19 ms·

Animal Populations Fell by 68% in 50 Years and It’s Getting Worse

318 points by perfunctory 6y ago

cmendel 6y ago
It is going to be a rough rest of your life, buckle up.
- echelon 6y ago
  For us, not really. The generations that come after us? Probably. And therein lies the problem. The people making the rules and pulling the strings don't have a bleeding, burning pressure to change course. And they won't until it's too late. Complain all you want about climate and biodiversity and pollution, but nothing is going to be done until we've stunted the lives of the people at the top. That's just how the short-sighted, hill climbing algorithm called humanity works. We're like an ant colony, and we can't optimize for things happening outside of an N x (human lifespan), where 0 < N < 1. A better solution might be to increase human lifespan to the point where people begin to worry about a hundred years from now. Because they're just not going to care enough to act otherwise. Everything else is more immediate, more pressing. When's the last time you turned off your electricity? Or started a coup to remove the policy makers? Humans aren't equipped to solve this. It's because of the algorithm of society. Maybe that's the Great Filter.
  - dustinmoris 6y ago
    I started to change my bevahiour. I stopped buying fruit and vegetables in plastic wrapping. I buy milk in glass or paper containers. In my household I pay super close attention to how much water is running when we do dishes. We fill up the sink and wash it there. We turn off lights wherever possible and use energy efficient devices. I only bought A++ electrical kitchen appliances, we invested in a new energy efficient boiler and have a smart metre where we track our gas and electricity usage. I also switched our energy provider who uses 100% renewable energy. I also stopped worrying about COVID and wearing masks and keeping social distance. If humans are weak and die from a begnin virus then it's part of the circle of life. Keeping everyone alive through unsustainable measures only harms our planet due to over population and further exploitation. I stopped eating meat in 2018, don't own a car and I've started to book 15h train journeys when I travel to Europe instead of going on a 3 hour plane. There is a lot we can do, but I agree the most effective way would be to start civil unrest and force leaders into their knees to enforce more measures to everyone and not rely on people's good will like myself.
    - myvoiceismypass 6y ago
      Wait what? “I also stopped worrying about COVID and wearing masks and keeping social distance. If humans are weak and die from a begnin virus then it's part of the circle of life. Keeping everyone alive through unsustainable measures only harms our planet due to over population and further exploitation.” Benign?
      - ajkdhcb2 6y ago
        Yes, humans in previous generations wouldn't even bat an eyelid at the death rates. it wasn't long ago that people used to willingly go on boat journeys even though 10% of the passengers would typically die on the way
        devit 6y ago
        > on boat journeys even though 10% of the passengers would typically die on the way Source? Seems highly implausible (in general).
        dredmorbius 6y ago
        The "middle passage" portion of the slave trade saw ~15% mortality, though that would have been high for non-slave passenger travel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Passage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Passage Deaths at sea definitely occurred. Credible accurate records don't seem to be available however, as this article's abstract notes: Farley Grubb, "Morbidity and Mortality on the North Atlantic Passage: Eighteenth-Century German Immigration" (1987). https://www.jstor.org/stable/204611 https://www.jstor.org/stable/204611
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
        Yeah, the only kind of boat where that was probably true was the kind where the majority of "passengers" definitely weren't going willingly.
        inglor_cz 6y ago
  - graeme 6y ago
    There’s a lot to what you say, but: if you’re under 40-50 or so, I also expect a rough life. Assume you’re 30 and live to 85: 55 more years is until 2075. There’s a lot of time to do damage by then.
  - itsoktocry 6y ago
    >but nothing is going to be done until we've stunted the lives of the people at the top Do people honestly believe "nothing" is being done? We are chipping away at these problems, otherwise you wouldn't be reading about it in a mainstream newspaper article. People (especially younger people) are more conscious about these issues than at any time in my lifetime. It's not like you can flip a switch and change a society that has developed over millennia.
    - rcxdude 6y ago
      The concern is that compared to what's necessary to change the apparent course of the planet, what has been done so far is basically nothing. On a global scale the amount of change necessary is orders of magnitude larger than what has changed so far, and it needs to happen fast (and the problem is getting worse: the second derivative isn't even in the right direction in that carbon emissions per year are still increasing globally. Given what we know about the climate it's not clear if we would avoid substantial shifts even if we reset the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to the levels from the start of the century). And the fact is much more action could be easily taken even right now, but some governments are still in denial that there's even a problem in the first place (and the fact is this is a problem which needs government action: individual consumers do not have the power to change the behaviour of industry, even if well organised).
    - baron_harkonnen 6y ago
      > "nothing" is being done? What is being done? Nearly every "green" initiative is much more marketing than reality when you look at the details. Renewable energy sources are widely supplementing not replacing hydrocarbons. Decreased emissions are largely from a financial switch from coal to natural gas and offloading your CO2 production to somewhere else. Global emissions are still rising. Consumer capitalism is the largest driver of our CO2 usage and we have done worse than nothing about changing the way our economies operate. Consumer spending has been a perpetually increasing part of the US GDP. Currently 70% of the US GDP is consumer spending. We have a pandemic which has forced that to drop and everyone with political power is doing everything they can to get that back up. > It's not like you can flip a switch... Well unfortunately we don't have time. Historically every major sudden climate change period seems to have reached a tipping point where positive feedbacks initiated rapid temperature increases. We don't entirely know what these feedback are (we have some guesses that they might be methane hydrates and melting permafrost) but once we hit these it's over, it doesn't matter if you reduce CO2 emission to 0. It's worth noting that IPCC projections typically do not include feedbacks, which may explain why 'faster than expected' is the new norm. We might see a blue ocean event before the decade is out. That will have immediate impact on the entire global climate.
ximeng 6y ago
Not too long before it's man versus man rather than man versus nature.
- thecureforzits 6y ago
  Once the animals are gone, we won't last much longer. It is extremely naive to think we can engineer ourselves a new biome that can sustain anything even close to what we have now.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Don't people engineer new biomes pretty frequently? It seems pretty defeatist to look at a world where we regularly transform dirt fields into grassy plains into food and think that we'll never be able to sustain ourselves if the climate changes.
    - RockIslandLine 6y ago
      Engineering new biomes for fun is different than having to do it every year or you die. What do you do when seasonal heat makes Pakistan and India uninhabitable for large parts of the year? We're not prepared for that kind of migration, we didn't even deal with Syria well. Farming and other activities often require decades to truly show a profit. When rainfall patterns are changing on short timescales, you will not be able to plan for food production given the underlying churn in fertile locations.
keiferski 6y ago
In addition, no one today remembered why the war had come about or who, if anyone, had won. The dust which had contaminated most of the planet's surface had originated in no country and no one, even the wartime enemy, had planned on it. First, strangely, the owls had died. At the time it had seemed almost funny, the fat, fluffy white birds lying here and there, in yards and on streets; coming out no earlier than twilight as they had while alive the owls escaped notice. Medieval plagues had manifested themselves in a similar way, in the form of many dead rats. This plague, however, had descended from above. After the owls, of course, the other birds followed, but by then the mystery had been grasped and understood. - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) One of the major themes in the story are animals; most species have been wiped out and people own artificial versions instead. Decker himself is motivated by a desire to own a "real" animal. Interesting that they mostly left this out of the film version (Blade Runner) and only vaguely mentioned it. In general, the book is very different, but discussion of animals takes up at least 1/4 of the narrative.
