Protect the last of the wild | Hacker News Reader

Protect the last of the wild

nature.com

218 pointsaviziva118 comments

I live in southeast Alaska, where we have a relatively healthy population of coastal brown bears. When we go into the woods, there is always a chance a bear could be nearby.

Your first encounter with a brown bear in the wild can be unnerving. It's a really different feeling to see an animal that could easily kill you in the woods, without a wall or a fence between you and that animal. It's really humbling, and makes the woods feel entirely different than most other woods I've ever been in.

It's not that hard to be safe. You make noise when you're in brushy areas, and you stay aware of your surroundings as long as you're in bear country. If you're camping, there are well-established routines that keep bears from messing with your camping area. You keep in mind where bears are in their annual cycles; are they relatively well-fed, or are they hungry and looking anywhere they can for food?

I like the balance of doing technical work with the experience of walking in the woods with bears. The projects I work on are important, but they're not life-safety-critical. If one of my servers goes down, no one's going to die. Having interacted with brown bears at close range, a server going down is a relatively low-stress event.

I wish there were more wild areas left. The woods in the lower 48 feel empty after living in forests that still have the top predators alive and healthy.

Was out in the wilderness on Vancouver Island, a place with the highest concentration of cougars in North America. You're right, it is a vastly different experience walking around an area like that knowing you're just a fragile voyeur in another animal's environment (especially something as silent and murderous as a big cat).

I live on the San Francisco peninsula. A mountain lion killed a deer in our back yard once, and then the buzzards came and cleaned it up. Not that I wish to dispute the premise of the OP in the slightest, but you can still find wildness in some unexpected places.

I think the ecological issues we're facing are more serious and underappreciated that the overall warming problem. They are linked but ultimately we can survive longer as it gets warmer, just more alone. If you do a search for ecological the result presumes you mean environmental a lot. Pollution, plastics and habitats need very urgent attention as well has CO2/Methane.

It is also one of the big results people are freaking out about the changing climates but stay away from mentioning it much as many don't see it affecting us directly. Technology may drive us enough to replace the untouched wildness essential for nature. I've heard the only large area becoming wilder is Chernobyl and it's hard to think about what's next for Brazil and pretty much everywhere.

We have to consider what's left to be land of the highest value and compensate people (less the 0.1%) who are affected by that decision.

This may be of interest https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/21/alaska...

I hope the bears keep tourists away.

I'd argue that humanity certainly requires huge tracts of wilderness for its long term survival. So far, we've successfully transformed diverse ecosystems into vast, but basic, mono-cultural 'deserts'.

But - is it sustainable? In the century since the Haber process was introduced, the world has started to buckle at the seams from the results: huge population growth, with accompanying pollution (nitrates, pesticides, algal blooms, etc.) and degradation of biomes. What are the effects on our biochemistry? Plastic pollution is only now being noticed. Pthalates and numerous other estrogen mimickers are silently at work. Antibiotic resistance is increasing.

I think it's too early to conclude that we can indeed survive this. The outlook for the rest of this century is not positive...

A 'wilderness' is a vast library of alternative biotech. Until humanity understands the effects of its impact on Earth's ecosystems and itself, it would be wise to remember this.

Quite apart from your well made point, just about everyone that "makes it" wants a home in the country with some land, probably some old forest. It's the location for so many leisure activities and holidays. Few want to retire in a city.

We conveniently don't notice the decline of soils, of insects or other species. The arrogance that we can just keep on until humanity is in battery hutches everywhere and everything else divided up between agriculture and industry astounds me. Who knows how many miracle drugs and biotech has been lost in those unknown bacteria and species.

Even if it turns out to be a process that can continue our collective psyche will lose something it apparently desires or needs. So at what cost?

Everyone wants the facilities resulting from economies of scales and efficiencies that cities provide, such as entertainment options, access to various labor and product markets, selections of schools, hospitals, doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc.

At the same time, everyone wants to their own space to do their own thing and raise their family and a peaceful neighborhood where you don't have to worry about dealing with too many others, especially not too far below your socioeconomic class.

This would seem to naturally result in the pattern of rich and poor suburbs clustered around cities with the constant struggle of individual housing vs shared housing, car vs public transport, public parks vs private yards, etc. Only recent factor I see changing is the delay in having children into the 30s means a lot of 20 somethings that aren't looking for suburbs, and if they don't ever have kids then maybe they never will want for suburbs.

Everyone? Plenty only move to a city because they have to, to get work. Then Nothing to do with want in many cases. Perhaps even the majority.

There's not the same need for everyone to congregate in one place there was when your factory or shipyard needed 40,000 workers every shift. The internet should have enabled more local and rural enterprises to thrive, except that's not turned out to be the case at all.

Those who want to go to the city only because they have to work fall under the "want access to labor markets" part of my statement. "Everyone" is an exaggeration of course on my part, but it still seems like a significant portion of the population, especially high earners, want incompatible parts of urban and suburban life.

I was commenting on the claim that "few want to retire in the city", which I agree with, but in old age you need access to medical professionals and other facilities that aren't economically feasible in rural populations, so even though people want the rural life, they don't want or can't afford to give up those other conveniences of more urban areas.

And yet city center locations are incredibly expensive.

Though I don't disagree with your general point, just that there are a fair number of people who make it and still want to be in the city.

I'd still rather be in the city. It's just too expensive, though, since there's a shortage of housing here (honestly "here" could be most cities with good tech industries) and I value being in the city less than a young person who still goes out a lot - and crucially, doesn't have a kid.

If it helps, I'm buying a few acres of grazing land an hour from the city by train - grazing land is basically sterile wasteland for ecological purposes - and planning to reforest it, while working remote. But we need a lot more than a few acres. And we need those places to be livable without a car. I rode a bike from the train station to view the property, but places you can do that without a death wish are far too rare.

My naive impression is that the safest bet for survival would be to improve our technological mastery to a point where we can create near-closed and self sufficient ecosystems for small populations that they can be fully in control of, like deep space habitats. Such habitats should be able to support life inside indefinitely and be able to produce new habitat. And we need to make sure that we can maintain a high level of technological competence even if our population would be severely diminished. Perhaps then can civilization survive almost anything. Not sure if this is a pipe dream.

