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

Most countries, the significant exceptions being in Sub-Saharan Africa, have TFR below or near replacement (2.1).

When girls are allowed to learn to read, and when people move to cities women don't have all that many kids.

Most of the world's current population growth is due to increasing lifespan.

So don't worry about managing population. In a few decades the worry will be about keeping it up, not down. (With Sub-Saharan Africa, again, as the exception.)

The problem is not rising population, it's rising affluence and inert technology.

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

Meanwhile we're not improving core technologies quickly enough.

We make buildings using Portland cement. Cement making is responsible for about 1/20 of total carbon emissions by itself. Planes are not electric yet; nor are cars. Cities are badly designed for pedestrians. Meat substitutes aren't good enough or cheap enough yet. We burn coal to make electricity, thanks to the coal industry's astroturfing campaign against nuclear in the 1960s and 1970s.

We also burn coal to make steel. We cut down forest to make biofuels, a bizarre and depraved practice.

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

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

The people chopping down rainforest and planting oil palms are dispossessed, former farmers.

The people making them do it are wealthy and politically well connected who arrange to have their land confiscated.

Currently under investigation as arson.

20 years later, you should watch that film again and see the manipulative fear mongering that is in play.

And let's not forget that Al is heavily invested in 'green' tech.

Sure but the point is that it's not directly related to the "Wildlife in catastrophic decline since the 70's".

I'm not sure I follow the rest, there is no time for philosophical debates about wether the West has the right to lecture developing countries, the earth cannot afford developing countries going down that path, period.

My point was that adapting our diet in the west looks useless to stop that catastrophic decline happening now, but maybe it could be a powerful act of solidarity to lead by example? To be clear I'm not discussing the merits of eating less meat (I'm vegetarian), just pointing out that it doesn't look like a short term solution for the very issue in TFA.

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

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

This planet is made for us, we are made for it. We need a top down approach to limit damage to nature and make sustainability the "GDP" of tomorrow.

I guess the HN crowd is not the once who like to hear that carbon tax might actually be a good solution.

Taxes are not market forces, they are exogenous interventions on markets. Which means having wealthiest countries implement a carbon tax is not riding market dynamics for free, but a difficult multi-agent cooperation problem that makes defecting competitively very advantageous. This includes for example requiring cooperation with India (5th in GDP) and China (2nd in GDP) who have been enjoying high, multi-year economic growth, whose de-carbonization would hurt their economies disproportionately, unlike other rich countries. Unfortunately exports only account for ~20% of their GDPs so there is only so much leverage to apply there either.

According to the IPCC, humans have transformed _more than 70%_ of all ice-free land if you take stuff like agriculture into account.

Edit: It'd seem that I've had remembered outdated figures.

The amount of land we live on is tiny compared to the amount of land we use.

That statement is a tautology. "Some" species will flourish in all productive biomes, by definition. But the ecosystems that existed will be highly disrupted. So we're replacing large predator marine species with jellyfish. Beavers with rats, wolves with feral cats, etc... And the plant diversity is quite a bit more impacted.

Your point amounts to "well, all life isn't going extince, so what's your problem?". The problem is that there is moral value in preserving what exists. Some of us like to believe that "causing a mass extinction event due to entirely preventable causes" is, y'know, a bad thing.

Megafauna do get most of the attention, but a lot of the hidden economic / scientific benefits of maintaining biodiversity I think comes from smaller parts of the ecosystem -- for instance, drug discovery. Or, the widely used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique for copying DNA... which for all we know is a technique that might not even exist today had preservationists not had the foresight to preserve the Lower Geyser Basin of Yellowstone National Park, where the crucial enzymes for this technique were found.

There are massive swaths of land in the lower 48 that are pretty much untouched beyond a few footpaths that are rarely used.

http://www.datapointed.net/2010/09/distance-to-nearest-mcdon...