- recuter 6y ago
  Probably because it would feel too far fetched and unbelievable to the audience, even today. I wonder when that will change.
- wiredfool 6y ago
  So much was removed -- The movie is clearly based on the book, but only a quarter of the books themes end up in the movie. Isidore. Religion vs TV. Shared experiences. The movie is cut down, probably so it didn't turn a Novella into a trilogy. Dial 800, the desire to watch TV, no matter what's on.
  - keiferski 6y ago
    It's an interesting case of literature-movie adaptation. The film is one of my favorites, but mostly for the atmosphere and cinematography, not the story itself. Yet, after recently re-reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I came away thinking that the movie could have been so much better. They left a lot of the interesting details and Phillip K. Dick weirdness out.
WalterBright 6y ago
It was pretty obvious to me 40-50 years ago that a mass extinction event was coming soon. I figured few animals larger than a dog would be left.
- kortex 6y ago
  Excluding pets and livestock, yep, pretty much. Obligatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/1338/ https://xkcd.com/1338/
thatguy0900 6y ago
Really sucks being young 20s. Between climate and the looming covid recession, is there even a point to planning for the future? Seems like the world will be trashed before I'm anywhere close to retirement anyway, almost like I might as well enjoy my money while I can do things with it.
- ecmascript 6y ago
  If there is something you should do as a young person who thinks the future is bleak is to invest. Invest in stuff that will be worth a lot when the shit hits the fan. Long before the economic system will collapse you will have a lot chances to buy properties make money from stocks and build to prepare for a potential collapse. If you invest now and prepare for a dystopian future you will be well prepared when and if it arrives. If you waste your money on goods and experiences you will instead face the same destiny as so many others.
  - geden 6y ago
    Invest in properly learning about yourself.
  - thatguy0900 6y ago
    "If you invest now and prepare for a dystopian future you will be well prepared when and if it arrives" I mean this is what I'm talking about, who cares about living in a dystopia future. Surely it's better to go all in on enjoying the world now for 10 or 20 years than desperately try to carve out a maybe somewhat tolerable middle aged life in a dystopia. At least I'll have good company at the bottom in the future
    - ecmascript 6y ago
      Sure, but I don't think you or me will experience any dystopian future. Such a future is still far from being here and we will most likely die before that happens. But I guess it's different ideologies, by going "all in" as you suggest you simply add haste and helps to ensure that such a dystopian future is actually going to become reality. I am on the other hand preparing, trying to become self sustainable and lower my consuming to such a degree I don't need any income from any other source than my investments. This will help reduce emissions, by "enjoying the world" you will help to create emissions. Who told you cannot enjoy life as the same time you plan for a shitty future? Plan for the worst, hope for the best. This is a good talk about the economics but you can take it further than that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-Li_sFNc4Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-Li_sFNc4Q Since I've started to follow this mindset I have moved to the countryside, sold my car, started to grow my own vegetables, got chicken from a specific race that is threatened of extinction (thus helping its continued existance) and stopped purchasing unnecessary stuff. I can already feel how I have improved my life in such a way that I have more money than ever before and I can save about 50% of my income.
ecmascript 6y ago
When the effects of global warming and extinction finally will hit us hard, people will die of in billions and life will begin to come back. Of course a lot of species will be extinct forever, but so is the natural cycle of life. Almost all species that ever existed has already gone extinct and it's foolish to think that we won't have the same destiny, especially how we're treating our food chain.
- hdjdbtbgwjsn 6y ago
  Assuming some negative feedback mechanism kicks in. There is a chance a positive feedback occurs, global warming spirals and Earth becomes uninhabitable. See Venus for an example.
  - ecmascript 6y ago
    Sure, but getting rid of life seems to be quite hard and for it to happen it must be some extraordinary event like the surface getting as hot as the surface of venus. People still believe there can be life on venus in it's clouds, most likely bacteria or something like it but it's not impossible that life will find a way. There has been extinction events where the surface of earth pretty much became uninhabitable, but bacteria lives in the earth and underground and life spirals back as soon as the surface or oceans are habitable again.
  - Aunche 6y ago
    You realize that all of the carbon in fossil fuels was once in the atmosphere right? The earth spits out a little bit of CO2 naturally, and the sun is a bit hotter than it was 100 million years ago, but we aren't turning into Venus anytime soon.
    - hdjdbtbgwjsn 6y ago
      Back then the continents were configured rather differently. That has a huge effect on hothouse vs icehouse regime. Right now we are in a continental configuration that should be icehouse (circumpolar currents with cold deep water). If we force the climate into hothouse against its natural state what will happen? It's very much not settled how balanced the mantle vs surface carbon cycle is. How much carbon is in MORB? Is subducted sediment actually entrained into the mantle? A major store of CO2 is sedimentary dolomite. We did't even really understand how that formed! (Last time I checked but I'm no sedimentologist so that might have been solved.) Speaking as a geologist your statement is dangerously naive. I'm not saying Venus and the end of all life is definite but it is the worst case scenario of a situation that we don't understand and that will soon be (maybe already is) out of our control.
nemo44x 6y ago
I guess it was alluded to in the article but my main concern is the amount of fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides we use. As we clear more land for Ag we are of course limiting habitat for animals but also zapping them constantly with these chemicals. Fertilizers get into water and decimate the life in there. Herbicides coupled with pesticides decimate insect ecosystems. The development of land gives larger animals nowhere to go. I get why we farm like we do - abundant food for everyone. So much so that we waste so much. I just wish there was some way to develop effective farming that didn’t do all this. But it feels like a catch-22.
- 52-6F-62 6y ago
  It's not a new problem, either. Growing up in a rural, agricultural zone we learned thoroughly about run-off and the potential for harm, and the harm that had happened in the past. DDT was nearly a curseword. It's etched into my mind that way. (And then the Ramones didn't help that) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Use_in_the_1940s_and_1950s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Use_in_the_1940s_and_1950s
  - nemo44x 6y ago
    Yeah it’s crazy to think that a chemical can be developed that can effectively destroy organic life and we just decide to spray it everywhere. I’ve read things about people that live near certain farms have higher rates of birth defects and diseases like cancer. I can only imagine being exposed to chemicals over and over for years is not only devastating to the local ecosystem but to the people nearby.
- tw04 6y ago
  But we also don't even take the most basic actions to prevent that fertilizer from making it into our waterways. Farmers insist on putting in thousands of miles of drain tile and running it straight into creeks and streams. They plow their fields right up to the very edge of marshes and streams instead of leaving grass strips to act as a barrier to runoff. It's shocking how little people seem to realize or care about the fact we can't even handle minute changes to help mother nature. The ironic part being, at least around here, every year some group spends millions and millions of dollars on "Farmer's Care" commercials and billboards. Also, not trying to be a grammar nazi - I just appreciate when people point things out to me so take it in that spirit. Alluded to - eluded means you're evading/escaping something.
geden 6y ago
Time for Game B. And fast. Come on HN. Time to bring your A Game to Game B and get stuck into John Vervaeke, Daniel Schmachtenberger, Jordan Hall etc. https://youtu.be/8Es_WTEgZHE https://youtu.be/8Es_WTEgZHE
rob74 6y ago
Mandatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1338/ https://xkcd.com/1338/ That was a real eye-opener when I first saw it. Talk about Anthropocene...
- nn3 6y ago
  I doubt that includes insects, bacteria and krill Krill biomass alone is significantly bigger than humanity's. Insect's and bacteria too. This article discusses a study that claims humanity is ~1/10000 of total biomass, including plants. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/humans-make-110000th-earths-biomass-180969141/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/humans-make-110000... In general large animals have been already devastated by the last ice age and then changes resulting from that. Even without humans large animals would be significantly less diverse than in many periods before. Of course human's killing spree is not helping either. The xkcd article is probably about large animals, but that's a kind of large animal chauvinism. Why do the small guys not matter? Yes they're in decline too
