuted by bike, composted, minimized fashion/tech consumption, etc. On the other hand my career required significant plane travel for…

Same here, I'm on a bike for everything, I eat organic (literally, I forage a lot of fruit when going for a ride, currently there are many figs). So my consumption and my environmental impact is certainly super low. I pick up plastic trash every now and then, it's hard to counter all that continuous litter volume Next step is to spread this philosophy, but it's not easy or even possible to change other people lifesty…

This brings back memories of living in Portland. It would be amazing if cities were designed with this type of foraging as a priority :D

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

#38

Post by Hokusai »

Aunche wrote: post #33
Hokusai wrote: post #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…

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.

> you're hurting these poorer communities the most.

My point is that redistributing wealth in a better way, we would get less opposition to upgrade our production means and people like that poor farmers and others will get a bigger piece of the cake in a more healthy environment and conserving their culture and land.

I agree with you, thou. The current mindset is that the super-rich are super-rich and their wealth cannot be touched. So, we are left with limited options on how to manage with the scraps. If we think out of the box and realize that we can redistribute wealth better, there will be still very rich people but also farmers would get a more fair price for their contribution.

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

#39

Post by Hokusai »

tuatoru wrote: post #25
laurent92 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”.

Second reply: Impact = Population * Affluence * Technology. The problem is not rising population, it's rising affluence and inert technology. As people earn more, they consume more in general, and more of environmentally harmful products like meat, cars, and plane trips in particular. Meanwhile we're not improving core technologies quickly enough. We make buildings using Portland cement. Cement making is responsible…

> As people earn more, they consume more in general, and more of environmentally harmful products like meat, cars, and plane trips in particular.

That is one part of the problem. But, as we have seen, there is alternatives. Because the pandemic, more people is working from home, playing video games instead of traveling or even learning new skills.

I love to travel, but also to play games or read books. A change of culture will help with that. Governments could also apply "sin taxes" to luxuries that harm the environment in favor of more social and cultural activities that hire more people but consume less natural resources.

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

#40

Post by tuatoru »

Aunche wrote: post #33
Hokusai wrote: post #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…

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.

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