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from the real-world-following-the-movies dept.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01448-4
Up to one million plant and animal species face extinction, many within decades, because of human activities, says the most comprehensive report yet on the state of global ecosystems.
Without drastic action to conserve habitats, the rate of species extinction — already tens to hundreds of times higher than the average across the past ten million years — will only increase, says the analysis. The findings come from a United Nations-backed panel called the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
According to the report, agricultural activities have had the largest impact on ecosystems that people depend on for food, clean water and a stable climate. The loss of species and habitats poses as much a danger to life on Earth as climate change does, says a summary of the work, released on 6 May.
The analysis distils findings from nearly 15,000 studies and government reports, integrating information from the natural and social sciences, Indigenous peoples and traditional agricultural communities. It is the first major international appraisal of biodiversity since 2005. Representatives of 132 governments met last week in Paris to finalize and approve the analysis.
Biodiversity should be at the top of the global agenda alongside climate, said Anne Larigauderie, IPBES executive secretary, at a 6 May press conference in Paris, France. "We can no longer say that we did not know," she said.
"We have never had a single unified statement from the world's governments that unambiguously makes clear the crisis we are facing for life on Earth," says Thomas Brooks, chief scientist at the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Gland, Switzerland, who helped to edit the biodiversity analysis. "That is really the absolutely key novelty that we see here."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Wednesday June 12 2019, @11:57PM (1 child)
You don't have to go around killing people. Just incentivize not procreating and in 100 years or so, the problem self-corrects. We actually do the reverse and give tax breaks to those who procreate so we are incentivizing destructive behavior. Step one -- stop that. That would help a little, but where we'd see big gains I suspect, is if we give tax breaks to those who don't have kids.
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/children-carbon-footprint-climate-change-damage-having-kids-research-a7837961.html [independent.co.uk]
Then there is the stick approach (still not killing): institute a carbon tax that takes into account those precious sprogs.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Thursday June 13 2019, @01:46PM
Where there are tax incentives to promote having children, the birth rate is generally below replacement levels already. Removing those incentives and adding aggressive new taxes on procreating would essentially be a voluntary extinction of our culture.