They track 16,704 populations of 4,005 vertebrate species, the LPI finds that global populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians have declined, on average, by 60 percent between 1970 and 2014, the most recent year with available data.
Human activity has impacted the habitats and natural resources wildlife and humanity depend on, such as oceans, forests, coral reefs, wetlands and mangroves. The Earth is estimated to have lost about half of its shallow water corals in the past 30 years and 20 percent of the Amazon has disappeared in just 50 years.
The World Wildlife Living Planet Report 2018 is a 75 page report.
The key drivers of biodiversity decline remain overexploitation and agriculture. Indeed, of all the plant, amphibian, reptile, bird and mammal species that have gone extinct since AD 1500, 75% were harmed by overexploitation or agricultural activity or both.
Human population and wealth has increased and will continue to increase
Human population is at 7.6 billion and will increase to 10 billion by 2050 and about 12 billion by 2100. Human wealth and GDP is also increasing.
The realistic scenario is for a shift from fossil fuel energy to occur over about 50+ years and for a shift to ocean farming using about 10 to 20% of the ocean. Shifting to a lot of greenhouses can also reduce land usage and increase water efficiency by 10 to 20 times.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
Yep. World is goa be about as wild as England in a hundred years or less.People.Dogs.Cats.Chickens.Cows.Pigs.Rough fish.Maybe some Squirrels.
So… GLOBAL WARMING?Nah, if anything, global warming has been so minor and iocuous that habitats might have nominally increased in range. Higher elevations are said to be more clement (dâhmn the glaciologists, full speed ahead) and all that. So… DEMOGRAPHICS?Actually, yes. More people ≡ more pressure on land-for-food and forests-for-cutting. And that spells death to almost all forest and margin species. So… INDUSTRIAL WASTE?Of course yes — especially for the waterways. America’s EPA. This agency, tho’ aoying sometimes to an extreme, actually is one of the poster-children for what responsible government CAN do to “administer the natural wealth” of a nation. The squashed obvious black smokestack emissions, not-so-obvious transparent SO₂ sulfur dioxide “acid rain” causing emissions; they’re the vanguard watching ozone emissions, nitric oxides, unburned hydrocarbons (“VOC’s”). They’ve got strict regulations and decent field enforcement for agricultural run-off, for power plant fly-ash waste processing, for all sorts of remediation of nasty-if-it-gets-into-the-waterways stuff. So… DOMESTIC WASTE?Not so much, in Europe and America and basically all the “First World” countries of the Planet. Domestic waste — while huge — is largely a “handled” commodity. Urban ore. Remarkably recyclable, and when not, usually fairly easy to sequester or pyrolyze. So… What then is the solution?Well “Obvious Man” (WITHOUT a conscience) has simple answers, none of which are tenable. Big War works. Not very effectively historically, but somewhat so. One-child-per-couple works. Slow, but sure, and remarkably egalitarian in the end. Untreated pandemics work. Quite effective historically. As I said, WITHOUT a conscience, Mr. Obvious is.But WITH a conscience? Literally — even though many of you will “know the Goat” as endlessly debating the Loony Libs and Tree Huggers on the Left, — even though that’s my normal position, IN THIS CASE, I do not think that’s the right plan. The right plan, WITH a conscience is for all the people of the world, not just the First Worlders, to rapidly rise up to living within our collective means. To live “cleanly”; to fight the inevitable, dark, persistent forces of wanton environmental over-use. To accept the organic-food principles: the store’s vegetables don’t need to look flawlessly perfect. Just good. And you don’t need to buy strawberries out of season. No growing these dâhmned things in countries with 4 zeros in their distance away. (i.e. 10,000 km or more!!!)This goes for all of what we consume. Every bit of it. Public transportation — if it can be shown to actually mitigate the problems of private vehicular use. Living small: NOT mentally investing in the new, New, NEW! throw-away mindset. BUT … also understand that it can NOT be imposed externally on the 3rd word. Just saying,GoatGuy
Short of forced migration of most of the human population to space and using small populations of people to keep up the genetic ability to survive on Earth, I am not sure if there is or ever will be a solution. I highly doubt we will build space stations for the express purpose of saving endangered species. We really are the sixth extinction event.
big headline, a bit short on evidence.
