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World Wildlife Falls By 58% in 40 years (bbc.com)
Global wildlife populations have fallen by 58% since 1970, BBC reports citing The Living Planet assessment by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and WWF. The report adds that if the trend continues, the decline would reach two-thirds among vertebrates by 2020. The figures suggest that animals living in lakes, rivers and wetlands are suffering the biggest losses. Human activity, including habitat loss, wildlife trade, pollution and climate change contributed to the declines. From the report: Dr Mike Barrett. head of science and policy at WWF, said: "It's pretty clear under 'business as usual' we will see continued declines in these wildlife populations. But I think now we've reached a point where there isn't really any excuse to let this carry on. This analysis looked at 3,700 different species of birds, fish, mammals, amphibians and reptiles - about 6% of the total number of vertebrate species in the world. The team collected data from peer-reviewed studies, government statistics and surveys collated by conservation groups and NGOs. Any species with population data going back to 1970, with two or more time points (to show trends) was included in the study.
Means more room for humans. We're succeeding as a species. I suspect it wont end well for us though.
... says the World Wildlife Fund, financed by Bayer / Monsanto, Unilever, and other large companies who sit at a round table to greenwash their projects of destroying Indonesian forests and indigenous people to grow palm trees for palm oil production. Read this... and tell me this organization really cares about wildlife.
I am sick and tired of climate change being mentioned in every story with no evidence to back it up?
To me the solution to most problems is simple ... Less people!
What about the fact that species die out all the time? Like before we were here? Actually, some of them dying out are the reason we are here now! It happens. It will happen to us. It will suck when it is our turn, but it will still happen.
The point is they are dying out due to human activity. Activity which only grows as the population grows. Following this trend, we'll destroy the ecosystem before long and probably ourselves along with it. We can't prosper without a healthy ecosystem. There's no sense in unregulated growth.
More economically advanced countries tend to have lower birth rates.
When they no longer need 8 or 10 kids to help out on the farm, that's when folks tend to start thinking about ways not to have so many of them.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I'm not saying there's any intentional bias here, I'm just curious and posing the question. If the data was collected from a any study with multiple data points on population... is there a control factor for whether studies including population data in general are more likely to occur on species that are dwindling? If a species has no population issues to begin with, is it likely to have a study?
Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
Um.
"lesser countries"?
There have been sects of Christianity that didn't promote having children, and in fact promoted chastity. Unsurprisingly, they last only about a generation...
I'm more worried about the current ongoing mass extinction than I am about climate change per se. (Yes, I realize that climate change is a major contributor to the mass extinction). Sea level rise is going to be catastrophic, but not an existential problem for human civilization. But our agriculture depends on a lot of non-human species (bees, for example). An agricultural collapse brought on by a combination of climate change and mass extinction would be an existential threat to humanity.
Chastity is not the opposite of reproduction.
Contraception is the opposite of reproduction. Small yet important difference.
The problem is simply that religion still tries to shame sexual encounters outside of marriage and even outside of reproduction.
Imagine if the church went and told the believers that they had to be abstinent for five years after conceiving a child and that sharing yourself with someone without conception was actually pleasing god, I bet the religions would be gone in a hundred years tops.
In my opinion that reliance on population growth shows you, right there, that they are based on bullshit. If their holy scriptures made any sense to normally thinking people then they wouldn't rely so much on indoctrination in the families.
I've seen that movie. Charlton Heston was awesome. And hey, tasty, tasty Soylent Green. . .
Actually, a lot of religions DON'T promote fucking like rabbits. The Medieval Church, for one. You were simply supposed to go without UNLESS you were specifically attempting to conceive children. In fact, in some cases, even things like the rhythm method were condemned.
Fortunately back then, peasants needed lots of strong sons to work the farm and nobles have always been better at promoting "morality" than actually practicing it.
What about the fact that species die out all the time? Like before we were here? Actually, some of them dying out are the reason we are here now! It happens. It will happen to us. It will suck when it is our turn, but it will still happen.
