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Humanity 'Sleepwalking Towards the Edge of a Cliff': 60% of Earth's Wildlife Wiped Out Since 1970

News & Views
#1

Humanity 'Sleepwalking Towards the Edge of a Cliff': 60% of Earth's Wildlife Wiped Out Since 1970

Julia Conley, staff writer

Scientists from around the world issued a stark warning to humanity Tuesday in a semi-annual report on the Earth's declining biodiversity, which shows that about 60 percent of mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles have been wiped out by human activity since 1970.

"What is increasingly clear is that human development and wellbeing are reliant on healthy natural systems, and we cannot continue to enjoy the former without the latter." —World Wildlife Fund

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#3

From the article:

“The Living Planet report clearly demonstrates that human activities are destroying nature at an unacceptable rate, threatening the wellbeing of current and future generations.”

There is no “acceptable rate” for destroying nature, as we will soon discover.

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#4

View from the moon: when the time comes, extinction happens. It’s evolution. No future species will mourn ours.

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#6

If one measures the biomass of humans and what they need to survive each day within the existing ecosystem as a subset of the total biomass of the planet in the past the Earth can support the numbers. What it can not support is how that biomass of humans chooses to live with its technologies and its consumptive practices. No species on this planet requires or uses as many resources of the Planet as does the human species per capita and no species on the planet has subjected the entire Earth to that consumption and ecosystem ruination. The presence of human consumption is felt from the deserts of Sahara to the tundra of the Far north, from the mountains in the Andes to the depths of the oceans in the Pacific.

The system called Capitalism , which is based on growth and consumption and mass production has to be ended. This GROWTH also includes human Population growth which is linked directly to our economic systems which are structured around competition for resources at the input end, and competition for markets at the output end. The larger the market on the output side , the greater the profit and the greater need for access to resources at the input side. This structural change is not limited to Capitalism but runs the entire gamut of 'isms that are structured around the growth model. The Competitive model has to go and be replaced by the sharing model. “Growing our economies” which is the goal of virtually every Government on this Earth translates to GROWING consumption of the worlds resources. It does matter if the population of a Country 5 million or 50 million, if the goal is to grow the economy under the existing model then the end result is increased consumption.

I linked to a report the other day as to how China starts to abandon the one family one child policy as they fear this erodes their COMPETITIVE advantage in the Worlds Economy. That competitive advantage is more workers for cheaper wages which results in job transfers from another country TO China in order to maximize profits. In Russia and Europe Governments are concerned about support for the elderly under existing models wherein the workforce has to continue to grow in order to support a larger number of retired citizens who can no longer participate in the Labor force. Again they address this by seeking out immigrants and “competing” for a larger workforce.

This competition for resources , be they human or natural also leads to the development of ever more destructive technologies which have a greater negative impact on the environment. The development of the tarsands in North Alberta, the Shale Gas explosion and the like are all fueled by the GROWING need for energy in a world where the more easily accessed resources already consumed.

I am not so hopeful anything can reverse this given the state of the World today. I look to China, Russia, Europe the US , India, Canada and indeed the vast majority of the Worlds Countries and see more competition and not less and more Countries harnessing themselves to the growth model. There a small number of peoples advocating for shrinking economies, but these are only voices and do not have the MONEY or the Political power of that 1 percent that drive the growth model.

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#8

Our turn is coming very soon. Good riddance to the virus we’ve become.

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#9

While it is possible that we might cause our own extinction whether by nuclear, biological warfare or otherwise… it is far more likely that we will so damage our biosphere’s environment as to render it almost but not quite uninhabitable. The sixth extinction will leave us amongst our ineradicable vermin and with a few zoo species to remind us of what we have lost.

In this severely over heated, polluted, unbreathable, undrinkable, inedible remainder of what we once called our environment, humanity will attempt to survive as is our nature. The world as we once knew it will be gone but we will most likely continue as a species in the anthropocene future. We won’t become extinct by our own hand, as so many are wont to pronounce.

It is a world of misery and want that we will find in our anthropocene future but not our own extinction. We too are as ineradicable as are the vermin that will accompany us.

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#10

I’ve forwarded this article to some rural folks who call themselves " conservationists ". Farmers and ranchers mostly who voted for Trump’s reactionary " deregulation " agenda.
So far, crickets.
They are whistling by the graveyard. Unfortunately, it’s probably ours, as well.
That’s how it works, in the good Ol’ U.S. of A.

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#11

8 billion people. Three additional people born every second. Gee whatever could the problem be?

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#12

“We are the first generation to know we are destroying our planet and the last one that can do anything about it,” said Tanya Steele, chief executive at WWF.”

I worked in an oasis in the desert of one of the gulf states of the middle east from 1996 till 2003 and in that time i saw the disappearance of frogs, foxes, migratory birds and other creatures. Some species disappeared in just one year whilst others took longer.
Extinct is forever. (A WWF slogan from around 20 years ago)

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#13

Logistics?

#16

I wonder if the doomsday seed vault in svalbard will be of any use at all. (Always supposing anyone left can find it or open its sealed doors.)

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#17

Perhaps it’s gluten intolerance.

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#18

This is heartbreaking. We are just too many. There used to be an axiom that democratic societies considered: Zero population growth. It “can be achieved** when the birth rate of a population equals the death rate, i.e. fertility is at replacement level and birth and death rates are stable, a condition also called demographic equilibrium. Unstable rates can lead to drastic changes in population levels.”

But it was not possible in the 1960s (it then became a movement in the US) when the wealthy had far more children than that, and the rest of American women did not have reliable contraception.

So many people love wildlife, and our lives and welfare are going to plummet if this trend continues. Already there are animals who do not exist in the wild but only in zoos. Too many people. Most animals go extinct because their habitats are destroyed to make room for human ventures, or poaching. It is sickening.

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#20

But they are having a sale at the mall this weekend. And the kids need some new school clothes.

#22

Clearly, you haven’t been keeping up with the Futurists and their predictions for all the cool things they are about to bring us, whether we want their idea of ‘cool’ or not.’ I’ve started spending some time learning about the AGI, Transhumanist, uber-libertarian, robotic, machine learning future they are working on behind closed doors and it’s way past time to get some other perspectives at that table. I hope you will all find a way to join me there because if the 6th extinction doesn’t get us, nuclear war or global warming do us in then these guys certainly will.

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#23

You are likely correct while no one can feel it now. The puzzle for a few million years from now is the difference in the fossil fuels. Ours was made with clean organics. The next batch will be mixed with concrete, steel, and plastics.

#25

EXactly

#26

There may be more awareness for people who have both been in the out of doors to hunt at times or have cut down trees, and at other times to just be in the woods enjoying nature in it’s own right, non abused except for the footsteps you laid down.

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#27

Just think, if we could have eliminated a mere 0.001% of the human population (does anyone care to guess WHICH 0.001% of our population I’m referring to?) starting around 1980 we wouldn’t be in this position to begin with.

Someone above mentioned biological warfare as a possible means that the human species could eliminate itself. Wouldn’t that be an ironic ending? Poetic justice perhaps?

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#28

I canceled a post earlier but can’t get it out of my mind so here is the jist of it. I was picturing Ted Nugent and Donald Jr. in Africa kneeling alongside their big game kills… Some of these animals are being poached at a rate that will extinguish them in a generation or two… Photos just are not the same.