Living Planet Index (LPI) is a notoriously crude count of biodiversity and animal count, especially because where the most diversity exists is where the least amount of counting is done (e.g., tropical rainforest). Take birds, for example, LPI’s biggest category. LPI counts about 1,415 bird species in hundreds of locations around the world (mostly in places where you can count….), out of about 3,700 species counted in total. Total bird species on Earth is estimated to be over 12 million and a population of 200-400 billion individuals (yeah, billion). So LPI extrapolates and estimates. The margin or error, therefore, is substantial (for birds the 95% confidence interval is /- 40% off the mean). No one really has a clue.The other problem is fish. Fish populations are down, as anyone knows, and the FAO does I think a pretty good job at keeping track of this. Because fish are the only animals in the LPI we eat for food, in a way you need to back it out (LPI doesn’t count animals raised for food). Then the picture looks very different. A relatively plateauing. Even with fish, the total population count in the northern hemisphere is INCREASING (though be warned, huge margin of error).Then there are the requisite specific examples of species decline, like Indian crocs. For sure, they are almost extinct. But humpback whales are more than than 100 years ago. Of course there are endangered species and bulldozing thousands of acres of rainforest will endanger or eliminate many of them. But to flat out decree that 60% of all animals on Earth have been wiped out in the last 40 years is really irresponsible. And fake news.
Hmm, strangely, my comment passed the test..
Looks like Vuukle. A couple other commenters also have this.test: connection cannot pennies
There seems to be a bug in one of your scripts that turns double n to a newline (or is that Vuukle’s fault?)
Hmm, strangely, my comment passed the test..
Looks like Vuukle. A couple other commenters also have this.
test: connection cannot pennies
There seems to be a bug in one of your scripts that turns double n to a newline (or is that Vuukle’s fault?)
Living Planet Index (LPI) is a notoriously crude count of biodiversity and animal count, especially because where the most diversity exists is where the least amount of counting is done (e.g., tropical rainforest). Take birds, for example, LPI’s biggest category. LPI counts about 1,415 bird species in hundreds of locations around the world (mostly in places where you can count….), out of about 3,700 species counted in total. Total bird species on Earth is estimated to be over 12 million and a population of 200-400 billion individuals (yeah, billion). So LPI extrapolates and estimates. The margin or error, therefore, is substantial (for birds the 95% confidence interval is /- 40% off the mean). No one really has a clue.The other problem is fish. Fish populations are down, as anyone knows, and the FAO does I think a pretty good job at keeping track of this. Because fish are the only animals in the LPI we eat for food, in a way you need to back it out (LPI doesn’t count animals raised for food). Then the picture looks very different. A relatively plateauing. Even with fish, the total population count in the northern hemisphere is INCREASING (though be warned, huge margin of error).Then there are the requisite specific examples of species decline, like Indian crocs. For sure, they are almost extinct. But humpback whales are more than than 100 years ago. Of course there are endangered species and bulldozing thousands of acres of rainforest will endanger or eliminate many of them. But to flat out decree that 60% of all animals on Earth have been wiped out in the last 40 years is really irresponsible. And fake news.
As a child I would catch 2nd year summer flounder 5 an hour in the Barnegat Bay (intercoastal waterway). That same water doesn’t support them at all any longer, nor ‘weakfish’ AKA ‘seatrout’. I recall a large fish kill, perhaps 1989, and a large increase in the blue crab population in the years following that has remained quite elevated. Meanwhile, the dye plant closed years ago. They just closed the nuke plant, Oyster Creek. I think the major sources of pollution would be Urban runoff and sewage treatment runoff, but this is New Jersey and it’s not combined sewer so that is treated effluent. Maybe all of the personal watercraft traffic is silting up the water and that is affecting the fish populations? It used to be a nursery but now it’s just a crab pot. True about catching a lot of older fish – codfish, sturgeon, etc. Long lived definitely. We ate all the fish that make a million eggs at a time.