Wouldn't the materials needed to build and maintain such environments ultimately have to come from nature?

Sure, but ideally that nature could be outside our biosphere so that we don't depend on it.

> Such habitats should be able to support life inside indefinitely and be able to produce new habitat...

We have this already, and it's free.

We're just too short sighted as a species to fully appreciate it, so we degrade or even destroy those habitats for short term gains.

Could not agree more with this. Evolution on Earth has had a very long time to develop super advanced nanotechnology, which we understand and utilise very poorly and are destroying forever - for what? More beef on the plate, palm oil for products no one needs and a bit of money for one generation?

Beyond being critical to the survival of deeply linked ecosystems, and ultimately ourselves, it's just really stupid to destroy products of millions of years of R&D before we've even begun to unlock their potential. The amount of energy and computation that has gone into that evolution is super valuable and a couple of generations are trading it for profits lasting a blink of an eye.

In general, I find it super strange that multi-generational thinking/optimisation isn't more deeply ingrained in our behaviour as a species.

Natural selection is a greedy algorithm. Being forward thinking or altruistic rarely produces more surviving progeny over the short term.

I guess in the case of humans we have partly outpaced natural selection - nature hasn't had time to optimise for the reality we are creating, it's too slow. Short term impulses which have worked great (until now) still govern our behaviour.

It's not altruism to try to avert long term disaster beyond your own life span. It's in your own interest to ensure your progeny survives - even several generations in the future they still carry your genes. But I don't know if inbuilt mechanisms for this exist in evolution.

I'd like to think self-inflicted extinction isn't a likely outcome of evolution - but maybe it is once a certain species dominates.

All of the things that humans have done, which you are referring to - can be traced back to one thing - cheap energy - in the form of OIL.

It is curious how carbon based life that existed in the past (dead plants and animals in the form of oil) is the catalyst for carbon based life wiping itself out in the future.

I wonder if this ultimately also happens on other planets with carbon based life (if they exist) - a short period of hyper growth once life learns how to unlock energy from the past, followed by extinction.

We're assuming that evolution has a higher chance of creating biotech that will solve problems than biotech we will be able to produce in the future using computational methods? I doubt it.

The one thing that gives me hope on this, is that lab-grown meat requires about 95% less land, energy, and water. If we can get it cheap enough we could put most of our farms out of business.

I seriously think lab grown meats will save the world, if we can pull it off in a commercially viable fashion.

It's fascinating how human beings cling to old habits.

It's like we as a species couldn't go vegetarian by choice.

We could, we just won't. People have been trying to promote that for the past several decades and meat consumption globally has just gone up. The book Clean Meat devotes a chapter to this; historically every culture has consumed more meat when they could afford it. Most people just like it.

We almost hunted whales to extinction for their oil. That didn't stop because we persuaded people to quit using oil in their lamps. It stopped because someone invented kerosene. Whaling was the fifth-largest industry in the U.S., and then in thirty years it was gone.

We evolved as omnivores. We are a predatory species. We can’t go vegetarian as a species because we aren’t a vegetarian species.

But we also evolved to have a large cerebral cortex that allows us to make decisions that go against certain impulses because we are able to see the bigger picture. We evolved to conserve energy when possible but we exercise anyway because we know that if we don`t it will be detrimental to our health.

And many people are still healthy while on a vegetarian diet so it is possible.

What a silly assertion. You can ignore evolutionary impulses with your brain when said impulses come from your brain.

Your brain can’t override how your metabolism and gut work. Your brain can’t change the bacteria in your gut, or the shape of your teeth.

Omnivorism is not an impulse, it’s an attribute of the species. It’s part of who we are.

I'm not a vegan, but my brother has been a strict vegan for a decade and is quite healthy. Plenty of other people do the same with similar results, including some professional athletes, so clearly it's possible. I just don't think most people can be persuaded to do it.

You’re ignoring what I’m saying.

I also don’t believe that vegans are healthy. Sure, they don’t starve (omnivores, after all). But I want to see their regular glucose levels and their mortality rates. The way I eat (omnivore) is ancient, veganism is brand new.

Humans are primates, and most primates of the world are vegan, or nearly so, including our closest relatives. That's not something new.

Our two closest primate relatives are not vegan, they’re omnivores. Bonobos and chimpanzees hunt smaller mammals.

Most of their diet is fruit/leaves. The rest is squirrels. I don't see many people eating squirrels, but I see a lot of squirrels.

Spend more times in the sticks. I’ve heard that squirrel is delicious.

I'm not ignoring, I'm disagreeing. My brother is a military officer, gets an annual physical, and his numbers are consistently great.

A quick google finds studies supporting the idea that his results are typical. Here's one from 2016, which finds that more plant protein correlates with lower mortality, and more animal protein with higher mortality: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families...

But as I said above, from an environmental perspective I don't think widespread vegetarianism is a feasible policy goal, so I'm not trying to tell you what to eat. Getting our meat from vats instead of animals is what I think will save the world.

Ahem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthy_user_bias

There are some studies that are coming out that undermine your idea that vegans are inherently healthier, such as the notice that vegetarians appear to have higher rates of cavities than the population at large. If you ask an anthropologist you'll know this is a big deal, because dental health is a great indicator of overall health.

I think all the arguments about the vegetarianism saving the world are bunk, and a convenient reason for us all to not talk about the real issue: oil.

My meat comes from animals that graze on grass, as has been the case for millenia. The millions of buffalo that ran around north America a few centuries ago didn't warm the planet with their farts, so why should properly managed grass fed cows do the same?

On the other hand, what is new is large scale industrial monoculture agriculture. I am dubious to the concept that we can transition the world over to plant based without planting a lot of soy, something that I think is bad.

Side note: we have been managing cattle poorly for years. The proper way is to pen them into relatively tight (but not cramped) portions of the grazing land, and then rotate them from section to section regularly. This mimics the way that herding animals react to predators (cluster up), and gives the grasses time to recover and sequester carbon. It's also far more land efficient than other methods, which is nice.

Edit: it looks like 84% of world wide calories come from plants already. Doesn’t seem to be doing anything to stop global warming to me. Maybe it’s the fact that we’re still using fossil fuels instead?