Sure, of course. But I think you're making a very large oversight by ignoring to recognize the rate of change over time. That's like saying there's no difference between a vehicle that accelerates from 0-100km/hr in 30 seconds from vehicle car that can do it in 2 seconds. Big difference. Rate of change matters. When you're trying to figure out where you are now and then calculating how far we're going to be in the future after a fixed period of time you're going to get very different results based on that figure. Then we can talk about scale, it's easier to affect the rate of change on something small like a 2-passenger car (or your backyard's ecosystem) than it is to affect the rate of change on a seafaring super tanker (or a continent's ecosystem). It's critical to keep everything in the proper perspective. If you don't, you're going to draw fundamentally flawed conclusions.
Actually, the concept of Global Warming was initially championed by Margaret Thatcher. . .
What do you mean "no evidence to back it up?" There are so many studies that indicate that increased temperatures are causing all sorts of disruptions in systems that varied around a threshold for so long. Mosquitoes in Hawai'i occur at higher elevations now, carrying diseases to endemic birds that are naive to these mozzies and the disease. Warmer temps have keep white-nose fungus alive in North American bats. There are plenty more examples, those were the only two that came to my mind in the moment. Maybe you're not aware of these events, but that doesn't mean there is no evidence.
While I agree with you about family size, there are plenty of motivations beyond developed country version of economics. In the developed country, you don't need the labor to help with the family business, whether that's farming or tending sheep or producing textiles. Those subsistence activities are still important in undeveloped countries and the more help a mother and father have, the better off they are. In the developed countries (and probably undeveloped, but I don't know about their traditions as much) religions like Mormons and Baptists literally view their children as a force for growing their religion. More children raised in their "faith" means more adults to expand their group. The moms are believer factories. Their job, as viewed by the people who run their religions, is to make more believers. Then there are who don't feel like they have control over their lives, and thus don't put any planning into any part of their life and end up having one baby and from there have trouble getting through school or even holding down a job.
That's all they want everyone to know that its mans fault and if we don't just die and leave the planet, all hope is lost.
There is overwhelming evidence that Climate Change is real. The problem isn't the evidence, but your refusal (for whatever reason) to accept it. It's the exact same attitude as anti-vaxxers or anti-evolution people. The evidence is overwhelming, yet instead of accepting that the evidence exists and adjusting their opinions accordingly, they double-down on their pre-conceived notions because of some kind of emotional investment in what they believe.
However, I agree with your main point. People need to stop fucking like rabbits. I see religion as being a serious factor in this, because most religions *insist* that people fuck like rabbits for "the greater glory of god" or some bullshit. The Catholic Church, for example, consider contraceptives to be Bad(tm).
We're eating this planet alive with our collective greed and self-obsession, and nobody seems to care. I hate to say it, but we *need* another world war to thin down the numbers.
We hand out condoms for free in many places in Africa affected by AIDS and most people refuse to use them and it has nothing to do with their religion. They have every incentive to avoid unprotected sex and stop producing children. Yet, they still do. Sure, while it's easy and mentally satisfying to simplify the problem and blame religion. The reality of the situation is far, far, far more complex. You have to dig into the fundamentals of human nature and begin to unravel the hundreds of reasons why groups of people make bad decisions. Cultural, psychological, economical, biological, etc. There are 1000's of factors and yes, religion is certainly mixed into that soup of reasons. Being greedy and self obsessive is definitely part of our programming, it's not easy to override our basic instincts.
Yeah, that's more than a bit of exaggeration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
WWF has been accused by the campaigner Corporate Watch of being too close to businesses to campaign objectively.[31][32] WWF claims partnering with corporations such as Coca-Cola, Lafarge, Carlos Slim's and IKEA will reduce their effect on the environment.[33] WWF received €56 million (US$80 million) from corporations in 2010 (an 8% increase in support from corporations compared to 2009), accounting for 11% of total revenue for the year.[3]
11% is not insignificant, but it's not at the level of 'greenwashing their projects' of influence.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Actually, I think it's probably about the time they realize that they could afford another kid or they could afford a big-screen TV. IMHO a big-screen TV is the ultimate birth-control device.
Leaving aside the usual mindless cant about "government-subsidized litters" and other duckspeak assertions that are either no longer true or never were, there was actually a reverse baby-boom during the Reagan years to the extent that there are something like 3 million fewer people in the 19-40 age bracket right now than there was a decade ago or something along those lines.