  - rob74 6y ago
    Well, it's written right in the title: "Earth's land mammals by weight". So no, it doesn't include bacteria, insects, other invertebrates, or anything living in the sea, but the point it's trying to make about the impact of humans on the planet is still important...
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- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Paul Chefurka plotted change over time, which puts an additional spin on the quantities. https://www.rexweyler.ca/ecologue/2018/7/18/how-much-of-earths-biomass-is-affected-by-humans https://www.rexweyler.ca/ecologue/2018/7/18/how-much-of-eart... https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/58ed5944e6f2e1f4c44d9d2f/1542077130274-6VAJRQRB9H9MLPIZ2300/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kN9WS6lkPTLWXFYvtrguK3tZw-zPPgdn4jUwVcJE1ZvWQUxwkmyExglNqGp0IvTJZamWLI2zvYWH8K3-s_4yszcp2ryTI0HqTOaaUohrI8PI7rubP63sZTEEql4LpB6iVkxQFBHeRds9Ybpt_P1NbQQ/Screen-Shot-2018-07-17-at-5.35.05-PM-768x731.png https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/58ed5944e6f2e1...
slavik81 6y ago
I saw a figure[1] the other day that blew me away. If you exclude pets and livestock, then human beings comprise ~90% of all mammals (by weight). All wild whales, bears, lions, deer, moose, mice, rabbits, wild horses, camels, beavers, buffalo, elephants, tigers, rhinos, chimpanzees, pandas, goats, etc... are in that remaining 10%. [1]: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/29/17386112/all-life-on-earth-chart-weight-plants-animals-pnas https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/29/17386112/al...
- yesenadam 6y ago
  A kind of similar xkcd diagram of Earth's Land Mammals by Weight https://xkcd.com/1338/ https://xkcd.com/1338/ - there's hardly any wild animals, comparatively.
  - Petrova 6y ago
    I've always wondered why horses are not used as livestock since they can also produce milk and have commercial use as well such plowing fields or transportation.
    - Funes- 6y ago
      Mare milk is consumed and commercialized [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumis.
    - lonelyasacloud 6y ago
      Eating horse meat has a long history and is still part of the culture in many places e.g. Mongolia, France. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_mea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_mea
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- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  That's because we've spent several millennia figuring out how to live more and more densely and we do the same with our livestock. If beavers invented a lifestyle that enabled them to live at densities up to thousands per square mile they'd compromise a hell of a lot of biomass too. The fact that there's more humans doesn't imply anything about the other animal population (though I suspect that it's not good for the other animals though).
alangibson 6y ago
Does anyone else > 40 years old remember there just being lots more animals around when you were a kid? I don't know if it's just age blinders or paranoia, but in particular I remember there being way more birds pretty much everywhere.
- baron_harkonnen 6y ago
  Remember fireflies? I myself almost don't believe that there were insects that would light dark fields in summer, and that children would fill jars with the these creatures because they were so plentiful you could grab a handful of glowing insects! I honestly feel that if I were to have grandchildren they would not believe me describing them or at the very least thing that I was greatly exaggerating. I know they still exist but I haven't seen a yard filled with fireflies in a long time.
  - dorchadas 6y ago
    I live in a decently rural area. This summer had a lot, for some reason, but overall I can't remember seeing many in recent summers. Same with earthworms coming out after a rain
    - _whiteCaps_ 6y ago
      I'm assuming you're in North America, many earthworm species there are invasive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthworms_as_invasive_species https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthworms_as_invasive_species
  - drzaiusapelord 6y ago
    I live in the middle of Chicago, in the city itself and in a very dense and urban part of it, and we had fireflies all summer. I'm guessing as an adult you're not out much during the hours they're out, or at least not in backyards and alleys where they tend to congregate. They do seem fewer to me, but who knows, I'm comparing my memories to a kid's from decades ago. I wonder if anyone keeps track of this stuff. I did notice less bumblebees this year, in fact I don't think I saw a single one, but that's my own experiences and not anything scientific of course. Miss those chonky little guys.
dangus 6y ago
From the details in the article it seems that the best thing you on an individual level can do to help is stop eating meat.
feralimal 6y ago
Unfortunately, these sorts of claims are impossible to verify. Did they measure like we do? Have the numbers been adjusted? Because everything is politicised, I have low levels of trust in any of these voices that self-purport themselves to be authorities. It seems so far away from my personal, anecdotal experience. It seems clear to me that rural areas are far less populated nowadays - small rural farms the world over, are being run by parents (or now, grandparents!) in their 80's it seems - the younger generation are in cities. From my school class no one has more that 3 children, and most have none. That should bode for a crashing population, but instead we are told it is increasing drastically. So, while cities may feel busy, I tend to think the population is in decline. And that if lots of rural areas are in decline, that animal populations are probably on the increase, only there's no one there to see it.
macspoofing 6y ago
One of the issues of plunging headlong into solar and wind (and bio-fuels) is that those sources require huge land-areas around mining of rare metals, deployment, and finally waste. As our global population and energy needs grow, this problem gets bigger and bigger and therefore place stress on existing, and already stressed, ecosystems. On the other end, nuclear is energy dense, and requires tiny amount of land for energy generation and waste storage. Sooner or later we will be moving back to large scale nuclear deployment because there isn't anything like nuclear power which checks the global warming box and reduced stress on ecosystem box.
- jamil7 6y ago
  Modern solar panels and their batteries do not require any "rare" metals. A lot of wind turbines use neodymium however it accounts for a very small amount of total usage. Edit: clarified.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    >Modern solar panels and their batteries do not require any really "rare" metals. The salient point was that manufacturing millions (billions?) of panels and turbines has a huge toll on the ecosystem - regardless if rare metals are used - and they are used in components of solar panels and wind turbines.
    - jamil7 6y ago
      > The salient point was that manufacturing millions (billions?) of panels and turbines has a huge toll on the ecosystem Everything has an impact on the ecosystem, is your point that nuclear has less of an impact than solar? > and they are used in components of solar panels Which rare metals are used in solar panels?
      - macspoofing 6y ago
        >Everything has an impact on the ecosystem, is your point that nuclear has less of an impact than solar? Yes. That was my point. Much less. The other argument I would make is I'm not seeing any evidence that solar actually solves any problem for us. It can't replace fossil fuels, and in fact needs fossil fuel back-up because there is no battery technology (today or upcoming) that can store enough energy to, say, power a city overnight. The global population continues to grow and with it energy needs. Worse, energy/capita is also growing. This means that as bad as solar is today on the environment, it is only going to get worse.
spodek 6y ago
The Hacker News and geek community is weird. Ask them about reaching Mars or fusion and they say it's inevitable. They're unqualified good results. Suggest we have fewer children for a few generations and consume less and it's absolutely impossible, against human nature. The One Child policy proves it. We idolize people who change the world as entrepreneurs but say one person can't make a difference in changing culture. Yet many cultures have chosen to lower birthrates through peaceful, voluntary means resulting in prosperity and stability. On a personal level, I've lowered my footprint by about 90 percent in a few years according to online calculators and every change improved my life. I figure most westerners could drop 75 - 80 percent with just the low-hanging fruit, improving their lives -- buying less junk, wasting less food, living closer to family, camping instead of visiting Timbuktu. Changing course is a matter of belief and choice far more than technology. While it's not monolithic, this community seems to choose to believe living sustainably is harder than space travel. I'd argue space travel is more attainable when we aren't pushing the Earth's limits to sustain life and human society.
