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https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full
Humanity is causing a rapid loss of biodiversity and, with it, Earth's ability to support complex life. But the mainstream is having difficulty grasping the magnitude of this loss, despite the steady erosion of the fabric of human civilization (Ceballos et al., 2015; IPBES, 2019; Convention on Biological Diversity, 2020; WWF, 2020). While suggested solutions abound (Díaz et al., 2019), the current scale of their implementation does not match the relentless progression of biodiversity loss (Cumming et al., 2006) and other existential threats tied to the continuous expansion of the human enterprise (Rees, 2020). Time delays between ecological deterioration and socio-economic penalties, as with climate disruption for example (IPCC, 2014), impede recognition of the magnitude of the challenge and timely counteraction needed. In addition, disciplinary specialization and insularity encourage unfamiliarity with the complex adaptive systems (Levin, 1999) in which problems and their potential solutions are embedded (Selby, 2006; Brand and Karvonen, 2007). Widespread ignorance of human behavior (Van Bavel et al., 2020) and the incremental nature of socio-political processes that plan and implement solutions further delay effective action (Shanley and López, 2009; King, 2016).
We summarize the state of the natural world in stark form here to help clarify the gravity of the human predicament. We also outline likely future trends in biodiversity decline (Díaz et al., 2019), climate disruption (Ripple et al., 2020), and human consumption and population growth to demonstrate the near certainty that these problems will worsen over the coming decades, with negative impacts for centuries to come. Finally, we discuss the ineffectiveness of current and planned actions that are attempting to address the ominous erosion of Earth's life-support system. Ours is not a call to surrender—we aim to provide leaders with a realistic "cold shower" of the state of the planet that is essential for planning to avoid a ghastly future.
Journal Reference:
Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Paul R. Ehrlich, Andrew Beattie. et al. Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future, Frontiers in Conservation Science [OPEN] (DOI: 10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @11:06AM (19 children)
Losing some potential cure for cancer/etc due to some species going extinct might be a problem from an individual perspective but is not a big deal from a species perspective. There have been other ways of dealing with cancer and other diseases that weren't reliant on biodiversity to develop.
In fact if certain bats go extinct we might have fewer reservoirs of coronavirus and other diseases. While most diseases are unlikely to make us go extinct since there are 7 billion of us around (and our diversity is quite high - we're mostly not clones), as 2020 has shown such stuff can make things unpleasant or ghastly even. The fewer other land species there are the fewer reservoirs of viruses there will be and more likely viruses will evolve to be less harmful to us. If the bats, pangolins, etc go extinct, various viruses can't peacefully reproduce in them causing few symptoms and then occasionally jump to humans and kill millions/billions.
Climate change even to dinosaur era levels of warming won't make us go extinct - just look at the human species operating range of temperatures and rainfall/precipitation.
Yes it might make stuff unpleasant but the "realistic cold shower" is humans have actually been experiencing terrible natural disasters for centuries ("years without summer" etc). It's just there's now a LOT more of us around to experience it and there's technology around so that billions of us can witness it. As stuff gets warmer there might be more hurricanes/year but seriously, we can build hurricane resistant houses. What's difficult is building hurricane AND earthquake resistant houses that are CHEAP. And guess what? That all has less to do with biodiversity than to do with the economy.
The final realistic cold shower is no matter what happens or what we forseeably can do[1] the Earth will eventually become inhabitable (e.g. our sun changes enough). And if creatures on Earth haven't developed space colony tech in time, they will mostly go extinct.
[1] I doubt we'd ever be able to move the Earth or shield it from the Sun if it goes nova.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @12:15PM
I haven't ever thought I'd get to miss those times when lunatics like you were treated with cold showers. But I do now.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @12:33PM (11 children)
And what happens if the species we depend on go extinct? How much higher can we push the acidity of the oceans before we see rapid declines in oxygen levels?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Tokolosh on Saturday January 23 2021, @02:13PM (4 children)
Which is more likely to go extinct? An animal that humans kill by the million, called cows, which have economic value? Or an animal that is protected by governments and conservation groups, called elephants, which by law may not be used for economic gain?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Saturday January 23 2021, @04:14PM (3 children)
False dichotomy. The species most likely to get extinct is the species which nobody is aware of. Which doesn't mean we don't depend on it, just that we are not aware of our dependence.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @04:38PM (2 children)
Just find out what we depend on instead of unscientific scaremongering.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @07:25PM (1 child)
How about you educate yourself on ecological science. Aside from your ignorance humanity should try and prevent the genocide of other species, if you disagree then you represent the worst of humanity and not the best.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 26 2021, @01:48PM
How about you do that first and while you're at it, tell the scientists involved in projects to eradicate mosquitoes to educate themselves on ecological science too.
My point still stands: "I'm pretty sure while we depend on lots of species we don't depend on as many species as the treehuggers would like us to believe."
If giant pandas, tigers, rhinos went extinct we won't go extinct nor really be that affected (won't significantly negatively affect our average lifespan, mortality or quality of life). In contrast if the malaria parasite or polio virus went extinct I think we'd do even better.
