5 ms·

Over 10k species risk extinction in Amazon, says landmark report

55 points by uptown 5y ago

MattGaiser 5y ago
I am pretty sure that the only way to halt deforestation and overfishing is to use technology to produce such vast abundance with current resources that those using damaging practices are driven out of the market. There just isn't political will for anything else. People will mock the "yet another startup" attitude in this, but is anything successfully moving the needle except products that outcompete worse products (Tesla vs internal combustion)?
- whatshisface 5y ago
  I think where you'll run into trouble is approaching the problem of inventing a new building material/foodsource from the 100,000-foot level of abstraction that is "use technology."
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    I was more thinking of applying Walmart/Amazon's mindless obsession with optimization to production to price out everyone else. This had more to do with fish, but one of the documentaries I watched had these small scale fishers fishing with dynamite. I want to get to the point where fish farms are so efficient that the fisher can't get back his gas money.
    - whatshisface 5y ago
      If the plan is to apply "optimization" to fish farming, that's not a lot more specific than applying "technology" to fish farming.
- mikepurvis 5y ago
  This has long been Michael Shellenberger's viewpoint— basically that conventional "green" advocacy/politics is mostly about erecting arbitrary barriers and preventing people from doing or having the things they want. Which is all well and good when it's a rich country setting aside slivers of land as national parks for the common good, but it's pretty unfair when it's rich nations telling the BRIC what they can and can't do with the same kinds of natural resources that the now-rich countries happily strip mined from themselves and have plundered from elsewhere for the past century or longer. Anyway, I don't agree with all of it (particularly his total dismissal of wind and solar), but a lot does ring true, especially when basically the end conclusion is that the route to saving the planet is to get everyone as rich as possible as fast as possible, because that's how to get them to care. And the route to that is cheap energy, and that means nuclear— not vapourware tomorrow-nuclear (thorium, fusion, whatever), but today's nuclear technology, en masse. He's given a few TED Talks on this, worth a listen.
  - blooalien 5y ago
    > … "but today's nuclear technology, en masse." Folks who say nuclear shouldn't be part of the solution should really research "today's nuclear" technology. It's considerably superior to yo' grandaddy's nuclear which represents a majority of the existing nuclear plants that people are so worried about. If nothing else, it's a fantastic stepping stone to future potentially "better" options.
- sjtindell 5y ago
  The problem of political will seems to me to be one of money. Many if not most governments are already funded substantially via debt. The massive outlays required to make a real difference will be nigh on impossible to obtain unless the average voter starts to see tangible, daily consequences. And then the economic consequences of so much money creation would be hard to manage. Ironically, the system itself is threatened by collapse, so trying to operate within the system to get the problem solved seems like folly...if you could get everyone to agree, perhaps we could simply wipe the "debt" away somehow. Find some other way to "pay for it". But our financial constructs are so fundamental to daily life, it's hard to imagine what that would look like.
  - aaron-santos 5y ago
    > But our financial constructs are so fundamental to daily life, it's hard to imagine what that would look like. We have politicians asking if we can change the orbit of the moon because changing the system which is creating these problems somehow seems more impossible. I cannot fathom how a system created by humans cannot be changed by humans, but here we are.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  The problem is that if you can produce this vast abundance in the US, you might be able to produce it cheaper by moving your operation to a previously undeveloped part of the Amazon rainforest - where land values are and taxes are lower. And the market always demands more growth. No level of efficiency will ever be "enough".
ProAm 5y ago
This could really be either Amazon
aboringusername 5y ago
It's been pretty obvious for a long time there's an overabundance of humans on earth that is simply unsustainable in the long term. WW1 and WW2 along with the Spanish Flu and others relieved the earth of hundreds of millions of humans. Covid didn't have much of the same affect as we exerted our dominance over nature - there's absolutely nothing that can eradicate the plague of humans we have today (aside from other humans, it seems) So something's got to give, and whether for good or worse earth is for humans by humans, unless we cull our population significantly that's an uncomfortable but true reality. I'll be surprised if in a decade or two the "Amazon" will be a thing.