So that was not the case for my brother; his numbers were significantly worse and he was on medication, before he switched to veganism and greatly improved. In the study I posted, the meat-eaters were in the study too so I don't think that bias exactly applies, though in general dietary studies are always difficult.

I think I've read the same books as you, and agree with much of what you say. I would love to see us switch all our cattle over to Allan Savory's methods, and if lab-grown meat works out, maybe some ranchers will survive by providing premium grass-fed.

I've also read a stack of the better-known low-carb/paleo books. It just didn't work out for me, my results were horrific. It does seem to work for some people. Regarding cavities, perhaps there are tradeoffs to every diet.

In any case, as I said above I don't think vegetarianism is a way to save the world. Lab-grown meat is what will help save the world. Getting off oil will also be a huge help.

The bias absolutely applies. Vegans care about their health, so they’re likely to do a lot of behaviors that are unambiguously healthy. If someone believes that meat is bad for them and continues to eat it, then they are obviously valuing something else over their health, and are more likely to do other unhealthy things like smoke, drink too much, etc.

I’d be far more interested in comparing vegans to people who believe that meat is good for them and are very health aware. Paleo or Keto individuals would be a good cohort to pick. That would measure technique and not intention, because both paleos and vegans are intending to be healthy.

I’m curious what your results were on low carb. I work out with a cohort of low carb eaters, and we lost an avg of 30lbs when we switched. I personally lost 40, most of it fat (thanks Dexa scan!). I’d also be curious about what your brother cut out from his food supply that helped. Obviously we’re deep into anecdote land at this point though.

I’m dubious about lab grown meat. As previously mentioned in an edit, 84% of the worlds calories are just straight up plants, and it doesn’t seem to be helping much. But if it provides cheaper meat to the masses, I might be persuaded.

I am however very conservative when it comes to introducing new ingredients into the human food supply. I think we’ve done a lot of harm in the past 30 years by adding a lot of seed (sorry, “vegetable”) oils into our food supply. Just because something isn’t acutely toxic doesn’t mean you should be eating it all the time, and I will personally take the exact same approach to lab grown meat. I’ll probably be the last person to switch over, if I ever do.

Edit: it turns out the original study claiming that meat was producing half of the greenhouse gasses was flawed, and the authors had to revise it. The actual number is 3.9% of US emissions, with the rest of agriculture representing 5.1% of US emissions.

Source: https://www.eco-business.com/opinion/yes-eating-meat-affects...

It's possible to move around exclusively by hopping on one leg. Doesn't mean it's the best way to live your life.

But hopping around on one leg is obviously less efficient, slower and maybe even unhealthy for your joints etc. Is a vegetarian diet less efficient or healthy?

It is limiting your choices in restaurants obviously, but suppose you live in some vegetarian community. Is this community limiting its potential? While if you live in a community that exclusively hops around on one leg, the answer is obviously yes, for the first example I'm not sure.

A vegetarian diet often has significantly less protein (important if you're trying to build or maintain muscle mass) and less of some trace nutrients (zinc, iron, vitamin B12) than a diet including meat. It's possible to make up the differences and there are health benefits if you do, but it's definitely more work.

We evolved to adapt to our environment and we are not some kind of 'final form' that we are stuck with forever, we are still evolving. And people are able to extract nutrients from plants just fine. Also the two incisors do not have to determine anyone's diet. Now if you don't want to be be a vegetarian fine but don't tell me it's impossible because that's just not true.

> We evolved to adapt to our environment and we are not some kind of 'final form' that we are stuck with forever, we are still evolving.

As a species we are evolving, as an individual you are not. You can argue that humans might become herbivores in the next few 10,000 years, but don't expect to see it in your lifetime.

I also would argue that the individuals who are trying to consciously work against where we've evolved from will face some negative effects, even if their intentions are good.

> the two incisors do not have to determine anyone's diet.

We actually have 4 incisors and 4 canines, for a total of 25% of our teeth. In general teeth are a good indication of what a species eats, since the teeth and the rest of the organism evolved together. Teeth are also a fantastic indicator of the health of the individual, anthropologists use the rate of cavities to tell how healthy the individual and society was.

Coincidentally, vegetarians have a higher rate of cavities than the population at large.

> Now if you don't want to be be a vegetarian fine but don't tell me it's impossible because that's just not true.

I would kindly appreciate you not making up what I'm arguing and putting words into my mouth. I'm not saying humans are obligate carnivores, I'm saying they're omnivores. That means that we can survive off plants, I just think it's a bad idea.

Individuals can and do evolve, and then they pass that on to their children, that's how evolution works. Biological evolution is a very long and slow process, technological evolution is not. That's why our teeth are a poor indication of what we should be eating because of this revolutionary thing called cooking. Our teeth are records of our past evolution, not rules for our future or current evolution. The claim that vegetarians have higher rates of cavities is total bullshit. They actually have better dental hygiene.

Bzzzt, no.

Individuals do not evolve new genetic features after birth. You will not change your teeth structure genetically in your lifetime, unless if you take up hockey or bare knuckle boxing. Your kids might have a mutation from you that’ll change their teeth, but statistically they won’t.

There’s also an ongoing debate about to what degree humans face evolutionary pressures anymore. Without some selection to pick one mutation over the other, it’s unclear which direction we will evolve.

Teeth are a good record of how the individual evolved to eat, which is indeed in the past. But you have no idea where the evolution will take us, and that’ll take thousands of years, and again individuals do not evolve. So yes, teeth still matter.

I’m glad you have good teeth, but I’ll remind you that anecdotes are not data.

Now you're hopping from evolution to genetic features as though they are the same thing. I never mentioned that I have good teeth or that I was vegetarian, nor is it anecdotal that vegetarians have better dental hygiene. I highly doubt our teeth will change at all because people don't die from lack of a certain tooth. Teeth don't matter when you can literally have all fake teeth and get by eating just fine. In fact, we often remove teeth because we have too many. Again, individuals do evolve, which is not the same as suddenly getting new distinct physical features half way through your life, which actually can happen so you're also wrong about that.

You keep asserting, sans proof, that individuals evolve. Unfortunately for you, the experts disagree[0-2]. Evolution is something that happens to a population, not an individual.