BUT if various common ants, bees, algae, plankton or similar lower end of pyramid stuff went extinct then yeah it wouldn't be a surprise if there are big problems.
You've got nothing but empty ignorant emotional claims and rhetoric. While I've got facts and science backing up my claims.
The cold harsh fact is there are plenty of species that we don't need for our survival or even well-being.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 23 2021, @07:23PM (4 children)
Why would that be a thing? Global warming doesn't do that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @07:45PM (3 children)
Warming doesn't, but human activity sure as hell does. Have you been living under a rock, or are you just pretending to be wilfully ignorant?
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Saturday January 23 2021, @08:11PM (2 children)
Doesn't matter unless the human activity is making those species we depend on extinct. I have to agree with the skeptics in this thread. There's a lot of bullshit flying around without evidence to back it up.
(Score: 1, Troll) by c0lo on Sunday January 24 2021, @12:25AM (1 child)
Same like the evidence that you already have a mechanism to deal with the extreme right, so that is not a problem. Because you can afford to keep 20k national guard in the capitol for 2 weeks, so supporting that cost is not a problem, right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 24 2021, @06:43AM
If it is the same, then you should have the evidence, right? And yes, I don't see 20k national guard in the Capitol for 2 weeks as a serious issue for a country of over 300 million.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday January 24 2021, @02:37AM
Actually, that would be in about 1.25 million years, when the CO2 level drops below 160ppm and ALL the green plants starve to death, and their oxygen production dies with them.
Our little industrial CO2 production blip let us dodge that bullet. At least for a while.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXxktLAsBPo [youtube.com]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @12:37PM (4 children)
If you are so sure nothing can go wrong if some species go extinct, eliminate those pesky honey bees from your country. Small doses of neonicotinoids will do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @12:43PM
Don't even need to get the honeybees - they aren't great pollinators compared to mason bees and the small wasps and flies and bumblebees that we're indiscriminately killing without measuring because nobody makes money directly exploiting them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @04:29PM (2 children)
That's like eliminating the chickens that lay our eggs.
I'm pretty sure we don't depend on as many species as the treehuggers would like us to believe.
Just find out what we depend on instead of unscientific scaremongering.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 24 2021, @12:03AM (1 child)
We didn't try to eliminate honey bees, but we still managed to do just that to a lot of colonies
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 25 2021, @06:24PM
Maybe some bright spark will figure a way of breeding honey bees that are resistant to whatever is killing them. Even the brain dead approach of just repeatedly cross breeding the survivors might work. Works for roaches and other insects after all.
Fact is unlike for software/tech stuff it's extremely unlikely that 7+ billion people would depend on the survival of a species with very few members.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @09:43PM
If something is ready to make our future ghastly, it is globalist bureaucracy. No other man-made disaster need apply.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @01:06PM (6 children)
A certain ghastly future would be a worldwide dictatorship run by elites claiming to be acting for save the world. Everything planned. No choices in your life. No hope of political change. Nothing you can do about it. You are a human sacrifice to Gaia. Sacrifice for no purpose but to get more power. Forever. '
(Score: 3, Insightful) by shortscreen on Saturday January 23 2021, @03:20PM (1 child)
Except right now it looks like we have a good chance of getting the dictatorship anyway, with or without claims of benevolent purpose.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Saturday January 23 2021, @06:39PM
When the pandemic broke out, I had a conversation with my sister where I brought up the fact that deadly pandemics were the historical norm and we've been living in a several decade "vaccine and good public health" bubble.
Same deal with dictatorship. It's the historical norm. We've been living in a "stable republic protected by oceans" bubble. European civilization is just a few hundred years out from absolute monarchy. The Romans had a republic, but that devolved in to dictatorship. World-wide, throughout history, we're easily more than 50/50 skewed towards forms of government that would now be described as dictatorship.