In fact, if Trump builds his wall, the current US population growth rate would suffer the same fate as countries such as Japan, Italy and Russia, where the population is shrinking at a rate that they find alarming. Only the immigrants have kept the overall US population growing.
What about the fact that species die out all the time?
Wow, the level of ignorance here is ... astounding.
It's not species dying that's the issue. It's the *rate* that they're dying that's the issue.
I know that may be too difficult for you to understand, but go look here and learn:
http://news.nationalgeographic...
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Maybe if you read the article, seeing as how it does not claim "all of them"
"Human activity, including habitat loss, wildlife trade, pollution and climate change contributed to the declines."
And since when was the BBC World News a clickbait site? Seriously you make fucking ridiculous claims for someone who obviously never even bothered to learn anything more then they think they know.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
I'm down with this. I say we should have tax incentives for LESS kids, not more kids. I'm counting down the days until I can go into a doctor's office and ask for a vasectomy and not be laughed out based on my age and lack of kids.
Without immigration the US population would be experiencing negative growth. Most European countries are the same. It seems the poorest countries do all the breeding. Imagine a program where you pay women in those poor countries to be sterilized. Give them enough money they can live in comfort the rest of their lives and you have a cold, inhuman solution to over population. In the rich countries people are too busy having fun to have children. I live and work in a middle class environment and hardly anyone has more than one or two children anymore.
Why don't we give out condoms to lesser countries and give tax incentives in wealthier ones? Face it. The reason for habit loss is economic as people need housing, food, and cheap products that produce toxins. Immigration problems wouldn't be an issue if Latin Americans and Africans could find work at livable wages. When over supply of labor hits you get a dump on demand.
In short: Because it doesn't work. Richer people are only richer because there are others who are poor; exploitation in one way or another - that is the bedrock on which Capitalism rests. If we somehow got rid of the poorest 75% of the world's population, just to take a number, one of the things that would happen would be that the bottom of the pile got a lot closer to where you are (if you didn't happen to be one the 75%); and who do you think it is that works hard at very low wages to produce the food, clothes etc etc that the wealthier end of the world enjoy? The poorer you are, the harder you have to work and the less you get paid for it.
The real solution to this problem isn't, in effect, to tell the poor to go and kill themselves, but reducing inequality, improving things like education, health care, food safety, etc. These are the factors that have led to people having fewer children as well as being more interested in (and and able to) protecting the environment.
It's not just poverty. People in Orlando wouldn't be constantly having their dogs eaten by bears if they weren't developing into the Ocala National Forest. Florida is a post-automobile state and high-rise residences are the exception, not the rule. Pair that with the American Dream of owning your own detached home and you end up crowding the critters. You end up with alligators in your garage and bears in the garbage bins.
Some critters respond to encroachment by going extinct. Others respond by trying to eat you.
Um.
"lesser countries"?
Does the concept of ranking things bother you? Do you feel every country should be ranked the same, just to be more fair? Why, if I may ask? What is a country to you, other than just an administrative division of land with some local rules? Are you some kind of nationalist?
Countries like the US or most places in Europe are objectively better places to live than most countries in Africa. It's why so many people want to migrate there.
some animal parts have the potential to produce them
Only through the placebo effect.
What we have to do is convince the Chinese that parts of invasive species will give you a super-boner...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Chastity is not the opposite of reproduction.
That's only been true since 1960 or so.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Does the concept of ranking things bother you?
I think that implying that some people should be subject to eugenics programs because they don't live in the U.S. or Europe is pretty profoundly offensive, yeah. Extra points for giving the First-Worlders tax breaks at the same time.
Population growth is a huge problem, and it's a fact that most of it is taking place in the Third World, but it's also a fact that most of the resource consumption is taking place in the First World. The best way to stem population growth is via prosperity: middle-class people don't have as many children, which is why population growth is practically negative in places like Europe and Japan. Economic justice is in the First World's interest, and we would do well to export prosperity, not just condoms and bullets.
Not if you are carrying out a study on Wildlife
I am not talking about eugenics.
