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Animals Are Dying in Droves. What Are They Telling Us?
- darkwraithcov 3y agoThere’s a mass extinction happening and no one seems to care. We may see a complete collapse of the ecosystem in the next 30 years.
- jebarker 3y agoI think lots of people care but nobody knows what to do.
- timthelion 3y agoI think that if everyone gave up air travel, individual automobile transport, and meat and dairy and lived in a max 110m2 apartment you could say that. But it seems that there are a lot of people who simply don't care.
- camel-cdr 3y agoI wonder why people down vote this Edit: it looks like the ratio has shifted now
- jebarker 3y ago"a lot of people who simply don't care" is not the same as "no one seems to care". Furthermore, the challenge isn't in figuring out the individual changes you list it's figuring out how to convince everyone to adopt them.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bee_rider 3y agoI already live in a tiny apartment and take the bus to work, so clearly my individual contribution didn’t fix the problem. I don’t know how to make everyone do that, so, I still don’t know what to do.
- myshpa 3y agoBe the change you wish to see in the world. - somebody
- timthelion 3y agoI am actually in the same boat. I have limited myself to the things I list, yet the problem is still there. And The human population doubles every 50 or so years even after I had a vasectomy [1], and yet my emissions aren't going to cut in two in that time. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth
- dmbche 3y agoYeah - individual changes will never change anything - I think the discussion has been poisonned, and we are blind to the actual solutions, which all seem unthinkable even though they are self evident
- gs17 3y ago> Yeah - individual changes will never change anything - I think the discussion has been poisonned The idea that individuals have no responsibility or power is part of how it has been poisoned. I've known people who genuinely would say something like "did you know a half dozen companies put out the majority of emissions? so we don't need to consume less or differently, everything is those companies' fault".
- bluefirebrand 3y agoI would rather humanity have a bloody war that wipes out 90% of us than live the miserable life you have described. My life does not fit within walking distance of a 110m2 box.
- bee_rider 3y agoYou would rather accept a 90% chance of death for yourself and everyone you love, than live in a small apartment?
- gs17 3y agoNot even a small apartment, I share a ~110 sq m apartment now (with a sizable chunk wasted for stairs) and it's more than enough.
- truckerbill 3y agoStop and think about that for just a second... (As an aside, it seems a lot of people unwittingly are making this choice which I find both curious and very depressing)
- freilanzer 3y ago[flagged]
- timthelion 3y agoThat's weird. I grew up in a big house and my parents had plenty of cars, meat and travel, but I wasn't particularly happy. I'm happier now in my small apartment. I don't really understand how a big house will make you happy. Really, doing electronics is more fun in a hacker space than at home, and you can always go to a park.
- bluefirebrand 3y agoThat's nice that a very spartan lifestyle is good for you. The house doesn't make me happy. Not hearing my neighbors music blasting through the floor at 2am makes me happy. Not hearing my neighbors screaming at each other every day makes me happy Being able to paint my walls any color I want makes me happy. Having a plot of land I can dig up and plant stuff on or build a workshop on makes me happy. Having a place that is my own that I can do basically anything I want with makes me happy. Renting apartments is shit. Even condos, which you own on paper but cannot just do whatever you like with, sucks. Hacker spaces don't exist everywhere by the way, and the ones I have been to sucked.
- rektide 3y agoPeter Singer's Famine Affluence & Morality (1972) argued similarly, that we allow human suffering & don't do anything, even though we could. And he said that makes us provably evil. Recent submission, a video on Singer's paper: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35718342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35718342 https://youtu.be/KVl5kMXz1vA https://youtu.be/KVl5kMXz1vA
- 0xffff2 3y agoJust so we're clear, realistically "everyone gave up air travel" means the government shutting down airlines, not people voluntarily not buying plane tickets. I would vote in favor of massively limiting airline travel across the board, but until that happens I'm not going to make my life worse for absolutely no benefit.
- User23 3y agoThere are essentially three not entirely disjoint options. 1) Sacrifice yourself for the good of the whole. 2) Take advantage of those who sacrifice themselves for the good of the whole. 3) Nobody sacrifices and it's thunderdome time and the losers starve.
- surgical_fire 3y ago[flagged]
- gs17 3y agoA lot of people care but can't make a huge impact. A few people could make a huge impact but don't care (or worse, want to worsen things for short-term profits).
- moffkalast 3y ago30 years? Somebody is optimistic. I give it 20 years tops, given the state of the oceans.
- darkwraithcov 3y agoI was trying to be conservative, but given the rate of coral bleaching and mass die offs happening on the world's coral reefs, I'm afraid you might be right.
- pwgentleman 3y agoThe battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate...
- freilanzer 3y agoThe 1970s are long gone.
- pmarreck 3y agoWe need to determine the cause of these ASAP
- moffkalast 3y agoHumanity: destroys environment in which animal lives Animal: goes extinct Humanity: Why would nature do this!?