55 points by uptown 5y ago

I am pretty sure that the only way to halt deforestation and overfishing is to use technology to produce such vast abundance with current resources that those using damaging practices are driven out of the market. There just isn't political will for anything else. People will mock the "yet another startup" attitude in this, but is anything successfully moving the needle except products that outcompete worse products (Tesla vs internal combustion)?

whatshisface 5y ago
I think where you'll run into trouble is approaching the problem of inventing a new building material/foodsource from the 100,000-foot level of abstraction that is "use technology."
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  I was more thinking of applying Walmart/Amazon's mindless obsession with optimization to production to price out everyone else. This had more to do with fish, but one of the documentaries I watched had these small scale fishers fishing with dynamite. I want to get to the point where fish farms are so efficient that the fisher can't get back his gas money.
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    If the plan is to apply "optimization" to fish farming, that's not a lot more specific than applying "technology" to fish farming.
mikepurvis 5y ago
This has long been Michael Shellenberger's viewpoint— basically that conventional "green" advocacy/politics is mostly about erecting arbitrary barriers and preventing people from doing or having the things they want. Which is all well and good when it's a rich country setting aside slivers of land as national parks for the common good, but it's pretty unfair when it's rich nations telling the BRIC what they can and can't do with the same kinds of natural resources that the now-rich countries happily strip mined from themselves and have plundered from elsewhere for the past century or longer. Anyway, I don't agree with all of it (particularly his total dismissal of wind and solar), but a lot does ring true, especially when basically the end conclusion is that the route to saving the planet is to get everyone as rich as possible as fast as possible, because that's how to get them to care. And the route to that is cheap energy, and that means nuclear— not vapourware tomorrow-nuclear (thorium, fusion, whatever), but today's nuclear technology, en masse. He's given a few TED Talks on this, worth a listen.
- blooalien 5y ago
  > … "but today's nuclear technology, en masse." Folks who say nuclear shouldn't be part of the solution should really research "today's nuclear" technology. It's considerably superior to yo' grandaddy's nuclear which represents a majority of the existing nuclear plants that people are so worried about. If nothing else, it's a fantastic stepping stone to future potentially "better" options.
sjtindell 5y ago
The problem of political will seems to me to be one of money. Many if not most governments are already funded substantially via debt. The massive outlays required to make a real difference will be nigh on impossible to obtain unless the average voter starts to see tangible, daily consequences. And then the economic consequences of so much money creation would be hard to manage. Ironically, the system itself is threatened by collapse, so trying to operate within the system to get the problem solved seems like folly...if you could get everyone to agree, perhaps we could simply wipe the "debt" away somehow. Find some other way to "pay for it". But our financial constructs are so fundamental to daily life, it's hard to imagine what that would look like.
- aaron-santos 5y ago
  > But our financial constructs are so fundamental to daily life, it's hard to imagine what that would look like. We have politicians asking if we can change the orbit of the moon because changing the system which is creating these problems somehow seems more impossible. I cannot fathom how a system created by humans cannot be changed by humans, but here we are.
AlexandrB 5y ago
The problem is that if you can produce this vast abundance in the US, you might be able to produce it cheaper by moving your operation to a previously undeveloped part of the Amazon rainforest - where land values are and taxes are lower. And the market always demands more growth. No level of efficiency will ever be "enough".

ProAm 5y ago

This could really be either Amazon

aboringusername 5y ago

It's been pretty obvious for a long time there's an overabundance of humans on earth that is simply unsustainable in the long term. WW1 and WW2 along with the Spanish Flu and others relieved the earth of hundreds of millions of humans. Covid didn't have much of the same affect as we exerted our dominance over nature - there's absolutely nothing that can eradicate the plague of humans we have today (aside from other humans, it seems) So something's got to give, and whether for good or worse earth is for humans by humans, unless we cull our population significantly that's an uncomfortable but true reality. I'll be surprised if in a decade or two the "Amazon" will be a thing.