> I highly doubt our teeth will change at all because people don't die from lack of a certain tooth.

Yes, I made this point. But that was not true when humans evolved into our current form, right around when the rest of us evolved. Until relatively recently, humans did die from dental cavities, and we haven't changed significantly in 1,000 years, so the point stands.

> nor is it anecdotal that vegetarians have better dental hygiene.

Which would be a good point if I was trying to claim that. I said they had worse health, which is diet and behavior related.

The big one for me is K2. There is only one vegan source of K2, natto, all other sources are either animal or meat based. K2 is critical for a lot of things, including tooth cells.

Vegans and vegetarians are showing higher rates of tooth decay (not cavities, I misread) than the rest of the population[3]. Doesn't really matter how much they're brushing, it's diet driven.

> Again, individuals do evolve

[Citation needed]

> which is not the same as suddenly getting new distinct physical features half way through your life

You're right that meaningful mutations might be at the protein level, but you're not going to start synthesizing brand new proteins either.

0. http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/21st_century_science/lectures/l...

1. https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq...

2. https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/53371/what-is-me...

3. https://www.deltadentalwa.com/blog/entry/2018/07/vegan-diet-...

Okay, you're merely arguing semantics with me on evolution. You can call it adaptation or a catalyst for evolution, whatever word you want, but it's still evolution. When applying the theory of evolution to humans, you can't use such a simple definition because we have technology. Additionally, our minds are powerful enough to decide to do things that will cause physiological changes beyond those that one might say would have been caused by natural selection. And how do our minds evolve? Thought, experience, brain processes that we have yet to understand fully which are also directly linked/affected with the rest of our bodies. The evolution of our collective consciousness and knowledge base is the where the real evolution is occurring.

Honestly have no idea what you're saying about teeth anymore, your whole point was that our teeth prove we are meant to have omnivorous diets, which I was arguing against because our teeth are relics just like our nails, they do not matter anymore, so I still don't know how your point stands. They are merely links to our past evolution and what we used to eat 100's of thousands of years ago, long before we discovered cooking which some have linked to a spike in our evolution to our current status.

You literally said "Coincidentally, vegetarians have a higher rate of cavities than the population at large." Cavities are tooth decay btw...not sure why you think they are two different things.

Sorry, but they really don't, and the study you're pushing trying to claim that shit was done on isolated indigenous populations which has nothing to do with vegetarians in the rest of the world who are able to get K2 from plenty of non meat foods like cheese or eggs. More than likely, those isolated tribes are vegan more-so than vegetarian without access to milk-based products or soy beans. Also you get K2 from your gut as well.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1492156

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/changing-our-dna-...

There’s no point in continuing this thread, you’re literally making up your own definition for every subject we’re talking about.

Refusing to even admit you're completely wrong about vegetarians having more cavities because you know I'm right. :)

Speaking as a life-long vegetarian here, I don't think most people are naturally suited to it. I don't eat meat because I don't want to. I know I'd hate to live my life wanting, say, cheese, or spinach, or whatever, and denying it to myself because of some imagined higher good. I feel like people should embrace their nature. Mine doesn't happen to include eating meat. Most peoples' does, and that's OK.

So then it's a nature/nurture kind of discussion. Do you think some people are genetically unable to stop eating meat? Personally, I think your tastes will adapt, i.e. it wouldn't feel like denying yourself anything after a while. But maybe it's different for some people.

Also commercials and just society around you influences your cravings. I think if you would grow up somewhere where there is no dairy for example, you would not crave it.

I don't think they're genetically unable to stop, but I think they're genetically predisposed to prefer eating meat if it's an option. I've gone without dairy for a couple of months here and there (while traveling in Asia where it's much less of a thing than at home) and definitely still missed it by the time I got home.

It’s as much s habit as it is a habit for lions to hunt prey; or pigs. I understand we could choose to go vegetarian, but it’s more than overcoming “habit”. We’re omnivores, by nature, not by habit. My point is that being facile is detrimental to a cause. Yes, with effort we could become all vegetarians, but it’s more than overcoming habit (a habit is leaving the toilet seat up).

"To deny our own impulses is to deny the very thing that makes us human." - Mouse, The Matrix

Depending on humans to do “the right thing” when it goes against our instincts is not a good way to approach these problems. You need to offer ways for humans to satiate their needs AND do the right thing.

Yeah I agree. Though I don't think that lab meat will be a panacea.

I also think so. Moreover, I wish there were a way for me, as an average nonmillionaire, to invest in that as an industry.

I've been thinking about this quote a lot recently - "Canada, the most affluent of countries, operates on a depletion economy which leaves destruction in its wake. Your people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money." It's attributed to a canadian Aboriginal but could apply to any industrialized or semi industrialized country. Hopefully we save ourselves before it's too late

Canada has a terrible environmental record that completely undermines its progressive reputation. The tar sands project may be the single most egregious resources undertaking in history.

But other so-called progressive industrialized nations aren't much better. Norway is also wealthy primarily due to the extraction of fossil fuels.

Hopefully with the oil prices so low and keep getting lower, the tar sands is a dead project

> with the oil prices so low and keep getting lower

cries in french

Low prices means higher consumption, which will do the opposite of kill off that project.

260$ billion to clean up Alberta's oilpatch https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/2018/11/01/what-...

Sheeeet..

Norway is in the middle of trying to figure this out. Or we are where we have always been: Pretending to do everything we can to protect the climate while actually doing almost nothing that would impact our standard of living. Its hard to tell if we are actually moving the discussion forward or not.

We are happy to spend billions funding rainforrests around the world, but we won't make any hard choices that affect us at home.

Stopping the national subsidies for oil exploration is something that would probably stop it dead in its tracks. But we are not doing that. We are instead in the process of opening new areas for explorative drilling. There might be some truth to the "clean oil technology" talk, but it doesn't change the fact that oil == carbon.

The only reason we havn't started drilling in "Lofoton"( our famous fishing grounds and home of a lot of magnificent scenery constantly posted on reddit ) is that a few small swing parties are putting their foot down. All the larger parties want to drill. As they always have. Its depressing.