I am talking about reality. Greed wins everytime with the free market.
The only solution is to alter supply to fix demand. Less kids means less problems as resources are limited. Having 1 kid per family helps everyone
http://saveie6.com/
Did I say it's not real?
Look a story about a hurricane is posted on slashdot and climate change is instantly and scientifically accepted without question.
The problem is too many people frankly
http://saveie6.com/
RTFA: "Human activity, including habitat loss, wildlife trade, pollution and climate change contributed to the declines. "
Reading is fundamental...
"Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure."
The problem with tax credit for kids is because economists require never ending growth for their models to work. They'll all have to go back to the drawing board for 0 growth economies.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
A separate problem with this, though, and much harder to quantify -- is what this does to their reputation? Read somewhere that Greenpeace's mom & pop contributions went down, for example, as their board-room involvement went up.
Hard to say if that has ramifications on how effective they can be. Maybe they genuinely get more done with less funds this way.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
Chastity is not the opposite of reproduction.
That's only been true since 1960 or so.
It's been true for 100s of years, likely 1000s. Just because our sense of history generally is so short doesn't mean we're living in a unique era in everything we can do.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I am sick and tired of climate change being mentioned in every story with no evidence to back it up?
Is that a question?
In any case, you're in good company on Slashdot. The prevailing opinon is one of high skepticism that humans adversely affect the environment/biosphere what-so-ever.
When I say skepticism, what I mean is denialism.
FWIW, there is no point in arguing. Motivated reasoning trumps all. I would love to find out that all the 'bad news' of the last few decades was a hoax. I'm just not intellectually cowardly enough to kid myself into thinking that.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
What about the fact that species die out all the time? Like before we were here? Actually, some of them dying out are the reason we are here now! It happens. It will happen to us. It will suck when it is our turn, but it will still happen.
You really don't see that humans are qualitatively different, both as an animal and as a phenomenon that affects the whole planet?
Humanity is certainly capable of continuing to exist for aeons, I mean we won't because we're going to do something stupid/fail to ever do something smart (obviously), but it's possible in a way that isn't possible for other species.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
If something is going to happen in the far future, i.e., after you're dead, it doesn't matter.
There was a saying in ancient Greece along the lines of A civilization grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they will never sit in.
Your attitude is precisely the reason why extinction is beckoning us, but hey, you won't be around so who gives a fuck. Sadly, some of the rest of us have "consciences", which means that knowing full well that you're leaving a toxic wasteground behind when you die causes some cognitive dissonance while you're still actually alive.
So yeah, I guess I envy your shallow, mindless, selfish attitude. Bravo you.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
If something is going to happen in the far future, i.e., after you're dead, it doesn't matter.
Please be Poe's Law, but this sort of thinking is half the reason we have climate problems (the other half being greed).
"If I can be comfortable, who gives a shit if the entire planet falls apart the day after I die? That's the next generation's problem."
#whywecanthavenicethings
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Fortunately back then, peasants needed lots of strong sons to work the farm
There was also the matter of the high mortality rate. That was true until even the early 1900s when it was common enough to take a post-mortem family picture with a deceased child that no one thought it odd.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
You were modded flamebait for your first sentence. The exact same sentence on say, Ars, would have been massively upvoted. Denialism echo chamber here.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
You're annoyed that you have to use factory manufactured forks instead of lovely handcrafted cutlery? lol. The scourge of overpopulation.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
I think that implying that some people should be subject to eugenics programs because they don't live in the U.S. or Europe is pretty profoundly offensive, yeah. Extra points for giving the First-Worlders tax breaks at the same time.
Calm down: he's saying both "greater" and "lesser" countries would be "subjected to the eugeneics programs" as you so inflammatory put it. Free condoms and tax breaks are both incentives to have fewer kids.
Granted, it would be more egalitarian to apply one or the other or both to both demographics.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Actually, yes. Humanity was at least partially responsible for a lot of the megafauna of the wildlife going extinct.
We wiped out lots of large animals already and now we're working on the smaller ones.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Yes, species die out all the time. They do not, save during very extreme events, start dying out in the numbers being observed.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So I can create conclusions based on bias hypothesis with no experiments?
