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from the it's-only-natural-to-question-authority dept.
Around 80 percent of the land area in Europe is used for settlement, agriculture and forestry. In order to increase yields even further than current levels, exploitation is being intensified. Areas are being consolidated in order to cultivate them more efficiently using larger machines. Pesticides and fertilisers are increasingly being used and a larger number of animals being kept on grazing land. "Such measures increase yield but, overall, they also have negative impacts on biodiversity," says UFZ biologist Dr. Michael Beckmann. "This is because even agricultural areas offer fauna and flora a valuable habitat—which is something that is frequently not sufficiently taken into consideration."
Betteridge's law of headlines says no, but is more intensive farming really crowding out native species more than less intensive farming?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday April 13 2019, @01:30AM (1 child)
The last Dark Age only fell from late Roman levels of technology. If we truly crash this time, I think we're going much deeper - not sure how long the rebound will take, but with a population of 8+ billion and all these powerful resources at our disposal, it certainly looks like we're taking down most of the ecosystem with us this time. If we do rebound after a crash, it will be to build a society on a devastated ecosystem - probably with a carrying capacity under 500 million, planetwide. Tremendous amounts of knowledge will likely be lost, but I doubt we will have "learned nothing" from the incident. Stories of jet planes, flat panel TVs, and instant planetary communication are likely to survive for dozens of generations, at least among the humans whose parents live long enough to tell their children stories.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Saturday April 13 2019, @05:25AM
That is just science, yeah knowing it once existed is most of the battle to recover it. Which is why it would be far better to lose the knowledge of electricity entirely and keep a copy of Rudyard Kipling's Gods of the Copybook Headings so we might not just repeat the same pattern yet again. Better still a copy of Anonymous Conservative's The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics. But it wouldn't work. The American Founding Fathers had plenty of books that survived the Dark Ages, they had the writings of the old Greek and Roman philosophers. They knew Democracy decays into Socialism then into Despotism, they knew because they read the histories of how it had happened every single time it was tried. They warned us. They wrote it anew in books of their own. Books our Universities refuse to look at because they were written by dead White men. So we are damned to repeat known failures. As will our descendants after the world is rebuilt. Science advances, but humans are still basically the same creatures who first crawled out of a cave and discovered fire.
Seriously. Look at what current politicians are promising, compare to Kipling writing in 1919. More delusions, ultra feminism, Socialism, UBI, etc. We have learned nothing. One doesn't even nee to read a history book, Socialism is bringing misery and destruction right now in Venezuela. Now we are even losing the ability to keep advancing science. Soon we won't even be able to maintain what tech we have, plenty of signs we are already making that dreadful turn.
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The Gods of the Copybook Headings
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!