SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the better-go-find-me-some-more-worms dept.
Disappearance of meadows and prairies, expansion of farmlands, use of pesticide blamed for 29 percent drop since 1970.
The number of birds in the United States and Canada has dropped by an astonishing 29 percent, or almost three billion, since 1970, scientists said on Thursday, saying their findings signalled a widespread ecological crisis.
Grassland birds were the most affected, because of the disappearance of meadows and prairies and the extension of farmlands, as well as the growing use of pesticides that kill insects that affects the entire food chain.
"Birds are in crisis," Peter Marra, director of the Georgetown Environment Initiative at Georgetown University and a co-author of the study published in the journal Science, was quoted by Reuters as saying.
Forest birds and species that occur in a wider variety of habitats - known as habitat generalists - are also disappearing.
"We see the same thing happening the world over, the intensification of agriculture and land use changes are placing pressure on these bird populations," Ken Rosenberg, an ornithologist at Cornell University and principal co-author of the paper in Science told AFP news agency.
"Now, we see fields of corn and other crops right up to the horizon, everything is sanitised and mechanised, there's no room left for birds, fauna and nature."
More than 90 percent of the losses are from just 12 species including sparrows, warblers, blackbirds, and finches.
The figures mirror declines seen elsewhere, notably France, where the National Observatory of Biodiversity estimates there was a 30 percent decline in grassland birds between 1989 and 2017.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday September 23 2019, @06:41AM (5 children)
Alternatively, just bring them on a development level high enough to care about their environment.
They'll "sterilize" themselves the way the "western civilization" did (post-1970'ies) and in 2 generation tops (i.e. about 50 years) you have the population decline to sustainable levels.
See also Japan for a brutal case of declining population due to economic development. Declining population [wikipedia.org]:
economic development as cause [wikipedia.org]:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by acid andy on Monday September 23 2019, @08:21PM (4 children)
Does that mean that the only way for a country to reach a state where it cares about the environment enough to take action to save it, or to reduce their birth rate with that effect, is for the country to grow its industry and consumption to western levels?
If so, the greater scale of global pollution and defaunation [wikipedia.org] would be all the more catastrophic and I suspect would far outweigh any benefits of those later reductions in birth rate.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Monday September 23 2019, @10:18PM (3 children)
I was about to reply with a 'citation needed', but then I googled [google.com].
Fuck! This planet doesn't have a problem with overpopulation, it has a problem with consumption!
The immediate implication: eliminating one westerner does more than taking out 10 Afghani or Pakistani or around 20 Timor-Leste inhabitants [wikipedia.org].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 24 2019, @01:23PM (2 children)
In a century, the collective footprint of 1 US resident (added up over all those years) and their descendants will be roughly 4 Afghanistan, 7 Pakistan, and 8 Timor-Leste residents. If we were to somehow manage to continue to a thousand years from now, it would take 24 present day US residents to match the environmental footprint of one present day Pakistani resident. ~55k US residents to match the environmental footprint of one present day Timor-Leste resident. And 180k US residents to match the environmental footprint of one present day Afghanistan resident.
Obviously, the populations in question would crash first. But it would be the high growth rate states that would do the crashing and recrashing. That's going to increase their footprint per person as they destroy habitat, cause species extinction, lob some WMD, etc.
The solution to this mess is to transition everyone to a system that works: the high consumption, low fertility, environmentally aware developed world.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday September 24 2019, @03:30PM (1 child)
You're still missing the point. When no developing countries are left, where does this high consumption world send its millions of tons of plastic waste? Where does it build its pollution-spewing factories? And how are the factory workers going to afford this life of high consumption without driving up the price of the products they manufacture (and so consume)--unless the fat cat factory owners have to start soaking up the difference?
Globally, there needs to either be reduced consumption per capita, or a reduced population, until we can go full-on post-scarcity by growing food in extremely compact spaces, unlimited energy through fusion or massively improved renewables, a fundamental redesign of the economy, 100 % capture and recycling of all waste (perhaps firing it into the sun or burning it in the reactors), even expansion into the solar system and beyond. I don't know if the majority of those things will ever be achieved by humanity. I suspect they won't be for a good few centuries, in any case.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 25 2019, @01:09AM
Landfills or recycling. Like it does now.
What pollution-spewing factories? Why do we have a need for those things?
By using their wages to buy the things they want. And if your factory worker is making industrial pumps, they aren't going to be buying them for their own city-sized water treatment installation.
We're not going to go full-on post-scarcity as long as we treat cheap shit as if it were something precious. This is not the first time that someone has proposed creating a post-scarcity society through a lot of artificial scarcity. Post-scarcity means too cheap to meter, plenty of consumption, and waste is not a serious concern for the consumers consuming.
Notice how all the above concerns you mention have simple solutions which have been around for generations. We're not yet to a post-scarcity society, but we've already checked off a lot of the boxes. This "reduced consumption per capita, or a reduced population" goes the wrong direction.
But let's suppose we decide to abandon the idea of the post-scarcity economy and muddle through with a reduced economy, you still have to figure out how to deal with population growth. The wealthy societies are now less wealthy and hence, naturally higher fertility, and the poor societies will never get to the lower population growth of the present developed world. That means forced population control. Our record on that is mixed.