We do have the fairly new(in terms of actually being voted for) "Green" party which is basically a single-issue party. I'm hoping they can steer the conversation to a point where will be able to make hard choices.

Not to derail too much, but this also applies to everything else we do or dont do. Like not cutting arm sales to the saudies etc. Its money talks all the way.

Edit: and don't get me starte on wolves. Even while the majority of norwegians seemingly wants wolves in our forests, we seem to be dead set on limiting their numbers to a population which is not going to sustain itself genetically. Rip wolves.

What? I'm in the industry and believe me, Norway is making transitions. Statoil -> Equinor. Your SWF no longer will invest in fossil fuels. Wayyy more mandates regarding emissions/pollution during extraction.

They shouldn't just stop drilling. It is a moneymaker for the country and gives the government lots of money to spend on policies which reduce the country's emissions. Norway produces lots of oil relative to the country's size so if they took it off the market, it would just come from somewhere with less standards and less commitment to the environment. They should make calculated moves which don't risk the country's economic future. Taking the biggest sovereign wealth fund in the world's money out of FF stocks is a good way to start, and doesn't jeopardize much, if anything.

Green's only purpose should be to change the dialogue, not to be given any legislative power whatsoever. They will make drastic moves which will yield economic consequences felt by the public. Reality is, people have to be in good economic circumstances to care about altruistic goals like curtailing climate change. Take those good economic circumstances away from them - and suddenly the environment is no longer much of a priority.

Changing their name is not really changing what they do. I realize they are diversifying into other areas(which is only sensible), but they are still also doing what they have always been doing. Push for more drilling. And i'm not sure i buy their argument that since someone else will just pick up the slack we should keep doing it. I realize that oil is what has brought us our wealth, but this is what i meant by hard choices.

> Taking the biggest sovereign wealth fund in the world's money out of FF stocks is a good way to start, and doesn't jeopardize much, if anything.

This is also what i mean by hard choices. In this case it wasn't really that hard.

I don't know why you insist on a choice being "hard". What matters is the outcome. Taking billions of dollars out of foreign FF stocks has a good outcome for the environment and leads the way for even more to be taken out. The economy is unaffected. Government gets their petrorevenues to spend on reducing the country's emissions.

Stopping drilling just means another producer fills the void, and the Norwegian economy suffers as a result. People rightfully react to that and often elect someone on the other end of the political spectrum. Not only do other producers have less env. regulation, but the backlash from the Norwegian populace could elect a government within Norway who slashes this regulation and restarts production. History is replete with reactionary governments, especially when the Overton window is shifted too fast.

My point is, keep diversifying the economy, keep diversifying energy sources. Just because drilling continues does not mean alternative energy is slowing down. Take it slow, else you risk backlash.

Its not that they have to be hard choices. Its rather that we are only commiting to try the easy ones.

And i do agree that what matters is the outcome. I just don't think we are changing the outcome as much as we should be doing given our beneficial position in the world. There are only so many easy "things", for lack of a better word, we can do. The rest are hard. And it seems to me that we are stopping short of committing to doing anything "hard".

I could be wrong about what produces the best outcome with regards the environment considering wether to stopping or continue drilling(edit: in norway). But our carbon emmisions are still climbing while most of the europe that we should be comparing ourselves to has either stopped or reduced their emmisions. We are still not contributing to a carbon negative world other than not being as bad as we could have been.

>But our carbon emmisions are still climbing while most of the europe that we should be comparing ourselves to has either stopped or reduced their emmisions. We are still not contributing to a carbon negative world other than not being as bad as we could have been.

What now? Your emissions have remained flat for the last ten years, you have a carbon tax, your country was one of the first to implement CCS technology [1]. You guys have by no means been sitting on your hands.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Norway

Having grown up with a national forest as my literal backyard, its amusing and sad to hear so much nonsense spewed in this thread. Yes, we need to protect the wild, and inculcate respect for it in those that live in and visit it. My issue is with the naivety of proposed "solutions".

One of the best examples I can give, though I have many, is this: my grandfather was a logger and firefighter in this forest in the 70s. During my lifetime though, the PhD environmentalists came to dominate the forest service, and as logging waned they stopped listening to the old timers about how to take care of the forest. My grandfather would try to tell them they needed to let loggers thin the forest out, and to do more control burns and let them burn longer.

As a kid I dismissed his ramblings, thinking; "they have PhDs! they know better than us!"... and then after I left home, after the pine beetle infestation, poof: two fires within a few years of each other that burned over 500,000 acres of that national forest I grew up in... and it is still recovering to this day, and doesnt look the same. Old trails I used to walk dont exist anymore. Mud slides from the fire have covered up old fishing spots. Etc.

City slickers love to wax poetic about the forest, and then show up and destroy it, and want to send in their environmentalists to fix it their way, while those of us who live in those forests are greater stewards than they ever have been. Then after the forest service or BLM phds have fucked things up, they get sent off to some other poor areas forest, where they arent native and dont listen to the natives.

Another example for this thread: many are claiming cattle ruin forest. on the contrary, cattle have become an important part of keeping the forest healthy, including ranchers taking care of forest land the forest service doesnt have the resources to fix...

Just thought some people might want to hear a slightly different perspective on this issue. Now of course Im talking about smaller localized forests compared to the giant ecosystems the article covers, but I think those microcosms should serve as a warning for anyone wanting to tackle those larger ecosystems in a similar manner. Namely, listen to locals who know the forest better than you do.

Cattle are good for forests? I'm sorry but you're going to have to backup that statement.

One of the primary benefits is that cattle help clear underbrush, which therfor produces more productive stands of timber. If kept in one area too long though they will begine to damage trees, so proper rotation schedules should be followed. Split hooved animals also aerate soil which helps with natural seed planting and growth. There is an entire focus on the use of ranching and forestry together with lots of science behind it, it used to be called silvopasture, but is now referred to as agroforestry.

Of course they can be destructive when not managed properly. The main cause of this correlation in most peoples minds imho is the fact that in the Amazon, such as Brazil, cattle ranchers were causing deforestation simply to create pastures. That is obviously wrong, but its not what happens in the US.

Do you have any references for this? I've honestly never heard of cows or cow-like grazing animals living in forests. I've only ever heard of them in grasslands.