- shrimp_emoji 3y agohttps://youtu.be/75_nisowGX8?t=145 https://youtu.be/75_nisowGX8?t=145
- pmarreck 3y agoI never heard of this guy until now, insightful!
- myshpa 3y agoOne of the leading reasons why we're in such deep mess are our systems of food production, esp. animal agriculture (75% of agriculture lands, uses more land than forests) & fishing. - The majority of deforestation (particularly in the Amazon), is driven by livestock farming. By reducing demand for animal products, we could slow or even reverse the trend of habitat destruction, thus preserving biodiversity. - Growing plants to feed animals and then consuming those animals is an inefficient way of obtaining calories and nutrients. Shifting to a plant-based diet would allow us to feed more people with less land, reducing the pressure on wild habitats. - Animal agriculture is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. - Overfishing is a major threat to marine biodiversity. By reducing our consumption of fish, we can help protect marine ecosystems. - Animal agriculture is also a significant source of pollution, including runoff from farms that can create dead zones in oceans and rivers, harming aquatic species. - Intensive animal farming can create conditions ripe for the emergence of new diseases (zoonotic diseases), some of which could potentially leap to humans and cause pandemics, as well as decimate animal populations.
- renewiltord 3y agoThe real difference will be made by abolishing Europe's cities and returning that entire continent to Nature. All the forests and animals should be restored and the cities razed. Extant emissions from the people there dwarf the Amazon's deforestation so it's a much better fix.
- PeterisP 3y agoEurope has been and still is re-foresting, it's much more forested than 100 or 300 years ago, and in the last 30 years there has been a 9% increase in forested areas (https://resoilfoundation.org/en/environment/eu-forests-growth/ https://resoilfoundation.org/en/environment/eu-forests-growt...)
- renewiltord 3y agoIn Roman times, Germany had 70% forest cover. Conveniently chosen timelines of the last 100 years after half of all forest cover was razed are all very nice but ultimately, the Earth pays the price. What the Germans did then, the Brazilians do a fraction of now. 40% forest cover lost. And now, Germany has almost no primary forest. And Germans burn oil and coal and gas like no other. The net effect of Germany on the Climate is the effect of an Environmental WMD.
- DueDilligence 3y ago[dead]
- deanmoriarty 3y agoI am doing my part by deciding not to have kids: imagine the incredible amount of resources I just saved with my decision. Thousands of chickens, dozens of cows, pounds and pounds of fertilizers, etc. All this without causing any pain or suffering.
- gabereiser 3y agoThis is the kind of forward thinking we need. The issue is explained, in great detail, what happens in the future in the documentary called “Idiocracy” by the prophet Mike Judge.
- deanmoriarty 3y agoI do respect your opinion, but having kids just because "less smart" people would be having kids anyway is, in my humble opinion, the perfect example of a tragedy of the commons situation, where the resource at play is our scarce planet.
- gabereiser 3y agoNot my opinion, it’s exactly what will happen. Unless the whole world decides to do birth control, which isn’t likely seeing that half the USA just made abortion illegal. They’re making it happen right now.
- fsflover 3y agoAlternatively, you spend your life helping and teaching other children, which could even result in better outcomes than only caring about your own ones.
- gabereiser 3y agoThis is the only way out of this, education. Teaching. Educating. Passing that along to the next generation. Genetics plays a role, yes, but collective intelligence can and will grow.
- 3y ago
- erulabs 3y agoAt least in the case of the 200,000 Saiga Antelope, the cause appears to be bacteria/environment related: > We ... thus concluded that P. multocida serotype B was the primary cause of the disease. [1] > P. multocida is a ubiquitous organism, most probably widely present in the saiga antelope population in its latent form. The potential pathogenicity is inherent in the organism and can be triggered opportunistically at any time in response to environmental triggers. [1] I used to think "environment changes" -> "animal populations must adapt, not always successfully". But what seems to be killing entire populations at a time is not mal-adaptation to environment per-say, but an otherwise dormant life-form that we live with every day, suddenly waking up and deciding its time to change the world. It's not that 3C increase might make the globe too warm to be a comfortable place to life. It's that 3C increase might wake up an incredible evil that has been sleeping for a quarter million years. Evolution is a long-con - some of the billions of strains of dormant, boring, inactive bacterium we've yet to study may actually be the most sophisticated weapons the world has ever developed - just waiting for the right time to deploy themselves. We know there have been mass extinctions we've yet to understand, and we know most of them happened when the world was considerably warmer than it is today. [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6537709/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6537709/
- toiletfuneral 3y ago[dead]
- throwaway1777 3y agoDoes anyone have a realistic comment that isn’t some Malthusian doomerism? There must be a solution to this problem besides drastically curtailing people’s lifestyle, even if it involves technologies that aren’t quite here yet like genetic engineering, space travel and fusion power.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dmbche 3y agoNot really - you come with the presupposition that our way of life is right and should supersede nature - that's nit how that works. We're supposed to adapt to earth, not the other way around (big surprise, humans are not able to control the environnement - you can look at how fisheries are organised for a look at where we are going - claiming sustainability while fish stocks are plumetting
- Iwan-Zotow 3y agowhat is the solution to the dying biosphere? Kill all humans would be one, I guess
- ethanbond 3y agoWhy "must" there be a solution like that? It's wild how when it comes to the biggest problems, people will say "let's not be so emotional about this" and then produce suggestions borne exclusively of their emotional coping mechanism.