Some great thoughts there Brett.I’ll point out that the quaddies in “Falling Free” were genetically engineered for freefall, and then abandoned once artifical gravity was developed.
There is a link to a 75 page report. Not saying I read it, but that would be a good start.
There are lots of options for recyclable fuels. I personally like the “power ball” approach; Sodium metal encased in polyethylene balls, stored suspended in water. Run this through a simple crusher, and you get hydrogen gas and heat, and sodium hydroxide. You ship the sodium hydroxide and shredded polyethylene back to the factory for recycling.
Some of those fish we love to eat are very slow growing, we were eating 1-200 year old fish sometimes. And many of them have to be around quite a while before they start reproducing.I think it’s more of a near extinction than actual extinction, and we can reverse it, but stockpiling diverse genetic samples of threatened fish species for future cloning would be a good idea.
I think O. S. Card had something on that. “McMaster Bujold’s “quaddies” in “Falling Free”. It makes a lot of sense as a design modification for life in zero G, though I think you’d want the second set of arms to be dual purpose, specialized for heavy tasks and walking. But maybe that’s just my gravity centrism talking.I’ve accumulated a long list of changes you’d want to make to humans for life in space, and most of them are metabolic. 1) Simplifying our dietary requirements, so that we don’t have to be embedded in a complex ecosystem. There’s no reason all those vitamins couldn’t be manufactured by our gut flora, some of them are already.2) Better handling of heavy metals, so that inputs into the life support system don’t have to be processed so carefully.3) Higher tolerance for high CO2 and low O2 levels. Possibly involving counter-flow lungs.4) Better breath holding. The nomadic Bajau tribe live at sea, and can function underwater for 10 minutes or so, thanks to enlarged spleens that store oxygen. Really, if you’re going to live in space, not losing consciousness after a minute or two of interrupted life support would be handy.5) Better handling of water distribution in the body; The human body is adapted to be upright, and maldistributes fluids in the absence of gravity.6) Better radiation resistance. Unfortunately, long term resistance to cosmic rays may require a fundamental rebuild of our neuroanatomy, given the way it’s dependent on a population of cells that have to live our entire lives to maintain long distance coectivity in the nervous system.7) Suppressing bubble formation at very low pressures. This can be done with a mechanism similar to that used by arctic fish to suppress freezing, having molecules that identify and sequester nucleating centers for bubbles.8) Ability to go into hibernation or even suspended animation. Hibernation would be easy, suspended animation more difficult, but we have other species to guild us in this.More speculative:9) The ability to run our metabolisms off electricity. Maybe a built in biological battery, or just the ability to coect to an artificial one. Given a source of energy, our metabolisms would become closed, no food needed except to make up wear and growth.
Conscience is just a paper towel to wipe your a$$ with, when times get tough.Hollow and useless concepts and ideologies like “conscience” is what’s dooming this civilization.
Living Planet Index (LPI) is a notoriously crude count of biodiversity and animal count, especially because where the most diversity exists is where the least amount of counting is done (e.g., tropical rainforest). Take birds, for example, LPI’s biggest category. LPI counts about 1,415 bird species in hundreds of locations around the world (mostly in places where you can count….), out of about 3,700 species counted in total. Total bird species on Earth is estimated to be over 12 million and a population of 200-400 billion individuals (yeah, billion). So LPI extrapolates and estimates. The margin or error, therefore, is substantial (for birds the 95% confidence interval is +/- 40% off the mean). No one really has a clue.
