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The article mentions habitat destruction and agriculture as the driving issue, not climate change.

> The hardest hit were grassland birds, down by more than 50 percent, mostly due to the expansion of farms that turn a varied landscape into acres of neat, plowed rows.

pollution, habitat destruction, and climate change are not all different things.

i guess you can blame all the above on a single root cause, though: human over-population. we just don't have plagues and famines like we used to; we're really good at killing everything that we don't like.

i see my neighbors dousing their lawn with weed killer and pesticides every season, followed by grass nutrients! then burn 2gal of gasoline to mow that lawn every week. nothing better than an insect-less, uniform green lawn!

Not over-population. Over consumption.

Actually over-production since a lot of food is wasted before consumption.

But why is over-consumption even possible? It's the plentiful cheap energy in the form of fossil fuels that we figured out how to tap into. Once that is gone I am hopeful the next civilization cycle will be more temperate.

More likely once the current civilization’s cheap source of energy is gone, the next civilization will revert to the pre-industrial source of cheap energy: slavery.

Oof, this hurt to read

No it's not, go read the wealth of Nations to understand.

The over production started before we adopted fossil fuels.

Whales made their mistake by being made out of oil.

Don’t forget that if you don’t saturate your lawn with poison, coat it with industrial fertilizer, water it from depleted aquifers and burn that gasoline to cut it, you run the risk of getting fined or being foreclosed upon.

> you run the risk of getting fined or being foreclosed upon

yes! i was fined because my dandelions crossed the magical 8" threshold for a week a few seasons ago. i happily paid it of course. you see, i had saved up the $20 by then with all the money i didnt spend on weed killer and fertilizer.

i'm just the worst person in my HOA.

the irony, of course, is that immediately behind my 0.2 acre property is a massive wetland with "grass" that's 10-15ft tall.

What is HOA here?

Home Owners Association.

The HOA will pay you a visit at the very least.

> human over-population

in no way is this the root cause, in any real scientific analysis. it is literally just the rallying call of right wing politics.

I'd say it is the root cause, since habitat destruction and pollution have been proportional to population size. If the human pop. hadn't grown geometrically throughout recent history, there almost certainly wouldn't have been the global decimation of wildlife/habitat we have today.

To support such a large population, half of the earth's habitable land is currently being used for agriculture - that's a shitload of habitat destruction - that's not even accounting for all the rest of the space people use for homes, etc.

You can say this stuff all you want, but not only do the facts not support it but also the analysis of the facts disproves these statements.

> half of the earth's habitable land is currently being used for agriculture

This is a fact (to some margin of error). It's indisputable that humans require land to produce food through agriculture, and that amount of required land increases with population size. I'm curious what analysis could possibly show human population growth doesn't result in more wildlife habitat destruction.

Since we stopped being hunter-gatherers, we've required agriculture to support large sedentary populations. Land use by humans/wildlife is generally a zero-sum game.

First of all, left-wing politics is the one advocating for less kids.

Elon Musk is like “there’s no problem, guys, keep on having more kids!” and he himself did.

Right wingers are pro life, and many religious ones advocate not even using condoms.

Left wingers are the reason women now have so much education and careers that they postpone having children til their 30s.

Anyway, the amount of resources and garbage is proportional to how many humans are on the planet. I don’t see what Elon Musk is so worried about “population collapse”. For an otherwise smart guy, he seems to be very mistaken about this core issue. Maybe he thinks we can escape to Mars and start over LOL

> left-wing politics is the one advocating for less kids.

In no way is this true. No left-wing organization is advocating for this, liberal organizations and activists are.

> Left wingers are the reason women now have so much education and careers that they postpone having children til their 30s.

Oh you're one of those people.

Any half baked ecologist knows that monoculture farming is the single most damaging thing to the ecosystem that humans have developed. Let’s destroy MASSIVE amounts of land to farm, and the displaced animals will now go to areas they don’t belong, ruin that land, displace those animals, etc.

I heard once in one of my classes that every 1 acre of farmland disrupts 24 acres of adjacent land, not just the surrounding acres but the ones surrounding that!

Meanwhile, global warming is terrible but the world being even 5 degrees hotter doesn’t kill most stuff, but 10b acres of farming can destroy entire continents

Yes, this article is a rare example of an article that cares about habitat loss; we have mostly thrown the baby out with the bathwater with the last decade's reframing of conservation as climate change avoidance.

Who are we kidding...It'll recover within a century or so without humans. Millions of years for birds to re-evolve, but general recovery happens pretty quickly!!

We're getting bombarded with messages from the fossil fuel industry like "recycle," "ban nuclear," "ban straws," "ban plastic bags" that distract from the industry's real impact. If we want to solve the problem, we have to focus on the core issue: burning fossil fuels.

We're at a potentially species-ending crossroads - and we're moving towards saving ourselves. But it'll take actual focus on the problem to solve it instead of looking for perfect solutions to everything.

> and we're moving towards saving ourselves

I'd say we're still moving away from that.

Extinct animals won’t recover in a few centuries and humans are way more adaptable than most animals.