- jimbob45 3y agoBecause we'll see government propaganda encouraging us to carpool or meet remotely to reduce emissions. And then we'll see this shit[0], which dwarfs whatever contribution we could have made by carpooling and it becomes rapidly clear that our individual contributions do nothing. Also, 2020 should have been a huge reversal of emissions fortune with the low amount of travel and recreation. If 2020 didn't make a dent in climate change, then you're never going to convince me that individual contributions can accomplish anything. [0]https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/ghost-flights-pandemic-greenpeace-cmd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/ghost-flights-pandemic-gr...
- User23 3y agoWhat's the baseline though? My understanding is that wild animals have always died in droves, which is why the make a ton of offspring reproductive strategy is so popular. That's not to downplay the impact of habitat loss and other factors, but if say for example 40% of bird randomly get themselves killed every year then the marginal increase in deaths from wind power looks very different than if they don't.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoI also wonder how much of this is due to better measurement and tracking and is an actual aberration. I fundamentally believe it is an aberration but improved measurement has to account for some degree of the effect.
- hn_throawlles 3y agoWhat Are They Telling Us? "you are next" !?
- Iwan-Zotow 3y agoThey are telling "Fokk you, humans"
- mistrial9 3y agomultiple unrelated and extreme statements in response here, are telling of the psychological overwhelm individuals feel when seeing this news. There are several angles to respond to, but lets try this one This is not an individual choice problem, so neither people who live in tiny apartments and don't drive NOR people who compete relentlessly to have and use more than others, are the topic. Science of measurement and analysis has advanced faster in the last thirty years than the 300,000 years before it. Yet, we have quite a lot of science on say, body burden "forever" chemicals, the accumulative destruction of pesticides or the dust of tires from highways. The economic engines associated with making consumer products are not relenting their favorable economic niches. So this is a political problem. The kind of "stall and crawl" solutions produce some short-term stability, but obviously, it is not making a significant dent. Secondly, frenzied all-out protest and disruption rarely make positive change over time in themselves, so "complete teardown" kinds of solutions are also not the thing. Media mechanisms are part of political change, but this YNews place (high tech with ads) seems like it has over-stimulated media, and filled it with short-sighted content. The training wheels for the species are offically "Off" now.
- _8j50 3y agoMaybe there should be a government mandate like a mandatory military service but where you instead go farm stuff and hunt food for a year. I say that partly in jest but I'd imagine having that perspective would change a lot of minds and help us understand where our food comes from.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoDon’t really need to comment on this, just dropping it here to call it out and highlight what makes it difficult to read journalism: “700 million tons of dead tissue (a mass equivalent to one million Christ the Redeemer statues).”
- dennis_jeeves1 3y agoIn the spirit of 'science' here is a potential experiment that can be conducted to resolve the debt: 1)Individual 1 is a vegan. he is given 10 acres of land, He is free to grow whatever he wants and eat. The restriction here is he cannot raise any animals whatsoever including insects for food. 2) Individual 2 is a animal products eater, is also is given 10 acres of land, he can raise whatever he wants: pigs, chickens, cows etc. The restriction here is he cannot any eat any vegetation directly. He can eat only meat, eggs, milk etc. Conditions: Both these individuals should be independent, that is there should be no external resources provided to them. For example the person who raises cows, should not be provided with hay. Or the vegan should not be provided with pesticides. Assume that both these farmers have identical resources otherwise: same type of land, access to the same amount of water etc. Questions: 1) Who among the 2 do you think will will be more healthy? 2) Who among the 2 do you think will be more destructive to the environment?
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoI think the answer to both is the carnivore. If it were 100 farmers and 10000 acres, the it would be 1) vegan 2) carnivore. This is because you need more diversity to be healthily vegan than you do to be healthily carnivore. Carnivore is more damaging in both cases because however your slice it, you're going to have to dedicate more overall land to farming if you're eating animals, and that's a greater footgun probability re: eliminating a keystone species and disrupting your food supply. If you repeated this experiment until you had no more room on the planet, then I think the carnivores would go extinct because of problems either re: the soil chemistry or re: the pollinators. The vegans would survive because so much less of the overall space would be dedicated to farmland.
- dennis_jeeves1 3y ago>The vegans would survive because so much less of the overall space would be dedicated to farmland. Are you really sure about the "overall space" part? I mean have you really examined it? Do you have direct experience, as in having lived in a farmland, Or have you talked to a farmer? Or have you closely listen to accounts of farmers on videos or essays?