Like any movement for societal change, you have to accept you can’t do it alone. But you must still do your part. Do it by leading by example, voting, and campaigning for change. Don’t give up! Focus on what you can control.

US population density = under 100 per mile^2

SF population density = 18k per mile^2

Major cities in Bangladesh, India, Phillipines have well over 50k/ml^2

Those countries also have nation wide population density of over 500/ml^2 at least.

Most people there can't buy an electric vehicle any time soon. They don't have tall buildings or functional transportation. They don't have enough jobs. The pollution levels are worse. Their countries have more corruption and less rights for everyone. They don't have enough drinking water or land for agriculture geographically.

Overpopulation makes solving all the problems harder.

Why almond milk? Why not another alternative? Why do we need milk at current quantities at all?

See the link - 63% of the global protein supply already comes from crops while crops only make up 23% of agriculture land so meat isn't as efficient a source anyway: https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets

> If you wanted to replace all the meat and dairy with equivalent protein substitutes you’d be looking at huge amounts of land for growing soybeans, peanuts, tree nuts

Most livestock aren't eating grass though, they're eating crops like soy because soy is full of protein (and that land use is included in the 40 million km^2 figure).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soybean "Around 80% of the global soybean crop is used to feed livestock.[46] Soya imports represent 47% of Europe’s deforestation footprint"

> Replace all the milk with almond milk

Or rice milk, oat milk, or soy milk. When cows are eating soybeans to produce milk right now, soy milk is always going to be more efficient.

Plant based milks are all significantly more efficient than diary milk for emissions, land and water use too: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46654042

Also, the focus on protein is just a distraction. It's not difficult to get protein from plants alone and most Americans eat too much protein already:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/28/well/eat/how-much-protein... "Most American adults eat about 100 grams of protein per day, or roughly twice the recommended amount."

> Good luck growing soybeans on a bunch of jagged cliffs.

If we were only farming grass fed cows on jagged cliffs, it would be less of a problem compared to mass deforestation to grow soybeans to feed to cows in intensive farms. The latter is the reality right now for everyone to have access to cheap meat but it's not sustainable.

In addition to the other replies, I'd like to point out that insect farming is an often overlooked solution. But of course it's just not sexy enough for most westerners.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations:

> Edible insects contain high quality protein, vitamins and amino acids for humans. Insects have a high food conversion rate, e.g. crickets need six times less feed than cattle, four times less than sheep, and twice less than pigs and broiler chickens to produce the same amount of protein. Besides, they emit less greenhouse gases and ammonia than conventional livestock. Insects can be grown on organic waste. Therefore, insects are a potential source for conventional production (mini-livestock) of protein, either for direct human consumption, or indirectly in recomposed foods (with extracted protein from insects); and as a protein source into feedstock mixtures.

http://www.fao.org/edible-insects/en/

I don't follow — I get my protein mostly from grains and a small amount of legumes. In Australia, about 2/3rds of all crop production is grown as animal feed, and 90% of the food given to farmed chickens and pigs are grains [1].

> Second of all, you can raise livestock like cattle, sheep, and goats on extremely rough terrain. Good luck growing soybeans on a bunch of jagged cliffs. Those areas may be highly inefficient in terms of land area per gram of protein, but it’s not going to be productive farmland otherwise.

And you can grow crops inside vertical farms within urban areas.

[1] https://www.veganaustralia.org.au/impact_of_a_vegan_agricult...

What we need to stop is industrial meat production. Americans eat nearly 100kg of meat per year. How about we reduce that to 25kg like in Turkey for a start. That's still a steak per week.

Others have chimed in with data, so here's today's anecdotal evidence: today I'm surrounded by fields and farmland. Fields make up roughly 60% of land. 20% of this land houses cattle and 80% grows barley which no human will ever consume. It's only grown for the cattle

I think it comes as no surprise that less land could produce more food for humans if the crops didn't have to pass through the cattle.