To your second point, native biodiversity is definitely destroyed to graze cattle, that happens in the US and everywhere in the world.

I can't speak for what the OP meant, but at least out West cattle fill a critical role in the wilderness ecosystem vacated by bison. If you remove the cattle, you would need to find a suitable replacement with similar grazing patterns.

As a well known example, pronghorn antelope benefit significantly from coexisting with cattle/bison populations, due to reduced predation and increased food supply (they have complementary feeding patterns). Grazers create ideal habitat for pronghorn, so pronghorn populations tend to track grazer populations. These days, that is cattle.

I am talking about out west. I hadn't thought of the bison angle, but thats a good point. (I'm a geek, not a rancher, so my knowledge on these things is anecdotal from listening to the old timers)

I thought we were talking about forests, not grasslands.

They can be with proper handling and rotation. They are also vital for grasslands, not just forests. However, industrial raised beef is not good for forests, it's very very bad.

Opposite perspective time.

Dr. So and So sometimes is a local. A local who has hard data collected fairly regularly since ~1950 that shows that Chesapeake oyster/blue crab/whatever populations have been in steady decline due to a combination of over-fishing, and massive increases in nutrient levels due to runoff. And yet many water-men resist any sort of limits on catch and fishing methods tooth and nail.

You are probably right in some cases, but "locals" are nearly always the bloody problem. And when you leave them alone, without intervention, they tend to completely destroy whatever resources are near bye. Look at the coral reefs in Cuba for instance vs the protected reefs off the Florida keys.

I'm not saying the having a PhD makes you correct. There are tons of arrogant idiots out there and some of them are definitely wrong, but when the two sides of the argument are leave it alone vs don't leave it alone (and also maybe stop dumping so much chicken poop on your crops), I tend to think that leave it alone is the healthier option a good percentage of the time.

I made this post because I have seen this attitude before so many times, and it is so often combined with a willful ignorance of the situation. The government doesn't spend an obscene amount of money raising and releasing oysters so that "natives", who are often no more native than the people raising and studying the oysters, can scoop them out of protected areas, inhibit the process, and claim that nothing is wrong and they know the bay better than those arrogant scientists.

My story and your story aren't mutually exclusive. You are correct that often locals can be the problem. I don't want to give the impression that they are always right or always know better, but at the same time, I think it's worth acknowledging a certain amount of wisdom from them regarding certain subjects. I probably could have chosen my words to that effect more carefully. That's why I gave that particular example about the forest fire as a result of not listening to locals.

There has to be some middle ground between the two, some meeting place, (usually the best done with education programs for the locals), but most of the time, neither side in this debate is completely right or completely wrong. I don't know anything about oceans or bays so I'll just say I do see that type in the forest as well, the "nothing the scientists ever do is right" type, but that's not who I am defending or talking about in this case.

> usually the best done with education programs for the locals

Agreed, although that sort of outreach is surprisingly difficult because the people on both sides that you most want to interact with each other are usually the people least interested in doing so.

The point is still excellent though. People really hate being told what to do without being told why, or feeling like they had input in the process, so involving them is the best way to get people on board.

When we start letting anecdotal experiences override scientific knowledge and rational thinking, we are limited to more primitive modes of thought like group think or stereotypes. This includes even those with PhD's who often have a higher prestige of themselves due to said accomplishment, and may look down on those without. Education is key, I agree, and just cause someone has a PhD doesn't mean they should stop learning, or they are the end-all-be-all.

for example your idea on over-fishing. this over-fishing is generally done by the larger fishing companies. local fisheries have incentive to keep the population in check as they cannot just migrate to another fishing area. that means that over generations those locals will have learnt a lot about this very thing. usually bigger business is a bit more careless, as they generally have more options to go to if one is depleted.

That spiecies are declining due to human impact is a bit of a tough conclusion to draw and i'd like to see how specifically this is proven. Not to say that this doesn't happen, but people are often quick to judge eachother and look at human impact on things, all the while spieces have been going extinct and new ones have been rising up from long long before humans were around.

this study and data since 1950, most likely looks at the impact of fisheries on the area. no doubt. but did it look also at the time before fisheries to see what was happening tot the population then? Is there a good baseline made? I'm pretty sure they won't have the same data pre-fisheries and compare the two, but only look at the data they gathered while the fishing was already going on.

Don't take this as an attack on your opinion, i'm a bit skeptical on anything really, and don't disagree that humans ofcourse in areas have negative impact on nature due to their disregard of it. It jjust pains me to see a lot of small local businesses getting hurt because some studies point to them as a source of a problem while often these studies are fairly shallow. even 50 years of data has potential to be a 1-sided data collection, aimed at proving a specific point instead of trying to show data which might prove OR disprove it. (in a lot of these situations it's practically impossible to gather good baseline data to compare to, as human interactions have been present from before the data collection started, i am aware of that.)

>Then after the forest service or BLM phds have fucked things up

>The PhD environmentalists came to dominate the forest service

What forest exactly? Because this reads like a really bad forwarded email.

Most BLM "PhD's" are from the area they're protecting. They don't shift them around all over the country. Like, I'm not even sure what lead you to think that.

Your arrogance is not as good as someone else's knowledge. And that's all your post really gets at. "I've lived here my entire life, so clearly without devoting any actual effort to studying the ecosystem I know what's best because hey, the trees look pretty good to me!"

> Most BLM "PhD's" are from the area they're protecting.

Citation needed. In my experience this has not been the case, but I was on national forest land, not BLM land, so there may be a difference in management practices.

> "I've lived here my entire life, so clearly without devoting any actual effort to studying the ecosystem I know what's best because hey, the trees look pretty good to me!"

That's not at all what my post said, you are attacking a strawman.

BLM -- Bureau of Land Management?

Correct.

>Citation needed.

Where are your citations for anything you've said?

I've worked with the BLM many times out West and your characterization does not comport with my experience. For example, during my many interactions with BLM in rural Nevada, an astonishing number of the local employees were New England natives that had recently graduated from environmental science programs. True locals were rare. (It was strange -- even the old timers that seemed like natives originally moved there from New England and just never left. Why always New England?)

