Imagine the cartoon with the dialogue "yes, millions of people continued to live in subsistence farming and faced an early death, but for a beautiful moment in time the Yangtze Finless Porpoise continued to reproduce"
National parks, massive non profit animal parks, and well funded conservation teams all need funding and time. Both of those are a luxury in most places in the world with underdeveloped economies.
Across the world in countries living in poverty the environment always takes a backseat. Without a stable economy and stable nation states the outcomes will be far worse.
It’s hardly just either/or.
If anything it’s the mere existence of humans and population levels aren’t going down anytime soon. The fact they engage in trade for survival and to prevent suffering is merely a product of that.
The only way this articles direct correlation makes sense is if economic success doesn’t increase capacity for conservation and humans ability/technology isn’t capable of being at a minimum neutral harm to the wider ecosystem.
But it will always be a balance, that’s just the cards we were dealt being born on this planet. I mean we were already killing thousands of animals and countless plants and manipulating the earth well before the word ‘economy’ was ever invented.
Oh wait. I'm pretty sure some of the countries with the biggest numbers don't really have that good of living standards.
This is what mankind should be shooting for: http://www.fiftytwostories.com/?p=270, not whatever goal the blind idiot god of capitalism spews forth.