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Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970, report finds.
Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, leading the world's foremost experts to warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens civilisation.
The new estimate of the massacre of wildlife is made in a major report produced by WWF and involving 59 scientists from across the globe. It finds that the vast and growing consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the web of life, billions of years in the making, upon which human society ultimately depends for clean air, water and everything else.
"We are sleepwalking towards the edge of a cliff" said Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF. "If there was a 60% decline in the human population, that would be equivalent to emptying North America, South America, Africa, Europe, China and Oceania. That is the scale of what we have done."
"This is far more than just being about losing the wonders of nature, desperately sad though that is," he said. "This is actually now jeopardising the future of people. Nature is not a 'nice to have' – it is our life-support system."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by patrick on Wednesday October 31 2018, @03:57PM (1 child)
How many animals is a western doctor worth, versus how many animals are 20 poor subsistence farmers worth? How do you quantify the world being "better" without these human beings?
You allude to the environmental impact of a rich lifestyle vs a poor lifestyle. However, there are low and high tech ways to be sustainable and low and high tech ways to cause major harm to the environment.
Counter arguments include poor poachers (a huge problem for African wildlife), and slash-and-burn farming used by 200–500 million people worldwide [wikipedia.org], while many natural environments are protected by environmental conservation groups, and patrolled by rangers or similar (ie: the upper and middle class).
Quantifying who the world would be better without is a slippery slope, and not helpful in the long run. The key is a local focus on intelligent sustainability, as populations grow and decline in varied areas all over the world.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 01 2018, @02:00AM
We're already pretty far down a slippery slope, and without real population reduction there won't be a long run to worry about.
Nobody has to die for population control (at least not unnaturally soon, immortality medicine is a whole other problem waiting to hatch.) Limit new births by much stronger disincentives than are currently used. The problem with this is: nationalism, and corporations that feed on population growth - specifically: top level executive compensation based on growth - decisions from the top are directed to garner bigger bonuses (so what if you can already afford 10 private islands (net worth 300M), why not try for 100 island buying power (3B net worth) before you die?) As for nationalism, the first nations to "blink" on the population growth race will be less populous in the later balance of human decision making. Even though China widely publicized "One Child", their population growth never stopped - it did slow, but did nothing resembling leveling off.
What the ecosystems of the world need is a global human one-child-like policy that actually delivers the results you would expect from the name.
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