- snarf21 6y ago
  You aren't wrong but to me you are focusing on the wrong things. As you say, the west is already dropping the birth rate and being more and more focused on sustainability, etc. Eventually, it will get there. Change takes time. The big problem is the 3rd world. People there don't a have a choice. They don't want their family to starve. Women are largely forced into a reproduction role only. But we know that the way to reduce birth rate is to educate women and give them jobs and careers. We know that if we can create stable jobs in the 3rd world, they will stop clear cutting forests. To me, that is where the billionaires should be putting their money. If we raise the global standard of living enough, our high population problems will slowly revert.
  - RockIslandLine 6y ago
    "They don't want their family to starve." We know how to stop that. We don't have to sentence people to subsistence agriculture. When you know better, you do better, and we know better. We can farm in ways that build high carbon soils. We can do this even in the 3rd world. Teach people the proper techniques. It's nonsense to claim that we just have to accept this kind of collapse.
wubbert 6y ago
There's really no way of stopping or reversing this without billions of people dying. Since the end of WWII, killing others for the survival of your own kind has become extremely taboo (outside of Israel, that is), so nothing is going to be done until it's way too late.
- disown 6y ago
  Well the world population is expected to stabilize around 10 billion or so for a long while. So that new normal may also stabilize the wild animal population. The exponential population growth of the past 100 years seems to have stopped so that is one good news.
angel_j 6y ago
The only solution to is to live in harmony with more animals. People think wild animals can't be domesticated, but they are wrong. Living in the wild makes any animal wild, including humans, but raised from birth, generations of animals can learn to cohabit with humans. We could even train the more intelligence animals to assist us. Imagine local monkeys trained to collect trash and recyclables, rewarded with food to bring bottles and cans to a local depository.
merricksb 6y ago
https://archive.md/HpKZu https://archive.md/HpKZu
leahey 6y ago
Is there any reason to believe this may have turned around some in the years since 2016? No, right? I feel stupid even asking.
dominotw 6y ago
I have to 'pick a lane' very soon re: having kids or not. This stuff really weighs on my mind all the time. People with young kids what are your feelings about this?
- wow_yes 6y ago
  With a world sliding into fascism, with slowly boiling oceans, and rampant inequality it's impossible to justify
  - Guy2020 6y ago
    "Fascism," "democracy," what's the difference? There's always an elite class pulling the strings. The world has always been a mess. The only thing that is dying is our illusions. Edit: for those that downvote me, go tell the millions living in violent poverty how magical democracy is. There will always be a show. What matters is who's putting on the show.
    - wow_yes 6y ago
      But those running the show now are open, avowed white supremacists, nationalists, xenophobes. We're in a world very similar to pre-WW2.
      - Guy2020 6y ago
        If that was the case, then why aren't our schools teaching white supremacy and nationalism? Isn't the opposite the case? Also, what's wrong with nationalism? Isn't it better to have nations who are interested in the well being of their people as opposed to a world controlled by globalist corporations? It seems to me like the people have been conditioned against nationalism and towards globalism which favors corporate control.
  - overthemoon 6y ago
    The end of the world has always been right around the corner. One of many things that having children represents is hope for the future. Maybe you don't find that compelling or realistic, but I'm not quite ready to throw in the towel on humanity.
throwaway5752 6y ago
Remember how everyone made fun of Al Gore? Manbearpig? Leaving the Paris accord? Remember how they are mocking the Green New Deal? Remember Dominionism, making fun of "soy boys", and everything else? You should remember this when they try to pretend they do everything they could to remove environmental regulations and delay dealing with global warming until it was too late. Also remember a good percentage of them believe in End-Time Theology (ever wonder why Evangelicals care so much about a Jerusalem embassy?) edit: California is burning down just like Australia did earlier. So is Siberia. Pay attention to methane emissions from permafrost and shallow clathrates. This article is a different facet of the same problem. We are beyond the Earth's carrying capacity and it's because the wealthiest wanted to keep getting wealthy and because some religious fanatics believe in the Rapture (including a fair number of the top members of the current US administration).
- MisterBastahrd 6y ago
  I think the end-time theology thing is understated. There's a significant part of the US population who actually believes that the reason they don't need to be concerned about the environment is because God will rapture them up before the shit hits the fan. This also allows a fringe of that fringe to actively ignore political leaders who don't cater to their specific subset of interests because they "might be the anti-christ." Between Obama + Antichrist and Trump + Antichrist alone there are over 7 million results on google including a ton of kindle books.
eutropia 6y ago
In the same period from 1970 to 2016, human population went from 3.7 billion to 7.4 billion.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
Vertical farming powered by renewable and nuclear, reforest the farm fields.
sul_tasto 6y ago
What would be helpful is a list of specific problems that need to be solved.
justcomments12 6y ago
related: https://geoengineering.environment.harvard.edu/geoengineering https://geoengineering.environment.harvard.edu/geoengineerin...
growlist 6y ago
Yet somehow, magically, there are no environmental impacts from mass migration.
effnorwood 6y ago
It didn’t and it isn’t.
squibbles 6y ago
The wolves eat the deer. The deer population collapses to the point that the food supply for the wolves cannot support the wolves. The wolves starve and the wolf population collapses. Without pressure from the wolves, the deer make a comeback and flourish. The population cycles occur in both large and small ecosystems. The process is slow and steady. Often it seems like the embers of life have gone out. However, something always comes back from the ashes. Humans are just another animal in the food chain.
- yogthos 6y ago
  Human population collapse is very likely in the near future.
  - squibbles 6y ago
    I don't know how near a collapse is, since catastrophes in systems tend to come as a surprise, not a gradual event. I do agree, however, that there is substantial evidence to suggest a collapse in the human population is inevitable.
- armandhammer 6y ago
  Except no other animal harnesses the power of oil to make machines that can wipe out hundreds of thousands of square km of ecosystems (on land and sea) in a single day.
jelliclesfarm 6y ago
We are past carrying capacity. If we don’t bring down population to 1-3 billion, when the natural trend of depopulation happens, there won’t be enough resources to feed the population on the spoils of a collapsing eco system. When the apex predator gets hungry, everything gets eaten. Not only are we a super apex predator, we are also the most hungry and are outbreeding all other species and devouring eco systems. It will never be enough. We will just eat the planet and perish hungry. And likely vulnerable to all kinds of natural disasters and disease. Better to control population to manageable levels for the future of the species than make way for nature to cull us.
- sgt101 6y ago
  Are you actually advocating genocide?
  - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
    There are only two reasons not to promote responsible procreation : 1. Religion 2. Creating a labour force. When reproductive rights are restored back to women and automation/AI takes over most of the mundane tasks, humanity can live to the best of its ability. We also need anti ageing therapies so we can all live long and healthy as well as ways to preserve and manipulate genetic material so that subsequent generations have the best future in every possible way. All while restoring our eco system and bringing our planet back to equilibrium. Does this sound like genocide to you? If we had longer life spans and can live healthy lives without the ravages of ageing, how many of us would want to procreate in a hurry so we remain immortal through our genes? I don’t see responsible procreation and advanced bio therapies as something negative. I think it’s the next level of our evolution.
- lilactown 6y ago
  We are not beyond carrying capacity. We have enough food and other resources to clothe, house and feed everyone in the world and forever if we could organize ourselves. Capitalism has failed us in doing so. We need a new way of organizing. The Malthusian idea of "there are too many people" leads us to only one logical conclusion: eugenics, genocide. Don't fall into that trap. The basis is provably not true.