How is that reality? Proof that 58% of species decline is caused by climate zones changing too quickly? Prove that each time there is a flood it MUST be climate change? I am sick of the bias!
It just adds ammo to the denialists otherwise.
Human activity we can prove. So less kids means less problems.
http://saveie6.com/
Now look at Greece. All their sayings really did them a lot of good.
People per se have almost no impact on climate. It's what people do and how much in aggregate they do it.
Environmentalists are often stereotyped as pessimists, but really most of the people I know who've dedicated their careers are optimistic that technology can address many environmental problems. Sure, they'd like to see the global population stabilized, or even somewhat reduced, because that makes the job of preserving the environment much easier. But they actually believe the sustainability problem can be licked, even without reducing the global population by much.
I'll give you one example of how an actual environmentalist thinks. I was at a meeting with the sustainability director of a major sportswear manufacturer, and he was describing the research they were doing into improving the recyclability of polyester fleece clothing. He made the point that scale is critical to assessing the environmental impact. For a small band of hunter-gatherers, wild animal pelts would be the source of clothing with the least impact; wool would have intermediate impact; a chemical plant that reprocesses coke bottles into polyester resins would have a ridiculously large impact. But if you are making hundreds of thousands of garments, the impacts are actually reversed: the chemical plant has the least environmental impact. Once you turn those bottles into fleece you can continually recycle those molecules into more fleece. He describes recycling as "living off your environmental income instead of your capital."
Environmentalists -- by which I mean the people who are actually working on solutions to environmental problems -- generally believe that even with a large population we can make use of the products of ecosystems without disturbing the equilibria that sustain those systems. As one civil engineering environmentalist I know put it: I = P*S/T ; impact is proportional to population and standard of living but inversely proportional to technology. You can reduce the environmental impact of home heating by reducing the number of people; or you could do it by people getting used to being colder. But you can get the same result by insulating your house and heating it with renewable energy.
It's actually the anti-environmentalists who are the pessimists; they don't believe in people's ability to adapt, and they anticipate nothing but suffering from trying to do anything about problems. Their version of "optimism" is to discount any evidence that problems exist, or to convincing themselves if we do nothing everything will work out for the best.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Really? All of them?
Does it have to be all of them for there to be a problem we need to think about?
I confess your reasoning seems incoherent to me. You appear to be implying that if a single species would have gone extinct anyway it makes no difference how many wildlife populations people destroy.
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There have been sects of Christianity that didn't promote having children, and in fact promoted chastity. Unsurprisingly, they last only about a generation...
Fair point. However, the Shakers did last much longer than one generation, although they effectively closed shop in 1957.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Say what you will, but I don't like the way things are going in the broad perspective.
Yes, we are the dominant species. And yes that is cool.
But we need to start and act as responsible as we are. Right now we only have one planet and it's probably going to stay that way - any people moving to mars in 300 years probably will go to stay there. Just watching those old films of english colonial lords shooting tigers by the dozen just for the kicks or seeing japanese firms chopping down rainforests in the indonesian sea for precious wood because the imprint of it looks cool on cast concrete (seriously) makes me sick. This sort of behaviour is totally insane.
I actually think it might well placed and targeted eco terrorism/sabotage might even be waranted in a few situations happening around the globe. Ignorant idiots are fucking up the planet and we need a global military force to stop them. Make it really expensive in hardware, money and lives to poison rivers in south america where metals are being mined. Stop bulldozers in the amazon with an AMG shot to the motor.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
What did they do? Travel to Noah's Ark every year and do a census? If they took studies out of ecology journals obviously they're going to be biased toward animals that are going extinct, not much money in studying species doing just fine. Did they include roaches or pigeons? Seems like they're more of them around then ever? If not, why not? So you're telling me 58% of ALL animals on earth died off over a couple decades and we're still here having barely noticed. Hmmm...that would make a rational person think they were less important and not more, than we previously thought.
Might want to look closer next time you fly over. You might notice the vast amounts of wilderness once you get away from the major coastal cities....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Wow, they have more money than I realized.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The exact same sentence on say, Ars, would have been massively upvoted.