Some farmers not far from here are growing quinoa. It has a very good nutritional profile and offers a more effective use of land.

https://www.nutrition.org.uk/nutritionscience/nutrients-food...

It's quite easy to achieve this with a no or low animal product diet.

I don't know for sure but I expect the obsession with protein is down to carbohydrates being demonised in the last couple of decades of fad diets (much as fat was before that).

But to not address the parent's issue is really not an option.

Meat eating among the poor in European societies and derived societies is a new phenomenon at least in the idea that every meal has meat in it.

Take a look outside of Europe or even within less wealthy areas of Europe and their diets are magnitudes lower in their meat consumption.

I've read the opposite re: inflammatory side effects of meat that we are discovering. WHO a few years ago put eating sulfite infested meat as being carcinogenic.

My life wouldn't change at all if I suddenly started eating 50% less meat. wouldn't change a thing.

I don't know if this simply due to my own unique biochemistry or what, but it's not subtle. I have a fast metabolism, so that may have something to do with it? I know plenty of vegans and vegetarians who say they feel better after giving up meat, so I've always figured it depends on the person.

That's not a reason to continue, especially with climate change and the impact on nature. We have new challenges now.

> Add to that, the growing evidence that much of the plant material we're eating may have inflammatory side effects of consumption.

> The point I am making is that a solution isn't a solution if it means getting rid of one of the most dense forms of nutrition we have.

You offer no proof there's a problem going meat-free and major health organisations say plant-based diets are healthy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veganism

"Well-planned vegan diets are regarded as appropriate for all stages of life, including infancy and pregnancy, by the American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics,[f] Dietitians of Canada,[23] the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council,[24] New Zealand Ministry of Health,[25] Harvard Medical School,[26] and the British Dietetic Association.[27]"

There's lots of examples of sports people, academics, musicians etc. who are on plant based diets too to prove the point:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vegans

Hedging language aside — i.e. "humans evolved because X to some extent" — I recently had an epiphany touring the north island of New Zealand by minibus. Productivity utterly collapses when you have to frequently move from one (temporary) settlement to another. What you eat isn't nearly as impactful as the degree to which you can be stationary.

Interestingly, primitive hunter-gatherer societies could rely upon wild game or fish for caloric intake, which was conducive to a nomadic life. There's no need for an agricultural revolution if you're OK with killing wild animals to harvest their flesh for food. But to call this instrumental in human development is I think wrong. Meat is without question the most primitive way to feed: meat consumption does not require any amount of long-term settlement nor does it require much intelligence: carnivorous animals low in general intelligence regularly kill each other in the wild for food.

Meat consumption is fundamentally a primitive adaptation. Factory farmed meat consumption is a relatively modern phenomenon driven first and foremost by human habituation to the taste of flesh. Plants can provide every nutrient required for human survival save for vitamin B12.

> Meat is absolutely PACKED with bioavailable nutrients in a way that most plant products simply aren't.

Such as? Meat is a euphemism for slabs of fat and muscle tissue containing amino acids. With the exception of wild-caught fatty fish like salmon — factory farmed fatty fish contain greatly reduced levels of omega-3s — the fat is of questionable healthiness compared to vegetable sources. And if you're convinced it's necessary to consume the muscle tissue of formerly living creatures for amino acids, you'd eat insects for environmental sustainability's sake. In fact, insect exoskeletons are a rich source of dietary calcium directly comparable to dairy. The fact most of you reading this wouldn't dream of eating insects, goes to show nutritional value is not why you're eating meat. Taste is #1.

> Add to that, the growing evidence that much of the plant material we're eating may have inflammatory side effects of consumption.

Citation needed.

> The point I am making is that a solution isn't a solution if it means getting rid of one of the most dense forms of nutrition we have.

Where do high-fat nuts and seeds fit in your view of "dense forms of nutrition"? E.g. gram for gram, you're getting much more calories from nuts and seeds than you're getting from low-fat muscle tissue such as chicken.