BLM long-timers in the region were easy to work with and understood the nuances of the ecosystem well. Most of the conflict was when some recently transferred idealist with no experience in the high desert ecosystem decided that they needed to dramatically change how the ecosystem was managed, mostly just to show that there was a new sheriff in town, without understanding why things were managed the way they were. Normal human condition stuff. And yes, this occasionally produced real ecosystem destruction because they didn't understand the ecosystem interdependencies and weren't interested in listening. This always sorted itself out over time, they either quickly recognized that they didn't understand the ecosystem nearly as well as they thought they did and started listening to locals or they transferred back to the east coast, but there was always a steady stream of fresh young graduates cycling through to create new drama.

Can you provide a concrete example of this happening? Location and timelines would suffice.

>One of the best examples I can give, though I have many, is this: my grandfather was a logger and firefighter in this forest in the 70s. During my lifetime though, the PhD environmentalists came to dominate the forest service, and as logging waned they stopped listening to the old timers about how to take care of the forest. My grandfather would try to tell them they needed to let loggers thin the forest out, and to do more control burns and let them burn longer.

This is just flat out false, anti-science disinformation. Fire suppression as a policy started in the 1930s and actually reverted in the 60's and 70's.

>The first national fire policy came after several years of severe fires between 1910 and 1935. In the context of the ecological theory of the time, fire exclusion was believed to promote ecological stability. In addition, fire exclusion could also reduce commodity damages and economic losses. In 1935, the USDA Forest Service instituted the “10 AM Policy,” wherein the objective was to prevent all human-caused fires and contain any fire that started by 10 a.m. the following day. By the 1960s, fire management costs were increasing exponentially. The 1964 Wilderness Act, Tall Timbers Research Conferences, and Southern Forest Fire Lab research demonstrated the positive benefits derived from natural and prescribed fire. As a result, national fire policy began to evolve to address both the economic and ecological benefits of not aggressively controlling, and even using, fire. In February 1967, the USDA Forest Service permitted leeway for early- and late-season fires. In 1968, the National Park Service changed its policy to recognize the natural role of fire, allow natural ignitions to run their course under prescribed conditions, and use prescribed fires to meet management objectives. In 1971, the USDA Forest Service 10-Acre Policy was added, which set a pre-suppression objective of containing all fires within 10 acres. In 1977 a new fire policy was selected by the USDA Forest Service that replaced both the 10 AM and 10-Acre policies. The new policy encouraged a pluralistic approach — fire by prescription. Even for suppression, once initial attack failed, alternatives to full suppression were to be considered. Fire suppression became fire management.The 1994 fire season with its 34 fatalities (14 at South Canyon, Colorado) precipitated the 1995 Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy & Program Review (1995 Report). This review again affirmed the positive benefits of fire. It recognized that fire was part of a larger problem, one of several symptoms of natural ecosystems becoming increasingly unstable due to altered ecological regimes. It talked about the needs for landscape-level resource management, the integration of fire into land management planning and implementation, and the involvement of all affected landowners and stakeholders.[0]

[0]https://web.archive.org/web/20070810191055/http://www.nifc.g...

> This is just flat out false, anti-science disinformation. Fire suppression as a policy started in the 1930s and actually reverted in the 60's and 70's.

No it's not. I didn't say fire suppression as a policy started then. I said they stopped listening to locals for advice about, primarily, the control burns, and the needs for forest thinning. You are attacking an argument I never made. Strawman fallacy.

But they did allow controlled burns, thats what his link says. So you created a strawman in the scientists.

The 1964 Wilderness Act, Tall Timbers Research Conferences, and Southern Forest Fire Lab research demonstrated the positive benefits derived from natural and prescribed fire. As a result, national fire policy began to evolve to address both the economic and ecological benefits of not aggressively controlling, and even using, fire. In February 1967, the USDA Forest Service permitted leeway for early- and late-season fires. In 1968, the National Park Service changed its policy to recognize the natural role of fire, allow natural ignitions to run their course under prescribed conditions, and use prescribed fires to meet management objectives.

I never said they didn't allow control burns at all either. They were stopping them too soon, doing them too little, etc. Which is why I said they stopped listening to locals for input on those policies, not that they stopped them completely. So no, I did no such thing, and in fact, it is you who created the strawman. That seems to be the theme of the day today, because I'm starting to sound like a broken record.

Your comment above mine says this

" I said they stopped listening to locals for advice about, primarily, the control burns, and the needs for forest thinning."

It doesnt say the need for MORE forest thining. Its says needs for forest thinning, which implies it wasnt happening

your points are fine. people don't understand we live in a dynamic ecosystem. if we have been active in the forest doing things for a long time, it will get used to this ,and the whole ecosystem of the forest will adjust to it. like you said, if it stops, as your example, an infestation of some insect or plant which is generally kept in check by the human interactions might ruin everything.

humans are natural, and their interactions generally are also natural, and nature can deal with nature just fine...

on another note: people seem to think they dominate this earth all over, but most of the earth is uninhabited and a lot is still unexplored. if you want to 'save' something, go after big corporations who do things on 'unnaturally' large scale. not forestry services and loggers who are doing it small scale. they are the people who know things and should be listened to, their experience is invaluable, more important than some phd paper or science project from some dweeb who has hardly seen a naturally grown tree in their life.

completely agree with your points thanks, that happens only very rarely on here! :D

When I was growing up in Oregon the biggest forestry controversy was a halt to logging in national forests to conserve habitat for the endangered Northern Spotted Owl. Outside of the Portland area, it seemed like most news outlets and people were against this intervention. I kind of went along with adult sentiment and thought that the federal government shouldn't destroy our state's logging jobs with their meddling.

As an adult, I have a completely different perspective. Loggers had been cutting down old-growth trees faster than they grow back for generations. If they'd been managing the forests sustainably all along nobody would have forced them to do things differently. Blaming environmentalists and government for the end of old growth logging is like blaming the gas gauge for your empty fuel tank. The underlying resource was depleted and the logging community plan was, apparently, to ensure it ran out completely before changing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_spotted_owl#Controver...

Nobody talking about old growth logging... so many strawmen attacks today.

I'm not trying to tell you what happened where you grew up. I'm describing what happened where I grew up. We're both just sharing anecdotes.

