Wild animals are spiraling to extinction. Can a bunch of bureaucrats save them?
vox.com
vox.com
I strongly dispute this. Mass extinctions in the fossil record are typically measured at the family level, yes? Most of the then-extant species wouldn't even have been recorded.
If we were in the equivalent of one of the major mass extinctions it would be a "put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye" situation. We wouldn't be worried about the survival of uncommon animals. We'd be worried if rats were going extinct.
If you were actually in most historical mass extinction events, I'd also say they seemed "not that bad yet" for quite a long time after the point of no return, much longer than all of human history even in some cases.
It’s not defeatist to acknowledge reality- it is necessary to choose a realistic course of action. "If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle" -Sun Tzu
Here is a more technical treatment of what is actually happening: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09678
Look at Figure 2 to see where we are now compared to past mass extinction events. We're well below the 75% of all species threshold, but that criteria is for a time frame of 2 million years in length. We can only guess at the future, we can't for example say for sure which species are already past the point of no return when they aren't yet extinct.
Are you not familiar with the timespans of these previous events?
There is about as much time between the Tyrannosaurus Rex and humans than between the Tyrannosaurus Rex and Stegosaurus. If we took the entirety of the planet's existence and mapped it out on a single year, all of humanity takes place in the last 25 minutes of the last day. All of recorded history takes place in the thirty seconds before midnight on December 31st.
The Triassic/Jurassic extinction event took place "in less than 10,000 years". That's longer than recorded history. The KT extinction took place over 5000 years.
So "quick" is relative. We think in terms of weeks or months or years. But we're talking about a process that takes centuries or millennia.
It's like watching a two hour horror movie and, thirty seconds in, you exclaim "Oh come on nobody died yet! I'm sure this will be very boring."
Gestures broadly.
But there are a lot of people who are weirdly invested in humanity causing a mass extinction. I think for transparent psychological reasons.
Probably true, but it may just be the timescale is different.
> But there are a lot of people who are weirdly invested in humanity causing a mass extinction.
Well, we are causing mass extinctions! Just because it's not as bad as the dinosaurs got it doesn't mean it's not bad. And I love the natural world, why would I be anything other than invested in this ongoing tragedy, even if the eventual ceiling of our destruction isn't quite meteor-level outcomes?
That aside, ask yourself why so many people are aghast at the idea that humanity isn't causing a mass extinction. Is it really because they love nature? Does ranting about how awful humanity is help?
Anyway, if you really want to conserve nature, you should be positive. Some conservation efforts have succeeded. Focus on those and build on them; don't spend time ranting about how awful humanity is. I'm not saying you're doing that, but it is common to see.
For the same reason that flat-earthers aren’t taken seriously?
Okay, sure. I'll define it as species going extinct at 50x or more the typical background rate. We're somewhere in the 100-1000x space. You want to define it differently and come to a different conclusion then so be it.
> why so many people are aghast at the idea that humanity isn't causing a mass extinction
I'll answer for me: it's the shock and dismay that the evidence is so abundant and multifactorial as to momentarily deprive me of hope that we'll take action on a timescale that prevents such destruction.
> Anyway, if you really want to conserve nature, you should be positive.
No, I (and you) should be active. I don't have to plaster a smile on my face as the ocean warms because "some" conservation efforts have succeeded, for now, while we're still under 2 degrees warming. But I volunteer frequently, I financially support the causes I believe in, I canvass for issues and candidates that give a shit about this, and I call my representatives when I've got a specific policy or concern even if that I feel is mostly theater.
> ranting
Look, if someone is "ranting" about this topic while making no material change to their lives to help then fine. But this is an emotional topic for people, it gets to true passions, and ranting (anger) is one way people process grief. I used to watch monarchs by the thousands - this season I saw maybe 15. I'm grieving their loss, and will be for many years to come as the reminder of their decline seasonally returns. Maybe they'll rebound, but I wouldn't count on it.