318 points by perfunctory 6y ago

cmendel 6y ago

It is going to be a rough rest of your life, buckle up.

echelon 6y ago
For us, not really. The generations that come after us? Probably. And therein lies the problem. The people making the rules and pulling the strings don't have a bleeding, burning pressure to change course. And they won't until it's too late. Complain all you want about climate and biodiversity and pollution, but nothing is going to be done until we've stunted the lives of the people at the top. That's just how the short-sighted, hill climbing algorithm called humanity works. We're like an ant colony, and we can't optimize for things happening outside of an N x (human lifespan), where 0 < N < 1. A better solution might be to increase human lifespan to the point where people begin to worry about a hundred years from now. Because they're just not going to care enough to act otherwise. Everything else is more immediate, more pressing. When's the last time you turned off your electricity? Or started a coup to remove the policy makers? Humans aren't equipped to solve this. It's because of the algorithm of society. Maybe that's the Great Filter.
- dustinmoris 6y ago
  I started to change my bevahiour. I stopped buying fruit and vegetables in plastic wrapping. I buy milk in glass or paper containers. In my household I pay super close attention to how much water is running when we do dishes. We fill up the sink and wash it there. We turn off lights wherever possible and use energy efficient devices. I only bought A++ electrical kitchen appliances, we invested in a new energy efficient boiler and have a smart metre where we track our gas and electricity usage. I also switched our energy provider who uses 100% renewable energy. I also stopped worrying about COVID and wearing masks and keeping social distance. If humans are weak and die from a begnin virus then it's part of the circle of life. Keeping everyone alive through unsustainable measures only harms our planet due to over population and further exploitation. I stopped eating meat in 2018, don't own a car and I've started to book 15h train journeys when I travel to Europe instead of going on a 3 hour plane. There is a lot we can do, but I agree the most effective way would be to start civil unrest and force leaders into their knees to enforce more measures to everyone and not rely on people's good will like myself.
  - myvoiceismypass 6y ago
    Wait what? “I also stopped worrying about COVID and wearing masks and keeping social distance. If humans are weak and die from a begnin virus then it's part of the circle of life. Keeping everyone alive through unsustainable measures only harms our planet due to over population and further exploitation.” Benign?
    - ajkdhcb2 6y ago
      Yes, humans in previous generations wouldn't even bat an eyelid at the death rates. it wasn't long ago that people used to willingly go on boat journeys even though 10% of the passengers would typically die on the way
      - devit 6y ago
        > on boat journeys even though 10% of the passengers would typically die on the way Source? Seems highly implausible (in general).
        dredmorbius 6y ago
        The "middle passage" portion of the slave trade saw ~15% mortality, though that would have been high for non-slave passenger travel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Passage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Passage Deaths at sea definitely occurred. Credible accurate records don't seem to be available however, as this article's abstract notes: Farley Grubb, "Morbidity and Mortality on the North Atlantic Passage: Eighteenth-Century German Immigration" (1987). https://www.jstor.org/stable/204611 https://www.jstor.org/stable/204611
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
        Yeah, the only kind of boat where that was probably true was the kind where the majority of "passengers" definitely weren't going willingly.
        inglor_cz 6y ago
- graeme 6y ago
  There’s a lot to what you say, but: if you’re under 40-50 or so, I also expect a rough life. Assume you’re 30 and live to 85: 55 more years is until 2075. There’s a lot of time to do damage by then.
- itsoktocry 6y ago
  >but nothing is going to be done until we've stunted the lives of the people at the top Do people honestly believe "nothing" is being done? We are chipping away at these problems, otherwise you wouldn't be reading about it in a mainstream newspaper article. People (especially younger people) are more conscious about these issues than at any time in my lifetime. It's not like you can flip a switch and change a society that has developed over millennia.
  - rcxdude 6y ago
    The concern is that compared to what's necessary to change the apparent course of the planet, what has been done so far is basically nothing. On a global scale the amount of change necessary is orders of magnitude larger than what has changed so far, and it needs to happen fast (and the problem is getting worse: the second derivative isn't even in the right direction in that carbon emissions per year are still increasing globally. Given what we know about the climate it's not clear if we would avoid substantial shifts even if we reset the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to the levels from the start of the century). And the fact is much more action could be easily taken even right now, but some governments are still in denial that there's even a problem in the first place (and the fact is this is a problem which needs government action: individual consumers do not have the power to change the behaviour of industry, even if well organised).
  - baron_harkonnen 6y ago
    > "nothing" is being done? What is being done? Nearly every "green" initiative is much more marketing than reality when you look at the details. Renewable energy sources are widely supplementing not replacing hydrocarbons. Decreased emissions are largely from a financial switch from coal to natural gas and offloading your CO2 production to somewhere else. Global emissions are still rising. Consumer capitalism is the largest driver of our CO2 usage and we have done worse than nothing about changing the way our economies operate. Consumer spending has been a perpetually increasing part of the US GDP. Currently 70% of the US GDP is consumer spending. We have a pandemic which has forced that to drop and everyone with political power is doing everything they can to get that back up. > It's not like you can flip a switch... Well unfortunately we don't have time. Historically every major sudden climate change period seems to have reached a tipping point where positive feedbacks initiated rapid temperature increases. We don't entirely know what these feedback are (we have some guesses that they might be methane hydrates and melting permafrost) but once we hit these it's over, it doesn't matter if you reduce CO2 emission to 0. It's worth noting that IPCC projections typically do not include feedbacks, which may explain why 'faster than expected' is the new norm. We might see a blue ocean event before the decade is out. That will have immediate impact on the entire global climate.

ximeng 6y ago

Not too long before it's man versus man rather than man versus nature.

thecureforzits 6y ago
Once the animals are gone, we won't last much longer. It is extremely naive to think we can engineer ourselves a new biome that can sustain anything even close to what we have now.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Don't people engineer new biomes pretty frequently? It seems pretty defeatist to look at a world where we regularly transform dirt fields into grassy plains into food and think that we'll never be able to sustain ourselves if the climate changes.
  - RockIslandLine 6y ago
    Engineering new biomes for fun is different than having to do it every year or you die. What do you do when seasonal heat makes Pakistan and India uninhabitable for large parts of the year? We're not prepared for that kind of migration, we didn't even deal with Syria well. Farming and other activities often require decades to truly show a profit. When rainfall patterns are changing on short timescales, you will not be able to plan for food production given the underlying churn in fertile locations.

keiferski 6y ago

In addition, no one today remembered why the war had come about or who, if anyone, had won. The dust which had contaminated most of the planet's surface had originated in no country and no one, even the wartime enemy, had planned on it. First, strangely, the owls had died. At the time it had seemed almost funny, the fat, fluffy white birds lying here and there, in yards and on streets; coming out no earlier than twilight as they had while alive the owls escaped notice. Medieval plagues had manifested themselves in a similar way, in the form of many dead rats. This plague, however, had descended from above. After the owls, of course, the other birds followed, but by then the mystery had been grasped and understood. - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) One of the major themes in the story are animals; most species have been wiped out and people own artificial versions instead. Decker himself is motivated by a desire to own a "real" animal. Interesting that they mostly left this out of the film version (Blade Runner) and only vaguely mentioned it. In general, the book is very different, but discussion of animals takes up at least 1/4 of the narrative.

recuter 6y ago
Probably because it would feel too far fetched and unbelievable to the audience, even today. I wonder when that will change.
wiredfool 6y ago
So much was removed -- The movie is clearly based on the book, but only a quarter of the books themes end up in the movie. Isidore. Religion vs TV. Shared experiences. The movie is cut down, probably so it didn't turn a Novella into a trilogy. Dial 800, the desire to watch TV, no matter what's on.
- keiferski 6y ago
  It's an interesting case of literature-movie adaptation. The film is one of my favorites, but mostly for the atmosphere and cinematography, not the story itself. Yet, after recently re-reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I came away thinking that the movie could have been so much better. They left a lot of the interesting details and Phillip K. Dick weirdness out.