The coral reefs are another huge problem. Most fish species spend some time of their life in one, and a staggering amount have been destroyed. Last year I volunteered for a few hours at a coral nursery, they said 90% of coral has been destroyed[1] since the 70s. I'm not sure if they meant just barrier reefs,just around Florida, or everywhere, but in any case it's already a disaster.

[1] I tried to Google to verify that number and found a bunch of different numbers with different qualifiers.

10% of the US population does not have food security. 25% lives paycheck to paycheck. The simple truth is people don’t have room in their lives to worry about abstract problems that don’t impact them when their basic needs are not met.

Just look to the advance of the desert. People cut down vegetation to burn for cooking, and hasten desertification. But what choice do they have? They need to eat.

Environmentalists are increasingly starting to view poverty reduction and fostering economic opportunity as a critical first step in wildlife protection.

If you aren't motivated by smoke in your lungs, you aren't going to be motivated by coral destruction.

Pollution is a problem for everyone. We need government regulations and every single person changing their lifestyle but guess what, it won't happen. We had peak awareness in the 80s and 90s, I remember in school time was dedicated to ecology and the environment. Now half the US is actively working against environmentalism.

You're blaming the media for not talking about species going extint but about flooding. If people don't change even with the threat of human life being lost then there's no way they care if multiple species of birds goes extinct.

We've created a culture where being selfish is acceptable. Where polluting by modifying your vehicle is cool. Where caring about the environment makes you part of a conspiracy and who do you blame? The media for not talking about it more.

> If people don't change even with the threat of human life being lost then there's no way they care if multiple species of birds goes extinct.

people won't change. they are addicted to convenience, low prices, diversity in options, and unlimited availability. which is also great for corporate profits.

as a species, humans plan and invest very little beyond our own lifetimes. but we're just animals after all. all the talk about becoming an interplanetary (mars) species for our own survival has to be the most absurd statement that can be made to dismiss the very real problems we should solve here first. but billionaires need an excuse to play Tony Stark.

it's not cool or profitable to do the boring work of unfucking ourselves.

Bullshit. That's cultural. Look at nordic countries. Norway has a seed vault and has 80% of new cars are electric. Renewables in Europe are still moving at great speed https://www.energymonitor.ai/tech/renewables/europe-renewabl...

You just won't say the real people who are to blame. You want to lay the blame on all people equally

> Look at nordic countries. Norway has a seed vault and has 80% of new cars are electric.

80% of 0.001% is a rounding error. scale matters. just because a first-world country of 5M can do something does not make this attainable for the other 99.999% of the human population.

> Renewables in Europe are still moving at great speed

imo, nuclear (not fusion, mind you) + electric, is the only realistic way out of the energy mess.

I'm referring to their achievements as a country not the impact. My point is it's cultural

> My point is it's cultural

they didnt get your message in Nigeria

What do you think Norway’s primary export is, speaking of blaming the right people?

Is it seeds?

They are at fault for being suppliers? If they don't supply oil someone else will. Like blaming prostitutes instead of johns

But not that oil.

I think we have some moral standing to blame prostitutes for STDs. Peddling oil despite its externalities because people are addicted adds to the overall world market, driving down price, in turn hampering renewables.

They are contributing to fossil fuel usage. You don’t get to “but we also drive EVs!” your way out of that.

I would also suggest it’s more akin to blaming drug users instead of drug dealers, but whatever metaphor floats your boat.

I think this:

> addicted to convenience, low prices, diversity in options, and unlimited availability

applies just as much to Norway as to other rich countries. Maybe not in exactly the same way as in the US, but in their own way.

Norway’s economy is dependent on fossil fuels which represent over 50% of their exports and 20% of their GDP.

The idea that Norway holds some sort of moral high ground with respect to fossil fuels is offensive.

>The idea that Norway holds some sort of moral high ground with respect to fossil fuels is offensive

They at the very LEAST deserve the moral high ground of largely distributing the economic benefits of those fossil fuels to their citizens rather than to a dozen billionaires while their nation's infrastructure becomes dilapidated

True, but Norway still has more billionaires per capita than the US, several of them from the oil sector.

> people won't change. they are addicted to convenience, low prices, diversity in options, and unlimited availability. which is also great for corporate profits.

But we can change our behavior by showing ourselves less ads. And that would solve a lot of other problems too.

> But we can change our behavior by showing ourselves less ads.

i have uBO chrome extension installed, so i'm doing pretty good by that metric!

The reason you block ads is selfish, the environment savings (I'd like to see data on that) are incidental.

Not every change we need to make will benefit people. More often they will require more work, more resources, or less enjoyment at rhe individual level (recycling, not driving certain types of vehicle).

> all the talk about becoming an interplanetary (mars) species for our own survival has to be the most absurd statement that can be made to dismiss the very real problems...but billionaires need an excuse to play Tony Stark.

This is a thinly veiled dig at Elon musk. It's so weird that you think what he's doing is the problem, with his efforts bringing about electric cars earlier than what would have happened.

