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Rather than motivating environmental conservation out of some species-level nostalgia for "the biodiversity of our youth", there's another, forward-looking moti
by derefr 4y ago
Rather than motivating environmental conservation out of some species-level nostalgia for "the biodiversity of our youth", there's another, forward-looking motivation for it: the species that evolved at the same time we did — our "evolutionary cohort" — are the species of our own Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness. While they may not share our ecological niche, they all share a dependency on the same air mix we do, the same temperature ranges, the same water osmolarity and pH, etc.
This implies two things:
- Insofar as we want to keep the Earth a good place for us to live, we can measure our success by the number of our evolutionary cohort of species that stick around;
- Insofar as we plan to live in space, terraform other worlds, etc., it's only animals of our evolutionary cohort that will be able to comfortably survive in the places we optimize for our own well-being. If we increase global CO2 levels here on Earth to such a point that species on Earth that like our current air mix begin dying off, and we see an evolution of replacement species that prefer higher CO2 levels (and we ourselves retreat to dome cities or something to avoid that fate); but then we later terraform Mars to have the environment of Earth ca 5000BCE; then the species that inhabit Earth by that point, won't be able to be transplanted to Mars. Only the species we had conserved — keeping them in the dome-cities with us — would be able to be transplanted.
(Another way to say that second one, is that if we screw up the Earth's environment, but later fix it, we'll lose biodiversity twice — we'll have killed off our evolutionary cohort with the screw-up, and we'll kill off the newer-evolved species with our "fix.")
- RangerScience 4y ago> evolutionary cohort This is a very cool idea; I haven't heard of it before, and I'm not finding much on this concept on the 'web. Anything you can point me to? :)
- maxerickson 4y agoLarge land animals only really survive in Africa, where they evolved alongside early hominids. Everywhere else they got slaughtered.
- CyberDildonics 4y agoWhat about elephants, grizzly bears and polar bears?
- dredmorbius 4y agoWrong end of the viewscope. You're considering what's survived. Those are largely exceptions. What's gone extinct: Virtually all of South America's marsupial megafauna (much of this prior to the arrival of humans, triggered by the rising of the central American ithsmus), mammoths, mastodons, native horses (the species was reintroduced by Europeans), giant ground sloth (Megalonyx), short-faced bears, saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, tapirs, peccaries, giant tortoises, the American lion, Miracinonyx (the American cheetah), siaga antelope, several species of llamas, Camelops (a giant camel), and more, all in North America alone. Very nearly the American bison ("buffalo") and California condor, amongst others. In Europe there were also several species of mammoth and mastodons, native straight-tusked elephants, lions, cave bear, Irish elk, woolly rhinocerous, aurochs, and more. Australia saw two phases of human-driven extinctions, one triggered by the aboriginies roughly 50kya, the second by Europeans, beginning about 250 years ago. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_megafauna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_megafauna> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_animals_extinct_in_the_Holocene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_animals...> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_megafauna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_megafauna>
- CyberDildonics 4y agoYou're considering what's survived. It was about what has survived Large land animals only really survive in Africa
- dredmorbius 4y agoFirst, that's an informal statement made in an online discussion forum, rather than a tightly-worded scientific assessment. However it might be charitably interpreted along the lines of "of the prehuman megafauna extant on the multiple continents, the greatest degree of survival to the present day is found in Africa, where those species co-evolved with humans rather than experiencing humans as a suddenly-appearing invasive species". Which is what the sources I'm familiar with generally suggest. Though not a primary source, Wikipedia reasonably summarises the situation: Sub-Saharan Africa is the region of the world with the highest amount of Pleistocene megafauna surviving to the present day. These surviving species include the African bush elephant, African forest elephant, black rhinoceros, white rhinoceros and the hippopotamus. All of these species maintained populations in sub-Saharan Africa even after many of them were extirpated from Eurasia during the early Holocene.[58] This means that all of the largest herbivore genera present in Pleistocene Africa are still present today. Citing: Stuart, Anthony John (May 2015). "Late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions on the continents: a short review: LATE QUATERNARY MEGAFAUNAL EXTINCTIONS". Geological Journal. 50 (3): 338–363. doi:10.1002/gj.2633. S2CID 128868400 Stuart, Anthony J. (1991). "Mammalian Extinctions in the Late Pleistocene of Northern Eurasia and North America". Biological Reviews. 66 (4): 453–562. doi:10.1111/j.1469-185X.1991.tb01149.x. ISSN 1469-185X. PMID 1801948. S2CID 41295526 Which would strongly support the original statement by maxerickson above.
- Ma8ee 4y agoThe time scale for new species adapted to a completely new climate is many millions of years, not a few thousands. What we destroy today won’t be replaced while humans as a species as we know it today even exists. It will always be many orders of magnitude easier to terraform Earth, even after we screwed it up, than trying to terraform Mars.
- ke88y 4y ago> It will always be many orders of magnitude easier to terraform Earth, even after we screwed it up, than trying to terraform Mars. It's many orders of magnitude easier to afford a $100,000,000 home if you make $10,000 per year than if you only make $1 per year. But you're never going to afford that home either way.
- replygirl 4y agoWe reversed the Chicago River 120 years ago, protected the Netherlands from flooding for centuries, blasted out the bed of the East River to make New York one of the most successful ports in history, laid at least one canal through every major ithsmus, and built dozens of reservoirs and irrigation systems into every hydrological ecosystem that touches a major population center. That's just water projects.
- gus_massa 4y ago> We reversed the Chicago River 120 years ago I had never heard that. More info https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_River https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_River
- ke88y 4y agoNone of these are even remotely close to terraforming.
- ask_b123 4y agoWhat is an isthmus? Do the Pyrenees count as one? Tehuantepec?
- 4y ago
- tomrod 4y ago> Only the species we had conserved — keeping them in the dome-cities with us — would be able to be transplanted. And thus Toxoplasma gondii, from our ever present felines, gains awareness and rules the universe as a hivemind protozoa. I see some potential for a movie deal here.
- dr_dshiv 4y agoDon’t forget all the thousands of species we’ve created ourself through agriculture! (Artificial selection) That is another important source of aligned biodiversity
- lproven 4y agoNone. Zero. We've created varieties, variants, races... no species. They can still interbreed.
- dr_dshiv 4y ago“more new plant species in Europe have appeared than are documented to have gone extinct over the last three centuries” https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2016.0600 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2016.060... From the Review article “How humans drive speciation as well as extinction”
- bheadmaster 4y agoThis is one of the best rational arguments of environmentalism that I've heard. I wish more environmentalists used this kind of rigor in their arguments, instead of relying on emotional talk and guilt tripping. The very reason we care about the ecosystem in the first place is because we depend on it. That's the most important point - environmentalism is first and foremost about our own survival. Nobody gives a shit about plants and animals for their sake.
- daveslash 4y agoSome people do, but I definitely see your point.
- bheadmaster 4y agoYeah... I guess they do. I could've done without the last sentence.