WalterBright 6y ago

It was pretty obvious to me 40-50 years ago that a mass extinction event was coming soon. I figured few animals larger than a dog would be left.

kortex 6y ago
Excluding pets and livestock, yep, pretty much. Obligatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/1338/ https://xkcd.com/1338/

thatguy0900 6y ago

Really sucks being young 20s. Between climate and the looming covid recession, is there even a point to planning for the future? Seems like the world will be trashed before I'm anywhere close to retirement anyway, almost like I might as well enjoy my money while I can do things with it.

ecmascript 6y ago
If there is something you should do as a young person who thinks the future is bleak is to invest. Invest in stuff that will be worth a lot when the shit hits the fan. Long before the economic system will collapse you will have a lot chances to buy properties make money from stocks and build to prepare for a potential collapse. If you invest now and prepare for a dystopian future you will be well prepared when and if it arrives. If you waste your money on goods and experiences you will instead face the same destiny as so many others.
- geden 6y ago
  Invest in properly learning about yourself.
- thatguy0900 6y ago
  "If you invest now and prepare for a dystopian future you will be well prepared when and if it arrives" I mean this is what I'm talking about, who cares about living in a dystopia future. Surely it's better to go all in on enjoying the world now for 10 or 20 years than desperately try to carve out a maybe somewhat tolerable middle aged life in a dystopia. At least I'll have good company at the bottom in the future
  - ecmascript 6y ago
    Sure, but I don't think you or me will experience any dystopian future. Such a future is still far from being here and we will most likely die before that happens. But I guess it's different ideologies, by going "all in" as you suggest you simply add haste and helps to ensure that such a dystopian future is actually going to become reality. I am on the other hand preparing, trying to become self sustainable and lower my consuming to such a degree I don't need any income from any other source than my investments. This will help reduce emissions, by "enjoying the world" you will help to create emissions. Who told you cannot enjoy life as the same time you plan for a shitty future? Plan for the worst, hope for the best. This is a good talk about the economics but you can take it further than that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-Li_sFNc4Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-Li_sFNc4Q Since I've started to follow this mindset I have moved to the countryside, sold my car, started to grow my own vegetables, got chicken from a specific race that is threatened of extinction (thus helping its continued existance) and stopped purchasing unnecessary stuff. I can already feel how I have improved my life in such a way that I have more money than ever before and I can save about 50% of my income.

ecmascript 6y ago

When the effects of global warming and extinction finally will hit us hard, people will die of in billions and life will begin to come back. Of course a lot of species will be extinct forever, but so is the natural cycle of life. Almost all species that ever existed has already gone extinct and it's foolish to think that we won't have the same destiny, especially how we're treating our food chain.

hdjdbtbgwjsn 6y ago
Assuming some negative feedback mechanism kicks in. There is a chance a positive feedback occurs, global warming spirals and Earth becomes uninhabitable. See Venus for an example.
- ecmascript 6y ago
  Sure, but getting rid of life seems to be quite hard and for it to happen it must be some extraordinary event like the surface getting as hot as the surface of venus. People still believe there can be life on venus in it's clouds, most likely bacteria or something like it but it's not impossible that life will find a way. There has been extinction events where the surface of earth pretty much became uninhabitable, but bacteria lives in the earth and underground and life spirals back as soon as the surface or oceans are habitable again.
- Aunche 6y ago
  You realize that all of the carbon in fossil fuels was once in the atmosphere right? The earth spits out a little bit of CO2 naturally, and the sun is a bit hotter than it was 100 million years ago, but we aren't turning into Venus anytime soon.
  - hdjdbtbgwjsn 6y ago
    Back then the continents were configured rather differently. That has a huge effect on hothouse vs icehouse regime. Right now we are in a continental configuration that should be icehouse (circumpolar currents with cold deep water). If we force the climate into hothouse against its natural state what will happen? It's very much not settled how balanced the mantle vs surface carbon cycle is. How much carbon is in MORB? Is subducted sediment actually entrained into the mantle? A major store of CO2 is sedimentary dolomite. We did't even really understand how that formed! (Last time I checked but I'm no sedimentologist so that might have been solved.) Speaking as a geologist your statement is dangerously naive. I'm not saying Venus and the end of all life is definite but it is the worst case scenario of a situation that we don't understand and that will soon be (maybe already is) out of our control.

nemo44x 6y ago

I guess it was alluded to in the article but my main concern is the amount of fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides we use. As we clear more land for Ag we are of course limiting habitat for animals but also zapping them constantly with these chemicals. Fertilizers get into water and decimate the life in there. Herbicides coupled with pesticides decimate insect ecosystems. The development of land gives larger animals nowhere to go. I get why we farm like we do - abundant food for everyone. So much so that we waste so much. I just wish there was some way to develop effective farming that didn’t do all this. But it feels like a catch-22.

52-6F-62 6y ago
It's not a new problem, either. Growing up in a rural, agricultural zone we learned thoroughly about run-off and the potential for harm, and the harm that had happened in the past. DDT was nearly a curseword. It's etched into my mind that way. (And then the Ramones didn't help that) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Use_in_the_1940s_and_1950s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Use_in_the_1940s_and_1950s
- nemo44x 6y ago
  Yeah it’s crazy to think that a chemical can be developed that can effectively destroy organic life and we just decide to spray it everywhere. I’ve read things about people that live near certain farms have higher rates of birth defects and diseases like cancer. I can only imagine being exposed to chemicals over and over for years is not only devastating to the local ecosystem but to the people nearby.
tw04 6y ago
But we also don't even take the most basic actions to prevent that fertilizer from making it into our waterways. Farmers insist on putting in thousands of miles of drain tile and running it straight into creeks and streams. They plow their fields right up to the very edge of marshes and streams instead of leaving grass strips to act as a barrier to runoff. It's shocking how little people seem to realize or care about the fact we can't even handle minute changes to help mother nature. The ironic part being, at least around here, every year some group spends millions and millions of dollars on "Farmer's Care" commercials and billboards. Also, not trying to be a grammar nazi - I just appreciate when people point things out to me so take it in that spirit. Alluded to - eluded means you're evading/escaping something.

geden 6y ago

Time for Game B. And fast. Come on HN. Time to bring your A Game to Game B and get stuck into John Vervaeke, Daniel Schmachtenberger, Jordan Hall etc. https://youtu.be/8Es_WTEgZHE https://youtu.be/8Es_WTEgZHE

rob74 6y ago

Mandatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1338/ https://xkcd.com/1338/ That was a real eye-opener when I first saw it. Talk about Anthropocene...