The PhDs and environmentalists forced changes on timber communities in the state where I grew up because locals weren't good stewards of the national forests. If the PhDs listened to the timber town Oregon natives, the remaining old growth forest would stay open to logging too, the owls would have lost the last undisturbed habitat, and the post-timber economic cratering would have only been delayed for a bit.

People who have grown up near extractive industries may have a lot of experience of how those industries work that PhDs lack. But people who grow up around extractive industries may also be poor judges of the sustainability of those industries. Anything you grow up with seems "normal" and it's comforting to believe that there's a good, familiar kind of job waiting for you when you grow up. Locals may see things very unclearly when clear vision would reveal big challenges and changes ahead.

Ok, sorry for the defensiveness, I got into that mode due to all the attacks. You make fair points.

This is a difficult issue. On the one hand, it is arrogant to sit in comfortable chairs imported to areas that live in excess and tell others to live with less so that we may appreciate their wilderness from afar; or ephemerally while we are on vacation. On the other hand, I am reminded of this letter/video which sums up an important ethos: https://vimeo.com/newmanfilm/wildernessletter. We should protect the wilderness because it inspires us to be better.

Humanity doesn't need wilderness to survive and grow (we need food and water). But we do need it to remind ourselves where we came from and how complexity can be beautiful. So what do we do?

> Humanity doesn't need wilderness to survive and grow

Can you back this up? I agree with the comment by fractallyte that wilderness is a necessity for long-term survival of humans. Also guaranteeing food and water without wilderness has never been attempted before...

It seems to me that the opposite assessment requires more justification. Ever since Neolithic, mankind has been domesticating most if not all species it consumed. And we've been deforesting like crazy. We're not hunter gatherers anymore, so our progress has consisted relying less and less on wilderness and more on controlled, artificial environments.

I'm not saying that we don't need wilderness for deeper reasons (say psychological, or in terms on keeping biodiversity for future-proofing our biological pool of domesticated species...). But such hypothetical reliance on wilderness surely seems less obvious than our independence from it.

Absolutely not definitive, but the biosphere 2 experiments provide a data point.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2

We were talking about wilderness. Biosphere 2 is about way more than that, as it was a completely sealed environment (it had to produce its own oxygen, for a start).

> Humanity doesn't need wilderness to survive and grow

It is a very egoistic perspective (at the species level) that we can destroy species of plants and animals (and entire ecosystems) just because they don't serve us.

...and it's a bit naive to overlook the fact that we've already done this.

We've wiped hundreds of species off the face of the earth while coming to rely on other species that wouldn't exist without our intervention (e.g. livestock). Entire ecosystems have been destroyed simply because they don't serve us.

If you look on the map, there's a small patch of wilderness in the lower 48 (direct link):

https://media.nature.com/w800/magazine-assets/d41586-018-071...

That's most likely the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness here in Idaho, as well as the various national forests surrounding it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Church–River_of_No_Retur...

There is almost no wilderness left, and what remains is only there because people spent lifetimes working to defend it. I highly encourage anyone who reads this to make a stand in your personal discussions to always choose protecting wild lands over financial gain.

I see the recent attacks on things like the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase national monuments to be sabotage, undermining the decades-long efforts of conservationists:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/us/trump-bears-ears.html

As a native Idahoan I respect opposing arguments but recent trends have gone too far. I heard discussions while growing up that when the national debt reached a certain level, the US government would begin selling off its public lands. So look at who stands to benefit from that and other debts, and you'll see a giant circle of corruption. Meta-level critical thinking is needed now more than ever in these times.

Problem here is that developed world has destroyed it's wilderness long time ago, used that land to produce food and resources, but now we demand that others don't do the same. Why don't we instead create a wilderness by giving up on our local agriculture land? Nature takes back the land very quickly and if you limit hunting and repopulate the animals you'll quickly have a full-blown wilderness back. It doesn't have to be Amazon or some place in Africa, Europe once was covered in forests end-to-end too.

An absolutely massive amount of land could be saved by not eating beef. I don't see that ever happening in America though. And even if the land was saved from cow farming it would just be used to create more urban sprawl.

To be fair--a lot of the land in America used for beef is prairie. There wouldn't be massive rain forests there or anything anyways.

Other things could be put on that land instead of destroying nature to make more space.

This is literally what developed countries have been doing, at least in the last 6-7 decades. And besides, Europe still is ‘covered by forests end-to-end’.

So not sure what your rant is about… Just speculating, but maybe in your opinion the rates should be increased?

> Problem here is that developed world has destroyed it's wilderness long time ago, used that land to produce food and resources, but now we demand that others don't do the same.

So why not pay those countries to leave their wilderness wild?

It would be like saying: "You know, we really screwed up, and you guys are the only ones who have some of this precious wilderness left. We'd like to pay you to preserve it."

It would be nice, but many countries struggle to even get funding approved to help other people who are starving. Nationalism is a huge barrier.

So how do you incentivize/coerce governments and companies to conserve natural resources, not dump toxins into the air, land and water, and generally limit the negative influences on our health and environment?

"A world given over entirely to the engine of industry becomes a world no longer fit for creatures, human or otherwise; it becomes a world without hope." - Tim Winton

What these reports often seem to ignore is that there is still biodiversity within our cities--sometimes a lot of it. If the default assumption is "city bad, wilderness good", we're never going to make any progress, because short of an apocalyptic event cities are here to stay. What we should be focused on is making the cities we live in more sustainable and integrated with their ecosystems. Green roofs, urban parks, sustainable transportation networks, clean energy--there are plenty of avenues being explored today that are connecting our cities with nature. Cities should be a part of nature rather than apart from nature.

Thinking just of recognizable animals, typical cities have, what, rats, cats, starlings, house sparrows, rock doves, gulls, and not terribly much more. We can do better, but in general cities are not biodiversity hotspots.

Interesting that the article comes a week after Brazilians elected an extreme right-wing president that promised to open up all the Amazon's nature reserves for mining and farming. I expect the next 4 years will be very sad for Amazon forests.

At HN we are discussing roguelike game development while the world around us is systematically destroyed and what will be left is us experiencing nature through a Nethack game.

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