No one has been banned from Slashdot because they had the wrong opinion on climate change. I have on Ars Technica. Ars Technica is the real echo chamber.
Further, I guess I'm not alone in getting tired of idiots using the same irrelevant cliched statements. Sure, there are people who still don't believe in climate change, but why always assume the other party such? Give consideration to others and maybe you'll get some in turn.
Well, we have messed up many places in a misguided attempt to save them, (History of Yellowstone) so yes, doing nothing may be better! But thinking about that is longer then a simple article, so never mind.
Not site... Articles. Like on this site... And yes, BBC has succumbed to clickbait from time to time.
Well, we have messed up many places in a misguided attempt to save them, (History of Yellowstone) so yes, doing nothing may be better!
Err... "Doing nothing" in this case doesn't mean leaving nature alone; it means leaving human modification of nature alone.
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The problem is simply that religion still tries to shame sexual encounters outside of marriage and even outside of reproduction.
Correction: Uneducated, religious people still try to shame sexual enjoyment - inside and outside of marriage - out of sex because of their own ignorance and fear.
Educated religious people, OTOH, like to have sex as much as the atheist/agnostic next door. (Yes, it's a satire piece - but it makes a not-so-subtle point: we all like to fuck.) We use contraceptives if and when we want, and we manage our family's size based on what we want and need. Any priesthood leader that tells you or your spouse how often to use birth control is full of BS and stepping way out of bounds (the last time I checked, they don't have to live with the consequences of "no birth control".)
BTW - Your comments on "their holy scriptures" show that you don't really understand them. Of course they don't make sense to "normal thinking people" because they were written by a different cultural view, thousands of years ago. They make a lot more sense, however, with some serious study of their historical context (vs. copy+pasting passages that many on both sides do) - and they do hold the keys to happiness in any age/era if their core doctrines are understood and followed.
There is overwhelming evidence that Climate Change is real. The problem isn't the evidence, but your refusal (for whatever reason) to accept it. It's the exact same attitude as anti-vaxxers or anti-evolution people. The evidence is overwhelming, yet instead of accepting that the evidence exists and adjusting their opinions accordingly, they double-down on their pre-conceived notions because of some kind of emotional investment in what they believe.
Given that the GP stated that he accepts that climate change is real, do you have any relevant to say?
However, I agree with your main point. People need to stop fucking like rabbits. I see religion as being a serious factor in this, because most religions *insist* that people fuck like rabbits for "the greater glory of god" or some bullshit. The Catholic Church, for example, consider contraceptives to be Bad(tm).
Religion bashing. Ok.
We're eating this planet alive with our collective greed and self-obsession, and nobody seems to care. I hate to say it, but we *need* another world war to thin down the numbers.
And a pointless diatribe about the imaginary loose morals of humanity which are again irrelevant. A lot of people care, but they also care about other things which are in conflict with reversing climate change, such as doing good by the people alive now.
The real problem with climate change is that it is not the only problem we have. So obsessively focusing on it at the expense of everything else will result not just in making those other problems worse, but also not actually fixing climate change in a positive direction either.
For example, human fertility gets higher when people get poorer. So the many mitigation strategies out there that make people poorer will make future population higher. It's not going to be a win against climate change since you're making the overpopulation problem, which is the basic driver behind climate change, worse.
Blaming this on religion is silly. Most people aren't significantly religious. It's not the driving factor here though in some cases, it can contribute to the problem and sometimes it can help.
My view is to get rid of overpopulation, we need two things in particular: wealthy people and women who have equal rights to men. A lot of other stuff, such as democracy, rule of law, caring about environmental matters, and developed world infrastructure can follow from that.
IMO, this isn't about climate change, global warming, or some other complex ecological equation with a gazillion variables. Isn't it just that we're simply destroying more and more wild spaces/habitat for our own species' reasons? We've been slashing forests and clearing out new land for new subdivisions, dumping waste elsewhere, for centuries now - usually in the best places on the planet.
Mix in our propensity for permanently altering various environments with invasive species or new chemicals to support the human race's growing need for food/energy, and you have a very potent force for mass extinction.
Modern development should change to live more within the natural background it's living within, to cohabitate with other animals.. Hopefully we'll figure that out soon.