nn3 6y ago
I doubt that includes insects, bacteria and krill Krill biomass alone is significantly bigger than humanity's. Insect's and bacteria too. This article discusses a study that claims humanity is ~1/10000 of total biomass, including plants. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/humans-make-110000th-earths-biomass-180969141/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/humans-make-110000... In general large animals have been already devastated by the last ice age and then changes resulting from that. Even without humans large animals would be significantly less diverse than in many periods before. Of course human's killing spree is not helping either. The xkcd article is probably about large animals, but that's a kind of large animal chauvinism. Why do the small guys not matter? Yes they're in decline too
- rob74 6y ago
  Well, it's written right in the title: "Earth's land mammals by weight". So no, it doesn't include bacteria, insects, other invertebrates, or anything living in the sea, but the point it's trying to make about the impact of humans on the planet is still important...
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dredmorbius 6y ago
Paul Chefurka plotted change over time, which puts an additional spin on the quantities. https://www.rexweyler.ca/ecologue/2018/7/18/how-much-of-earths-biomass-is-affected-by-humans https://www.rexweyler.ca/ecologue/2018/7/18/how-much-of-eart... https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/58ed5944e6f2e1f4c44d9d2f/1542077130274-6VAJRQRB9H9MLPIZ2300/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kN9WS6lkPTLWXFYvtrguK3tZw-zPPgdn4jUwVcJE1ZvWQUxwkmyExglNqGp0IvTJZamWLI2zvYWH8K3-s_4yszcp2ryTI0HqTOaaUohrI8PI7rubP63sZTEEql4LpB6iVkxQFBHeRds9Ybpt_P1NbQQ/Screen-Shot-2018-07-17-at-5.35.05-PM-768x731.png https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/58ed5944e6f2e1...

slavik81 6y ago

I saw a figure[1] the other day that blew me away. If you exclude pets and livestock, then human beings comprise ~90% of all mammals (by weight). All wild whales, bears, lions, deer, moose, mice, rabbits, wild horses, camels, beavers, buffalo, elephants, tigers, rhinos, chimpanzees, pandas, goats, etc... are in that remaining 10%. [1]: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/29/17386112/all-life-on-earth-chart-weight-plants-animals-pnas https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/29/17386112/al...

yesenadam 6y ago
A kind of similar xkcd diagram of Earth's Land Mammals by Weight https://xkcd.com/1338/ https://xkcd.com/1338/ - there's hardly any wild animals, comparatively.
- Petrova 6y ago
  I've always wondered why horses are not used as livestock since they can also produce milk and have commercial use as well such plowing fields or transportation.
  - Funes- 6y ago
    Mare milk is consumed and commercialized [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumis.
  - lonelyasacloud 6y ago
    Eating horse meat has a long history and is still part of the culture in many places e.g. Mongolia, France. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_mea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_mea
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throwaway0a5e 6y ago
That's because we've spent several millennia figuring out how to live more and more densely and we do the same with our livestock. If beavers invented a lifestyle that enabled them to live at densities up to thousands per square mile they'd compromise a hell of a lot of biomass too. The fact that there's more humans doesn't imply anything about the other animal population (though I suspect that it's not good for the other animals though).

alangibson 6y ago

Does anyone else > 40 years old remember there just being lots more animals around when you were a kid? I don't know if it's just age blinders or paranoia, but in particular I remember there being way more birds pretty much everywhere.

baron_harkonnen 6y ago
Remember fireflies? I myself almost don't believe that there were insects that would light dark fields in summer, and that children would fill jars with the these creatures because they were so plentiful you could grab a handful of glowing insects! I honestly feel that if I were to have grandchildren they would not believe me describing them or at the very least thing that I was greatly exaggerating. I know they still exist but I haven't seen a yard filled with fireflies in a long time.
- dorchadas 6y ago
  I live in a decently rural area. This summer had a lot, for some reason, but overall I can't remember seeing many in recent summers. Same with earthworms coming out after a rain
  - _whiteCaps_ 6y ago
    I'm assuming you're in North America, many earthworm species there are invasive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthworms_as_invasive_species https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthworms_as_invasive_species
- drzaiusapelord 6y ago
  I live in the middle of Chicago, in the city itself and in a very dense and urban part of it, and we had fireflies all summer. I'm guessing as an adult you're not out much during the hours they're out, or at least not in backyards and alleys where they tend to congregate. They do seem fewer to me, but who knows, I'm comparing my memories to a kid's from decades ago. I wonder if anyone keeps track of this stuff. I did notice less bumblebees this year, in fact I don't think I saw a single one, but that's my own experiences and not anything scientific of course. Miss those chonky little guys.

dangus 6y ago

From the details in the article it seems that the best thing you on an individual level can do to help is stop eating meat.

feralimal 6y ago

Unfortunately, these sorts of claims are impossible to verify. Did they measure like we do? Have the numbers been adjusted? Because everything is politicised, I have low levels of trust in any of these voices that self-purport themselves to be authorities. It seems so far away from my personal, anecdotal experience. It seems clear to me that rural areas are far less populated nowadays - small rural farms the world over, are being run by parents (or now, grandparents!) in their 80's it seems - the younger generation are in cities. From my school class no one has more that 3 children, and most have none. That should bode for a crashing population, but instead we are told it is increasing drastically. So, while cities may feel busy, I tend to think the population is in decline. And that if lots of rural areas are in decline, that animal populations are probably on the increase, only there's no one there to see it.

macspoofing 6y ago

One of the issues of plunging headlong into solar and wind (and bio-fuels) is that those sources require huge land-areas around mining of rare metals, deployment, and finally waste. As our global population and energy needs grow, this problem gets bigger and bigger and therefore place stress on existing, and already stressed, ecosystems. On the other end, nuclear is energy dense, and requires tiny amount of land for energy generation and waste storage. Sooner or later we will be moving back to large scale nuclear deployment because there isn't anything like nuclear power which checks the global warming box and reduced stress on ecosystem box.

jamil7 6y ago
Modern solar panels and their batteries do not require any "rare" metals. A lot of wind turbines use neodymium however it accounts for a very small amount of total usage. Edit: clarified.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >Modern solar panels and their batteries do not require any really "rare" metals. The salient point was that manufacturing millions (billions?) of panels and turbines has a huge toll on the ecosystem - regardless if rare metals are used - and they are used in components of solar panels and wind turbines.
  - jamil7 6y ago
    > The salient point was that manufacturing millions (billions?) of panels and turbines has a huge toll on the ecosystem Everything has an impact on the ecosystem, is your point that nuclear has less of an impact than solar? > and they are used in components of solar panels Which rare metals are used in solar panels?
    - macspoofing 6y ago
      >Everything has an impact on the ecosystem, is your point that nuclear has less of an impact than solar? Yes. That was my point. Much less. The other argument I would make is I'm not seeing any evidence that solar actually solves any problem for us. It can't replace fossil fuels, and in fact needs fossil fuel back-up because there is no battery technology (today or upcoming) that can store enough energy to, say, power a city overnight. The global population continues to grow and with it energy needs. Worse, energy/capita is also growing. This means that as bad as solar is today on the environment, it is only going to get worse.

spodek 6y ago

The Hacker News and geek community is weird. Ask them about reaching Mars or fusion and they say it's inevitable. They're unqualified good results. Suggest we have fewer children for a few generations and consume less and it's absolutely impossible, against human nature. The One Child policy proves it. We idolize people who change the world as entrepreneurs but say one person can't make a difference in changing culture. Yet many cultures have chosen to lower birthrates through peaceful, voluntary means resulting in prosperity and stability. On a personal level, I've lowered my footprint by about 90 percent in a few years according to online calculators and every change improved my life. I figure most westerners could drop 75 - 80 percent with just the low-hanging fruit, improving their lives -- buying less junk, wasting less food, living closer to family, camping instead of visiting Timbuktu. Changing course is a matter of belief and choice far more than technology. While it's not monolithic, this community seems to choose to believe living sustainably is harder than space travel. I'd argue space travel is more attainable when we aren't pushing the Earth's limits to sustain life and human society.

