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Current Biology has an article (open access, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2016.08.049) about the extent of wilderness areas around the world (except Antarctica). The authors found a decrease of 9.6% in the extent of those areas in the 2010s, as compared to the early 1990s.
For 3 of the 14 biomes (kinds of ecosystems)—"Tropical and Subtropical Coniferous Forests, Mangroves, and Tropical and Subtropical Dry Broadleaf Forests"—there remain no contiguous areas of at least 10,000 km2, say the authors. However, such large contiguous areas do comprise 82.3% of all wild lands.
They note that
the total stock of terrestrial ecosystem carbon (~1,950 petagrams of [c]arbon (Pg C)) is greater than that of oil (∼173 Pg C), gas (∼383 Pg C), coal (∼446 Pg C), or the atmosphere (∼598 Pg C), and a significant proportion of this carbon is found in the globally significant wilderness areas of the tropics and boreal region.
and recommend legal protection for wild lands as part of efforts against emission of carbon dioxide.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday September 15 2016, @01:36PM
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Thursday September 15 2016, @03:35PM
Right. Pollution concerns, depleting natural resources, etc - none of these are related to growing population size. Please name one ecologic/environmental problem that is made BETTER by larger populations.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 15 2016, @05:56PM
Well, I am on your side, but one thing that is improving with a population of billions is intelligent understanding of the problem, planetwide communication and awareness, advanced science and technology to deal with the challenges. Reduce the world population to 500 million and you won't have as many people in the advanced academic pursuits, and that type of progress will slow - quite dramatically if the 500 million are mostly concerned with other things.
The morass of political reality will ensure that even when people put forward workable solutions to the problems, those solutions will have a terrible struggle getting implemented. But, I do have hope that with a few billion people educated, and accessing the world's information virtually instantly, we just might drive toward a system that benefits us all, rather than just a few.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday September 15 2016, @08:35PM
Please name one ecologic/environmental problem that is made BETTER by larger populations.
JoeMerchant did mention scientific progress and technology development. But I have to ask, did you read my post? I wasn't defending growing population. I was criticizing terrible development models that can never be falsified.