Only the immigrants have kept the overall US population growing.
Citation needed.
I reconcile my inherent selfishness with the long term good by planning to live 1000 years.
What about the fact that species die out all the time? Like before we were here? Actually, some of them dying out are the reason we are here now! It happens. It will happen to us. It will suck when it is our turn, but it will still happen.
There have been long periods in evolutionary history where individual species are occassionally dying out, new ones are occasionally emerging, and the ecosystem is relatively stable.
What's being suggested here is something else. The idea is that we're looking at a mass extinction event, marked by a sudden, unstable transition in the ecosystem, where major chunks of the tree of life are wiped out. There's no reason to assume that we're on the part of the tree that survives, but if some humans do come thorugh this, they will find themselves in a world where much of what we think of as "nature" is gone -- the natural world that has sustained us, and, beyond that, which has been the essense of life, the thing in mind when we speak of "life".
What rock do you live under?
http://www.google.com/
You can get the info straight from the Census Bureau, government, private, and academic analyses, etc., etc., etc. More citations than you can shake a stick at.
This isn't an "everybody knows", or "it sounds right, so it must be true", or "I can find a news site that supports my opinion". It's not a "smoking causes cancer" or "too much greenhouse gas causes AGW". It's cold hard numbers collected straight from the principals under US Law.
And this isn't Wikipedia. This is a forum where if you spout off a wrong statement, plenty of people are more than willing to spout a counter-citation, and for that matter, even if you're right.
So don't let other people do your thinking for you. Look it up yourself!
Back in the late Victorian times, people took post-mortem family pictures of everyone.
Not to argue the child mortality rate, but the two are only tangentially related.
Maybe if you read the article, seeing as how it does not claim "all of them"
"Human activity, including habitat loss, wildlife trade, pollution and climate change contributed to the declines."
And since when was the BBC World News a clickbait site? Seriously you make fucking ridiculous claims for someone who obviously never even bothered to learn anything more then they think they know.
You're latching onto the word "contributed" as though it was obviously intended to mean that human activity wasn't the dominant factor. Yet the obvious premise is that human activity is the dominant factor. One would need some dramatic new information to shift the story away from humans. Looks like it's you making the fucking ridiculous claims.
Looking at how this study was constructed, I believe most of the reported decline is likely just selection bias.
They did no original data collection - they just reviewed existing data sources. Unfortunately, the existing data sources are from conservation movements. They do not care about the New York rat population (which is doing just fine), those organizations are trying to track the species that are struggling.
So if a species is struggling to survive, it was far more likely to be included in the report than if the species was doing well. Selection bias.
It's depressing how rarely you see good statistics in science these days.
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It's not species dying that's the issue. It's the *rate* that they're dying that's the issue.
Well, really, the issue is that species we prefer are dying. We're not in any position to wipe out the biosphere; we're just making it less pleasant for ourselves. We're reducing diversity and reducing the number of species that we find it relatively pleasant to coexist with, and they'll be replaced by ones we aren't so fond of.
Species with longer reproductive cycles and smaller populations take longer to evolve, so when there's a sharp drop in biodiversity, it takes a relatively longer time, in evolutionary timescales, for such species to develop and fill the open niches. And broadly speaking we prefer that sort of organism - complex animals and long-lived plants - in our environment. We like birds and mammals more than insects; we like trees more than fungi and weeds.
Of course some people also attach an ethical imperative to this, which is fine (that is, it's a subjective good); but from a practical human standpoint, the underlying problem isn't that species are dying out in general but that we're making things worse for ourselves in the process. Earth will abide, but the place is going downhill.
Hey, if you're willing to put up with some extra work and expense now to make sure your last few centuries are comfortable, that's fine with me.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The biggest threat is the so-called conservationists. Conservationists have shifted from "sustainable use" to animal rights. An animal that does not have a "use" is a parasite. An animal that has a "use" will always be welcome on private land, while an animal that has no "use" will most likely be unwelcome. This might not sit well with many people, but it is reality. If you want animals to survive, don't make them useless. Unless you want just a handful of animals in public reserves. And even then, you will have to be prepared to spend a lot of money on protecting them from poachers.