snarf21 6y ago
You aren't wrong but to me you are focusing on the wrong things. As you say, the west is already dropping the birth rate and being more and more focused on sustainability, etc. Eventually, it will get there. Change takes time. The big problem is the 3rd world. People there don't a have a choice. They don't want their family to starve. Women are largely forced into a reproduction role only. But we know that the way to reduce birth rate is to educate women and give them jobs and careers. We know that if we can create stable jobs in the 3rd world, they will stop clear cutting forests. To me, that is where the billionaires should be putting their money. If we raise the global standard of living enough, our high population problems will slowly revert.
- RockIslandLine 6y ago
  "They don't want their family to starve." We know how to stop that. We don't have to sentence people to subsistence agriculture. When you know better, you do better, and we know better. We can farm in ways that build high carbon soils. We can do this even in the 3rd world. Teach people the proper techniques. It's nonsense to claim that we just have to accept this kind of collapse.

wubbert 6y ago

There's really no way of stopping or reversing this without billions of people dying. Since the end of WWII, killing others for the survival of your own kind has become extremely taboo (outside of Israel, that is), so nothing is going to be done until it's way too late.

disown 6y ago
Well the world population is expected to stabilize around 10 billion or so for a long while. So that new normal may also stabilize the wild animal population. The exponential population growth of the past 100 years seems to have stopped so that is one good news.

angel_j 6y ago

The only solution to is to live in harmony with more animals. People think wild animals can't be domesticated, but they are wrong. Living in the wild makes any animal wild, including humans, but raised from birth, generations of animals can learn to cohabit with humans. We could even train the more intelligence animals to assist us. Imagine local monkeys trained to collect trash and recyclables, rewarded with food to bring bottles and cans to a local depository.

merricksb 6y ago

https://archive.md/HpKZu https://archive.md/HpKZu

leahey 6y ago

Is there any reason to believe this may have turned around some in the years since 2016? No, right? I feel stupid even asking.

dominotw 6y ago

I have to 'pick a lane' very soon re: having kids or not. This stuff really weighs on my mind all the time. People with young kids what are your feelings about this?

wow_yes 6y ago
With a world sliding into fascism, with slowly boiling oceans, and rampant inequality it's impossible to justify
- Guy2020 6y ago
  "Fascism," "democracy," what's the difference? There's always an elite class pulling the strings. The world has always been a mess. The only thing that is dying is our illusions. Edit: for those that downvote me, go tell the millions living in violent poverty how magical democracy is. There will always be a show. What matters is who's putting on the show.
  - wow_yes 6y ago
    But those running the show now are open, avowed white supremacists, nationalists, xenophobes. We're in a world very similar to pre-WW2.
    - Guy2020 6y ago
      If that was the case, then why aren't our schools teaching white supremacy and nationalism? Isn't the opposite the case? Also, what's wrong with nationalism? Isn't it better to have nations who are interested in the well being of their people as opposed to a world controlled by globalist corporations? It seems to me like the people have been conditioned against nationalism and towards globalism which favors corporate control.
- overthemoon 6y ago
  The end of the world has always been right around the corner. One of many things that having children represents is hope for the future. Maybe you don't find that compelling or realistic, but I'm not quite ready to throw in the towel on humanity.

throwaway5752 6y ago

Remember how everyone made fun of Al Gore? Manbearpig? Leaving the Paris accord? Remember how they are mocking the Green New Deal? Remember Dominionism, making fun of "soy boys", and everything else? You should remember this when they try to pretend they do everything they could to remove environmental regulations and delay dealing with global warming until it was too late. Also remember a good percentage of them believe in End-Time Theology (ever wonder why Evangelicals care so much about a Jerusalem embassy?) edit: California is burning down just like Australia did earlier. So is Siberia. Pay attention to methane emissions from permafrost and shallow clathrates. This article is a different facet of the same problem. We are beyond the Earth's carrying capacity and it's because the wealthiest wanted to keep getting wealthy and because some religious fanatics believe in the Rapture (including a fair number of the top members of the current US administration).

MisterBastahrd 6y ago
I think the end-time theology thing is understated. There's a significant part of the US population who actually believes that the reason they don't need to be concerned about the environment is because God will rapture them up before the shit hits the fan. This also allows a fringe of that fringe to actively ignore political leaders who don't cater to their specific subset of interests because they "might be the anti-christ." Between Obama + Antichrist and Trump + Antichrist alone there are over 7 million results on google including a ton of kindle books.

eutropia 6y ago

In the same period from 1970 to 2016, human population went from 3.7 billion to 7.4 billion.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

Vertical farming powered by renewable and nuclear, reforest the farm fields.

sul_tasto 6y ago

What would be helpful is a list of specific problems that need to be solved.

justcomments12 6y ago

related: https://geoengineering.environment.harvard.edu/geoengineering https://geoengineering.environment.harvard.edu/geoengineerin...

growlist 6y ago

Yet somehow, magically, there are no environmental impacts from mass migration.

effnorwood 6y ago

It didn’t and it isn’t.

squibbles 6y ago

The wolves eat the deer. The deer population collapses to the point that the food supply for the wolves cannot support the wolves. The wolves starve and the wolf population collapses. Without pressure from the wolves, the deer make a comeback and flourish. The population cycles occur in both large and small ecosystems. The process is slow and steady. Often it seems like the embers of life have gone out. However, something always comes back from the ashes. Humans are just another animal in the food chain.

yogthos 6y ago
Human population collapse is very likely in the near future.
- squibbles 6y ago
  I don't know how near a collapse is, since catastrophes in systems tend to come as a surprise, not a gradual event. I do agree, however, that there is substantial evidence to suggest a collapse in the human population is inevitable.
armandhammer 6y ago
Except no other animal harnesses the power of oil to make machines that can wipe out hundreds of thousands of square km of ecosystems (on land and sea) in a single day.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago

We are past carrying capacity. If we don’t bring down population to 1-3 billion, when the natural trend of depopulation happens, there won’t be enough resources to feed the population on the spoils of a collapsing eco system. When the apex predator gets hungry, everything gets eaten. Not only are we a super apex predator, we are also the most hungry and are outbreeding all other species and devouring eco systems. It will never be enough. We will just eat the planet and perish hungry. And likely vulnerable to all kinds of natural disasters and disease. Better to control population to manageable levels for the future of the species than make way for nature to cull us.

sgt101 6y ago
Are you actually advocating genocide?
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  There are only two reasons not to promote responsible procreation : 1. Religion 2. Creating a labour force. When reproductive rights are restored back to women and automation/AI takes over most of the mundane tasks, humanity can live to the best of its ability. We also need anti ageing therapies so we can all live long and healthy as well as ways to preserve and manipulate genetic material so that subsequent generations have the best future in every possible way. All while restoring our eco system and bringing our planet back to equilibrium. Does this sound like genocide to you? If we had longer life spans and can live healthy lives without the ravages of ageing, how many of us would want to procreate in a hurry so we remain immortal through our genes? I don’t see responsible procreation and advanced bio therapies as something negative. I think it’s the next level of our evolution.
lilactown 6y ago
We are not beyond carrying capacity. We have enough food and other resources to clothe, house and feed everyone in the world and forever if we could organize ourselves. Capitalism has failed us in doing so. We need a new way of organizing. The Malthusian idea of "there are too many people" leads us to only one logical conclusion: eugenics, genocide. Don't fall into that trap. The basis is provably not true.