He might be a loud mouth jerk, but surely he's not symbolic of the real problem here?

the guy dropped how much coin on a social media platform that could have gone to the very environmental causes that he claims to want to advance?

what do you think $44 billion in climate/epa lobbying would look like?

teslas still have to be manufactured. he probably would've had a greater climate impact if he purchased everyone on earth the same model bicycle that can be repaired/reused indefinitely.

we should be trying to remove cars, reduce production, and replace it with public transit, etc. but that's neither cool nor profitable; electric cars are both of those things.

electric energy storage, on the other hand, is useful. so making batteries cheap is a good thing, and tesla definitely helped that a lot.

My point was not that Elon is a saint, or the best thing for the planet. Instead that there are so many individuals and companies that are much more deserving of your ire. But you're distracted by Elon's antics that you're ignoring much more legitimate threats to the environment.

> He might be a loud mouth jerk, but surely he's not symbolic of the real problem here?

Elon Musk, the guy who floats insane ideas like tunneling and hyperloop to derail public transit projects?

> with his efforts bringing about electric cars earlier than what would have happened

Now if only they were affordable by the masses....

>his efforts bringing about

Government subsidies and his engineers brought that about. Not Elon freaking musk. Stop drinking his kool aid.

That's precisely why every private launch company before SpaceX succeeded! After all, they had even larger government subsidies and even more engineers! /s

It is your own biases making you misinterpret my words. I did not say Elon singly handedly achieved anything. But it's undeniable that he did put in effort with Tesla, and that helped bring electric cars to market, helping to start the transition away from ICE.

I don't think Elon is a saint, there's plenty not to like. But I think that you're so angered by him (probably drinking an alternative brand coolaid) that you're willing to discount any positive contribution, action, or utterance from Elon. Usually people aren't all good or all bad, as much as we'd like the world to be that simple.

Elon Musk proposed the hyper loop specifically to decrease investment in actual rail. He had no plans to build it. He has no interest in improving transportation or making it greener (which rail would certainly be). He only wants to enrich himself.

> We had peak awareness in the 80s and 90s, I remember in school time was dedicated to ecology and the environment.

You can go back to the 70's.

There was a fascinating amount of experimentation in education when I grew up in the 70's. I went to two rather interesting "experimental" schools — one public, one private. But regardless, there was a Zeitgeist in the 70's both of danger (over-population, pollution) but also of optimism — that we could change course as a society if we wanted.

As an anecdote, I remember a fascinating visitor when I was in elementary school. A man showed up in our class with a fascinating machine that was described as a "computer"! (This was perhaps 1973 or so — it may well have been an analog computer.) The thing was upright and perhaps the size of a Pachinko machine. He explained that you could set some dials to represent perhaps human growth, energy use ... something like that. I mean, I was quite young so I think a lot of it flew over my head — perhaps his audience was generally an older age. In any event it was supposed to calculate ... something ... maybe how many years before we ran our of food or fissile fuel or space on the planet....

Afterword: Sadly, speaking of Zeitgeist, it seems something happened around the close of President Carter's term and when Reagan's presidency began. The Metric System they had taught us in elementary school was out the window. Ha ha, even national markers in the U.S. that had added Metric to the Imperial(?) units would dropped the metric units....

Or even a decade earlier:

> Opposition to DDT was focused by the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring. It talked about environmental impacts that correlated with the widespread use of DDT in agriculture in the United States, and it questioned the logic of broadcasting potentially dangerous chemicals into the environment with little prior investigation of their environmental and health effects. The book cited claims that DDT and other pesticides caused cancer and that their agricultural use was a threat to wildlife, particularly birds. Although Carson never directly called for an outright ban on the use of DDT, its publication was a seminal event for the environmental movement and resulted in a large public outcry that eventually led, in 1972, to a ban on DDT's agricultural use in the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#History

By the way, you can get Silent Spring for free on https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20151002 – and it is still very much worth reading; eloquent and poetic while still being factual, informative and balanced. The producers of DDT and other poisons started a smear-campaign after the publication, but it only lead to a Streisand-effect. See also this little clip from her single TV interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nriVjC0H8I

We don’t deserve this planet, but also we don’t owe this world a thing.

Fact is, humanity’s fate was sealed the moment we decided to stop living like savage animals and become civilized.

As simple creatures, humans could live indefinitely until the world ends or a major extinction event, but surviving as a civilization for millions of years is definitely going to take the sacrifice of a couple planets along the way, at the rate we’re growing. No way around that. When we’re done with Earth, we will have to use the resources of several more planets, and we will continue this until we reach some stable equilibrium or simply die out entirely.

That’s assuming we don’t start implementing some rigorous eugenics and population control, but that does not seem popular, though personally I think it’s a better solution than having an unquenchable thirst for natural resources.

And next at 11, hear how cher chooses her outfits followed by sports

Forget where I saw this, but we won't "save the planet", it will save itself by getting rid of us.

George Carlin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c&themeRefresh=1

i will say that saving (preserving) the planet for your children is still a form of "saving" it. english's lack of nuance here is unfortunate, but also makes for some hilarious puns :D

Tool made a song about it back in 1996:

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/tool/nema.html