We really shouldn't be that shocked that it looks like we might be regressing in that direction. That's not to say we shouldn't be fighting it; just that it's a lot harder we thought, because we've been living in a several decades "stable republic protected by oceans with good public health" bubble.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Saturday January 23 2021, @04:01PM
And do you think that's likely?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @06:46PM (1 child)
We all know you're grudge-holding contrarian babies, grow up already.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 24 2021, @01:29AM
Redefining "grow up" into "be a slave" is a stupid word game only your stupid bosses could fart out. Keep wasting their money, stupid minion. Maybe you win stupid prize in the end.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 24 2021, @04:37AM
FTFY
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @02:09PM (2 children)
A ghastly future is humanity locked down to supposedly protect their lives, in the purely physical sense. Only it's the ghastly present already in many European countries.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @04:44PM (1 child)
But instead of bread and circuses, it'll be beer and social media.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @05:39PM
Not just beer, craft beer.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by shortscreen on Saturday January 23 2021, @03:08PM (1 child)
Structural dependence on infinite growth is clearly incompatible with long-term sustainability. It incentivizes not only ignoring externalities but every other kind of shortcut and deception for the sake of numbers on a piece of paper. Obviously no one on the political scene will say it though. MMT, Keynes, monetarism, social security, the 401K, the green new deal, everything includes the assumption of infinite growth. Good luck convincing people to give up the free money dream. Right now we're at the stage where people can hardly bare the notion that the ruling class shouldn't outright steal trillions just because they can.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday January 26 2021, @12:43PM
Careful. Humans tend to act less rationally in the face of scarcity, not more.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by oumuamua on Saturday January 23 2021, @04:19PM (11 children)
For those who didn't notice, Paul R. Ehrlich is the author of the Population Bomb, a book published over 50 years ago and even now disparaged as wrong:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-population-bomb-was-a-dud-1525125341 [wsj.com]
Yet if we'd followed the book's advice we would not have the problems we do now. What averted the famines predicted in the book was technology and once again we look to technology to get us out of this crisis; a breakthrough in fusion power perhaps. This meme sums up how that is working out: https://www.genolve.com/design/socialmedia/memes/climate-apocalypse [genolve.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @04:36PM (2 children)
Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood have been promoting ethnic cleansing since the '30s.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @05:41PM
If we'd cleaned our ethnics back in the day, we would have all these dirty ones ruining everything now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @07:28PM
Planned Parenthood does exactly as its name suggests, providing health services that help reduce unintended pregnancies , still shockingly high worldwide https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4727534/ [nih.gov]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 23 2021, @08:31PM (4 children)
We'd have a worse class of problems. I wouldn't put it past them to create their own crises in order to justify their population reduction solutions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 24 2021, @12:36AM (3 children)
Let us note ^ is bullshit flying around without a shred of evidence. I don't buy it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 24 2021, @07:08AM (1 child)
Well, consider that they've been way wrong about the trajectories of human population and have advocated extreme anti-democratic measures for fixing overpopulation (forcing people to have less kids). So they already demonstrated that they're willing to take ruthless decisions based on a delusional narrative about the future of humanity. That never goes well.
And what happens in such a situation when someone comes up with a technology fix like better agricultural productivity? They've already shown they're willing to ignore 50 years of reality. Suppressing agricultural advances and creating food shortage crises isn't much of a leap when someone is convinced they're doing it for the greater good.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 24 2021, @07:22PM
Once again no evidence and more emotional crisis language. Fuck off shill.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 25 2021, @06:03AM
Critical Thinking skills are free to learn and profitable to use.
You might try acquiring some.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday January 24 2021, @02:47AM
Modern famines mostly line up behind the regional advent of communist dictatorships. Here's a handy chart:
http://www.doomgold.com/images/faminedeaths.png [doomgold.com]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday January 24 2021, @08:29PM
How is a breakthrough in fusion power going to fix anything at all?
The only thing it would help is by removing the need for fossil-fuel powered power plants. But those only contribute a fraction of CO2 emissions: aircraft and road vehicles and ships contribute the rest. Sorry, I'm not accounting for a "breakthrough" that involves fusion reactors that fit in your car, because that's just ridiculous. Fusion-generated electricity would help somewhat, but only somewhat. If we banned ICE cars and replaced them all with EVs (good luck with that), that would help more, but it'll be a long time before ships and airplanes can be carbon-free, though it is possible they could use electricity to generate artificial fuels to at least make them carbon-neutral, though inefficient.
But none of this will fix the problem of the sheer amount of land and resources that humans consume, which isn't getting any better at all (despite a somewhat stabilizing population due to people not having as many children in developed nations). In fact, better technology may likely just increase humans' desire for more resources (namely land). Look at what's happening now with Covid: many more people are working from home, thanks to IT that's been around for a while but not fully utilized for this purpose, and because many companies are now allowing full-time remote work without ever having to come back to the office, more people are leaving cities and moving to suburbs or exurbs, where they consume even more resources than in the city (mostly because of cars, big houses occupying former farmland or forest, and energy to heat those houses).
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday January 24 2021, @09:31PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @04:19PM (1 child)
In the 1970s, people actually figured out that people were a big problem. Finite resources and infinite growth didn't work. Just ask the people trying to live in Los Angeles (until last year, anyway). Along the way, the ZPG ideal didn't go along with political agendas, and so it was buried, as if it never existed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_population_growth [wikipedia.org]
750-million in the world want to come to the USA, and most of those want the CA lifestyle. That, combined with kneejerk planning and... Day after day, the whole place slipping away...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 23 2021, @08:33PM
There'd be a lot less "slipping away" in California, if the idiots weren't in charge.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by C0L0PH0N on Saturday January 23 2021, @04:56PM (3 children)
Earth only has another 3 or 4 billion years before the Sun's expansion incinerates it. So life on Earth will ebb and flow. I hope we do expand to the galaxy, and take a diversity of life with us. Then Earth's children will live forever. Well, maybe for a few trillion years anyways :).
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @05:49PM (1 child)
"We" probably will leave this planet as long as by "we" you mean our cousins the fungal spores.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @11:33PM
》 our cousins the fungal spores.
So they've finally identified Elon Musk's species?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 24 2021, @12:37AM
Physics is stacked against it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @11:03PM
Apathetic bloody planet, I've no sympathy at all.
There was a ghastly silence.
Then there was a ghastly noise.
Then there was another ghastly silence.