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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: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Wednesday October 31 2018, @04:07PM (5 children)
At this point population growth is mostly restricted to the developing and heavily Catholic nations - pretty much everyone else is only growing through immigration.
Catholics broadly condemn birth control, requiring members who wish to use it without public condemnation to have access to more discrete (and generally expensive) options than condoms (i.e. IUDs or bi-monthly injections).
And condoms *are* in fact beyond the means of a lot of people in developing nations. A condom costs about $0.50, which represents a sizeable fraction of a day's income for an awful lot of households in rural Africa, India, China, etc.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @04:18PM (1 child)
And, besides the fact that Muslims have a large birthrate, you know who make up a huge number of immigrants to the West? Muslims.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday November 01 2018, @12:39AM
So true. Big Caravan of People from Honduras now coming across Mexico and heading to our Weak Laws Boarder, had better be stopped before it gets there. Unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in -- too many for Guantanamo Bay. Must also stop foreign aid to Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and the Muslim countries that allow this to happen.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 31 2018, @06:00PM (2 children)
We're not talking developing nations here. If we were, the demographic in question would not have been "the urban poor". That's a developed nation phenomenon. And in the US that is a well above average number-of-children-having demographic.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday October 31 2018, @11:49PM (1 child)
Really? You think that developing nation cities, which contain a large percentage of rural dirt-farmers hoping to find their fortune, don't have any poor people?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 01 2018, @02:59AM
I think the urban poor being a demographic worth separately naming is a developed world phenomenon, yes.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.