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https://m.phys.org/news/2017-11-scientists-countries-negative-global-environmental.html
Human well-being will be severely jeopardized by negative trends in some types of environmental harm, such as a changing climate, deforestation, loss of access to fresh water, species extinctions and human population growth, scientists warn in today's issue of BioScience, an international journal.
The viewpoint article—"World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice"—was signed by more than 15,000 scientists in 184 countries.
The warning came with steps that can be taken to reverse negative trends, but the authors suggested that it may take a groundswell of public pressure to convince political leaders to take the right corrective actions. Such activities could include establishing more terrestrial and marine reserves, strengthening enforcement of anti-poaching laws and restraints on wildlife trade, expanding family planning and educational programs for women, promoting a dietary shift toward plant-based foods and massively adopting renewable energy and other "green" technologies.
Global trends have worsened since 1992, the authors wrote, when more than 1,700 scientists—including a majority of the living Nobel laureates at the time—signed a "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity" published by the Union of Concerned Scientists. In the last 25 years, trends in nine environmental issues suggest that humanity is continuing to risk its future. However, the article also reports that progress has been made in addressing some trends during this time.
The article was written by an international team led by William Ripple, distinguished professor in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University. The authors used data maintained by government agencies, nonprofit organizations and individual researchers to warn of "substantial and irreversible harm" to the Earth.
"Some people might be tempted to dismiss this evidence and think we are just being alarmist," said Ripple. "Scientists are in the business of analyzing data and looking at the long-term consequences. Those who signed this second warning aren't just raising a false alarm. They are acknowledging the obvious signs that we are heading down an unsustainable path. We are hoping that our paper will ignite a wide-spread public debate about the global environment and climate."
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Direct link to full article in PDF
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Kilo110 on Tuesday November 21 2017, @05:42PM (12 children)
1- I agree that air travel is very polluting. And academics certainly go to conferences occasionally. Whether or not they go more often than non-academics is questionable. I'd argue that big business types travel by air significantly more often than academics ever could. Academics don't have the funding to go all the time even though they may want to.
2- Your whole vegan/city rant is just plain wrong. Carbon footprint of vegetables is much less than meats. No question about it. Also while the food does need to be trucked into a city, It's a lot more carbon friendly than everyone taking their individual cars and driving to and from the grocery store. In cities, people walk to grocery stores and walk back to their homes. No one drives.
You seem to have a lot of misconceptions (and outright contempt) for academics and vegans. There are definitely valid criticisms against both of those camps. However, your post contained none of those.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 21 2017, @05:50PM (6 children)
It's not so obvious.
Animals can graze on hilly and rocky land that is unsuited to modern farm equipment. Without animals, we would be wasting land. Good farmland tends to get paved over because it is flat and has nice weather.
(Score: 2) by Kilo110 on Tuesday November 21 2017, @10:25PM (5 children)
That may or may not be so. I don't know either way. But the question is carbon footprint, not efficient use of land.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday November 21 2017, @10:47PM (4 children)
Only if you buy into the religion. Efficient use of land is otherwise quite relevant to carbon footprint.
Sounds like a good opportunity to educate yourself on the matter. What is the US state of Montana, for example, going to grow on infertile scrub land and prairie aside from herd animals like cows?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 22 2017, @10:28AM
Snails
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Wednesday November 22 2017, @01:28PM (2 children)
Most (and more and more) livestock are being produced by CAFO's, not grazing on rocky terrain and infertile scrub land. Those lands can not keep up with meat demand. THAT is why we need to go plant-based (or at least reduce meat consumption, either per-capita, or reducing population). CAFO's are horrible for the environment, for the animals, and for human health. On the last point, not only are they horrible from cholesterol, but they also pump the animals with antibiotics as that is the only way to keep them healthy. That, in turn, is contributing more than anything to the resistance problem with antibiotics.
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 3, Informative) by Taibhsear on Wednesday November 22 2017, @05:24PM (1 child)
So fight against that instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Also they don't use antibiotics prophylactically to keep them healthy. They do it because it makes them get fatter faster. I do agree that needs to be stopped.
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Monday November 27 2017, @02:33PM
You sure about that? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3234384/ [nih.gov]
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 21 2017, @05:50PM
You entire post was unnecessary, did you not read their SIG ;)?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 21 2017, @06:41PM (1 child)
I take it you've never been to LA, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Denver, Dallas, Houston, or really any other American city aside from NYC and a few select others...
(Score: 2) by Kilo110 on Tuesday November 21 2017, @10:22PM
Sure, but even then, the density of various shopping opportunities means less travel needed. Furthermore you'll find mass transit options that wouldn't be possible in the suburbs or rural areas.
Generally speaking, the closer people are, the more efficient services can be.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 22 2017, @06:20AM
"Carbon footprint of vegetables is much less than meats."
Oh man, this one is so wrongheaded it hurts.
Right up front, you're faced with an agronomic problem; to feed humanity you need a certain level of amino acid intake. Some amino acids usually come from meat, while others are abundant in plant sources. Now your well-educated vegans will talk about how soy and quinoa are complete amino acid sources, and they're right, but the skeleton in the closet is that you can't grow enough for the world.
In fact, even if you converted all the land on the planet's surface to row crop farming, you couldn't grow enough of the right kinds of crops to produce enough of the right kinds of amino acids to feed the world. Not even with lavish doses of petrochemically sourced plant nutrients. Pity about all those endangered animals you'll be slaughtering in the process, but oh well ...
And that was just the fun side of the calculation. If you then add in the reality that people want to reduce carbon footprints, all those petrochemical nutrients are off the table, or vastly reduced. What do you use to enrich your soil? Well, it would have been manure of some sort, but if we're not farming animals, that's off the table as well.
If you actually aren't into genocide by starvation (and I'm hoping you sincerely aren't into genocide at all) then meat is still on the menu.
Oh, sure, you could grow some of your complete meat sources for the rich folks who want to show off. Vegetarianism is pretty much a luxury available to picky eaters. But us poor folks? Steak's what's for dinner. Or turkey. Whatever staves off conditions like pellagra.
Now some other people have already pointed out that not all agricultural land is equal, and that places such as Wyoming are high enough that the partial vapour pressure of carbon dioxide is a serious factor limiting the growth of plants at that altitude (not to mention the punishing climate) and that water supplies are also an issue, and so on and so forth, but I'm hoping that your basic distaste for genocide is what will be the determining factor here.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Wednesday November 22 2017, @08:57PM
It's irrelevant how people get to the grocery store and back. Someone in Boston walking to Trader Joe's in January for some fresh, organic tomatoes and Basmati rice isn't going to get locally sourced food. These guys are advocating this kind of mono agriculture, which is very unsustainable, and have those items shipped from thousands of miles away. Winter means you're eating canned goods and, yes, sustainable herds of grazing animals and fish, source from the local area. You travel (slowly, because air travel won't last after we run out of oil) to another clime and you'll be eating different stuff.
That's the myopic attitude I see from these guys. They think their own lifestyle can go on forever and it's everybody else that has to change.
I am a crackpot