We'll ok, but we're not in the stone age anymore. We can produce processed, plant-based food with a similar nutrition density.

> Add to that, the growing evidence that much of the plant material we're eating may have inflammatory side effects of consumption.

Do you have sources for that?

It's worth noting though that for this to work we'd need to eat less meat and pay more for it because grass-fed takes much more land. The reason we have industrial animal farms with soy fed cattle is we need so much meat and we want it cheap (and countries that used to eat less meat want more meat as they get richer).

Also, to the extent "regenerative animal agriculture" works at all, it can be done without slaughtering the animals for their flesh.

[1]: https://www.fcrn.org.uk/sites/default/files/project-files/fc...

Because lab based meat isn't here yet:

- You can't buy it in supermarkets or for cheap, and I haven't heard a realistic timeline for when this is going to change.

- Is there going to be realistic lab based cuts of steak, duck, pork and chicken? Whole chickens? Lab based ground beef is one thing but lab based versions of everything the public wants is another.

- Beyond burgers and similar are already here which some people say are as good a beef burgers, yet there isn't a stampede to change over by either consumers or manufacturers. Why would lab based meat be different? I can see people demanding the "real thing" on principle.

We don't have time to wait when climate change is here now. Lab based meat is not a solution if it takes decades to make an impact. People that say they'll switch from real-meat when lab based meat is here are essentially saying they'll change when they don't have to change anything.

De-extinction would be to save just one screw from a perfectly tuned and complex machine that produces more than pandas. No-extinction is better than de-extinction and also much more cheap.

And if our artificial crops collapse we're doomed. Nature can't support the population levels we've reached.

Let the land go feral and soon you're looking at an unfathomable amount of ticks fed on unchecked deer who breed faster than anything can handle and infect each other with prions because the alternative is reintroducing wolves to the environment.

And even the plant life is dangerous as unpruned, splintery trees drop branches in every windstorm, the brush periodically catches on fire, thorny or irritating plants proliferate and roots infiltrate and destroy nearby structures.

It can take millennia to develop a stable, beautiful, all-natural environment, and there are sort of 'minimum size requirements' in the range of hundreds to thousands of miles.

The tobacco industry has never had a particular good reputation, so getting social buy-in is not that hard. It has no more utility than the alcohol industry, so getting rid of it has not a lot of knock-on effects. Even then, demanding a few scary pictures was a slap on the wrist, compared to outright banning them. (Not sure about Australia, but other notions actually work with local bans in a gradually increasing number of locations)

I think fighting climate change and environmental collapse are harder problems because the responsible industries are deeply intertwined into our economic systems and lifestyles. They are also providing a significant amount of political power. We'll have to actively work to find alternative ways of doing things in many areas before we're able to scale back here.

In a way, your response does answer it: you said people see that their actions won’t be effective unless they are a coordinated with other’s on a scale that can make a difference. I think that’s the same as saying: your actions are meaningless in themselves. What an interesting idea. But I’m sure you don’t feel that way about everything.

A better analog than people sending the Federal Reserve more money than they owe to the IRS would be voting: does your vote not matter unless it is the decisive one? Which vote is decisive? Is the meaningfulness of a vote or of voting found only in its effectiveness?

But that’s still not a good enough analog. The points that you and other commenters have made all point to the need for collective, coordinated action. I won’t dispute that; but if we’re talking about effectiveness and not meaningfulness (or, again, do you think they’re the same thing?) then the dynamic of collective action is fundamentally a social dynamic: people are neither provoked by nor affirmed by what they see the people around them doing. If you made visible, ethical choices (as I’m sure you do) you find that a friend or colleague is starting to make similar choices. The visibility encourages others. Maybe the very same arguments about the futility of action make it all the more critical.

I should be explicit about one other thing. I may be wrong, but my assumption in asking my question about how thinking about the meaning of your actions is hard is that that thoughtfulness is what will change your behavior.