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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, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 31 2018, @05:55PM (4 children)
Naahhhhh - you're not getting away with that one.
The Amish, Mennonites, and any others like them, are at least mindful of resources. Probably the worst among them are as wasteful as the last American generation BEFORE the 1930's. That is, you'll find waste, but it isn't blatant, obvious planned obselescence consumerism. And, the best of them use no more resources than people in the 1600's or 1700's. There's a spectrum among these people, for observing the old ways. None of them are as wasteful as the average American. Few are probably as wasteful as the average Brit or European.
The typical American doesn't have the slightest care about resources, whether they be natural, processed, human, or whatever. In the American mind, resources are to be used, exploited, sold, commoditized, or otherwise turned into profit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @05:59PM (2 children)
They are ALL highly dependent on modern technology, especially modern health care. And, pointing to the Amish as an counterexample to the OP is just as absurd as pointing to the poor African farmers; we want a Civilization, not Amish LARPing.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Wednesday October 31 2018, @07:06PM (1 child)
Shared resources (Health care, roads, etc) generally scale differently. If I have a car and want to drive 100km, I require x amount of gas. 1000kms would require 10x gas.
If I build a road for one person to use, it costs y. If 10 people use the road, it still costs y (maybe with slightly higher maintenance costs). It's not a linear increase. Health care is the same idea.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @07:24PM
Smooth Cross-continental roads and robotic prostate surgery aren't something Amish people could even imagine on their own.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 01 2018, @01:48AM
There's all degrees of Amish - some use rubber tires, it's against the rules but they do it anyway.
Some of the things they do are more wasteful than modern practices: lighting in their grocery stores is by kerosene... hardly competitive with the efficiency of florescent or LED, though more than compensated for by the lack of air conditioning, but again, the lack of refrigeration can lead to a great deal of waste too... All in all, yes, they lead a simple and ecologically friendly life, but when one's field caught on fire he didn't hesitate to run out to the pole-mounted telephone and call the non-Amish fire department to come out and help save his barn.
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