Maybe people need to rant a bit to get to a more productive place. But patronizing people with "well just stop complaining, dummy!" is as good as telling Hacker News commenters to stop fixating on the potential promise of open source software.
> The contemporary rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than the background extinction rate, the historically typical rate of extinction (in terms of the natural evolution of the planet); also, the current rate of extinction is 10 to 100 times higher than in any of the previous mass extinctions in the history of Earth.
> A 2018 study published in PNAS found that since the dawn of human civilization, the biomass of wild mammals has decreased by 83%.
> The World Wide Fund for Nature's 2020 Living Planet Report says that wildlife populations have declined by 68% since 1970
> A 2023 study published in Biological Reviews found that, of 70,000 monitored species, some 48% are experiencing population declines from anthropogenic pressures, whereas only 3% have increasing populations.
And finally, with regards to rats:
> Bramble Cay melomys were declared extinct in June 2016.
Meetups are on Saturdays, flowers bring the honey, trees bring the table.
Maybe by flowers you meant landplants in general? And shouldn't moss be grouped into this event?
Flowers were supposedly one of the many factors wiping out the dinosaurs (aside from asteroid impacts and Deccan Traps), reducing the food supply for herbivores by outcompeting existing flora.
I did some reading and it seems the actual potential mass extinction caused by trees was this: Their roots/mycorrhiza dug deep into the earth and brought up large amounts of phosphorus. Occassional mudslides or other events would then cause this soil to slide into the ocean and create an algae bloom which deprived the ocean of oxygen. Very similar to what's happening today with agricultural runoff of fertilizers
This is about potential treaties to preserve nature. Of course it will be government officials and scientists employed or funded by governments. The article also mentions public and private scientists.
Theres really not much to the article - there’s an upcoming UN summit on biodiversity. The subtitle just seemed strange to me.
About 20 years ago, wealthy environmentalist groups (poster-child Sierra Club and others) suffered infighting and lost public prominence. A very small number of very large environmentalist groups continue to engage in serious and long-term work to their credit (World Wildlife Fund and others)
Instead we have:
hectares and hectares of land dedicated to wind&solar with all wildlife habitat destroyed, and gas plants still continuing to burn fuel.
hectares of land dedicated to suburban sprawl
hectares of land dedicated to new highways that connect sprawl to downtown cities
dense low footprint housing
dense low footprint commercial RE
safe, clean, cheap mass public transit that connects the two
safe, clean nuclear energy that powers it allMost people are not going to worry about animals going extinct or about biodiversity in the abstract, but I think people would take the environment seriously if they realized dying of hunger might be a possibility.
This "I told you to do this" comment is exactly the pressure and noise that pushes ordinary people out, since they cannot respond and are negatively reinforced socially with semi-hostile criticism.
The last summit, known as COP15, was arguably much more important. During the event, held in 2022, nearly all countries of the world agreed on a groundbreaking new deal to halt biodiversity loss by 2030.
When we say that AI will help save the environment, I can see short term gains in things like nuclear energy expansion and improvement, better educational opportunities, robotic labor and other efficiency automations, etc. On ecosystems and biodiversity, I don't see a clear path.
AI can improve our understanding, but a systems collapse requires very complex bio-chemical systems that are all interdependent. Maybe we all live in bubbles of AI controlled environments post Holocene, but we rely on larger earth systems that will be difficult to rebuild post collapse.
Does anyone else worry that AI will not be rapid or sufficiently impactful to deal with ecosystem collapse?
For example, Arm computing are now quite active in funding biodiversity activities, see on wildlabs.net
I’d like to take the opportunity here to appeal to folks with the cash to see if they can find a funding cause that appeals to them and improve their karma :-)
... and I'm guessing the US doesn't want to sign on because in general we're skeptical of treaties that oblige us to do anything? And a big rich country not participating probably contributes to that funding gap? Blaming the bureaucrats for this not being effective seems misguided. Bureaucrats only have the powers that we give them. It's not gonna work because rich and powerful stakeholders don't think it's valuable.