The other problem is fish. Fish populations are down, as anyone knows, and the FAO does I think a pretty good job at keeping track of this. Because fish are the only animals in the LPI we eat for food, in a way you need to back it out (LPI doesn’t count animals raised for food). Then the picture looks very different. A relatively plateauing. Even with fish, the total population count in the northern hemisphere is INCREASING (though be warned, huge margin of error).
Then there are the requisite specific examples of species decline, like Indian crocs. For sure, they are almost extinct. But humpback whales are more than than 100 years ago.
Of course there are endangered species and bulldozing thousands of acres of rainforest will endanger or eliminate many of them. But to flat out decree that 60% of all animals on Earth have been wiped out in the last 40 years is really irresponsible. And fake news.
Some great thoughts there Brett.
I’ll point out that the quaddies in “Falling Free” were genetically engineered for freefall, and then abandoned once artifical gravity was developed.
There is a link to a 75 page report. Not saying I read it, but that would be a good start.
If we abandon fossil fuels, free trade in foodstuffs (yes, it sure is nice to eat salmon from Chile in the summer), and agricultural technology, then you won’t need a war to reduce the number of human beings on Earth. Starvation does that.
you just don’t get out much
There are lots of options for recyclable fuels. I personally like the “power ball” approach; Sodium metal encased in polyethylene balls, stored suspended in water. Run this through a simple crusher, and you get hydrogen gas and heat, and sodium hydroxide. You ship the sodium hydroxide and shredded polyethylene back to the factory for recycling.
Some of those fish we love to eat are very slow growing, we were eating 1-200 year old fish sometimes. And many of them have to be around quite a while before they start reproducing.
I think it’s more of a near extinction than actual extinction, and we can reverse it, but stockpiling diverse genetic samples of threatened fish species for future cloning would be a good idea.
” I think O. S. Card had something on that. ”
McMaster Bujold’s “quaddies” in “Falling Free”. It makes a lot of sense as a design modification for life in zero G, though I think you’d want the second set of arms to be dual purpose, specialized for heavy tasks and walking. But maybe that’s just my gravity centrism talking.
I’ve accumulated a long list of changes you’d want to make to humans for life in space, and most of them are metabolic.
1) Simplifying our dietary requirements, so that we don’t have to be embedded in a complex ecosystem. There’s no reason all those vitamins couldn’t be manufactured by our gut flora, some of them are already.
2) Better handling of heavy metals, so that inputs into the life support system don’t have to be processed so carefully.
3) Higher tolerance for high CO2 and low O2 levels. Possibly involving counter-flow lungs.
4) Better breath holding. The nomadic Bajau tribe live at sea, and can function underwater for 10 minutes or so, thanks to enlarged spleens that store oxygen. Really, if you’re going to live in space, not losing consciousness after a minute or two of interrupted life support would be handy.
5) Better handling of water distribution in the body; The human body is adapted to be upright, and maldistributes fluids in the absence of gravity.
6) Better radiation resistance. Unfortunately, long term resistance to cosmic rays may require a fundamental rebuild of our neuroanatomy, given the way it’s dependent on a population of cells that have to live our entire lives to maintain long distance connectivity in the nervous system.
7) Suppressing bubble formation at very low pressures. This can be done with a mechanism similar to that used by arctic fish to suppress freezing, having molecules that identify and sequester nucleating centers for bubbles.
8) Ability to go into hibernation or even suspended animation. Hibernation would be easy, suspended animation more difficult, but we have other species to guild us in this.
More speculative:
9) The ability to run our metabolisms off electricity. Maybe a built in biological battery, or just the ability to connect to an artificial one. Given a source of energy, our metabolisms would become closed, no food needed except to make up wear and growth.
Conscience is just a paper towel to wipe your a$$ with, when times get tough.
Hollow and useless concepts and ideologies like “conscience” is what’s dooming this civilization.
big headline, a bit short on evidence.
If we abandon fossil fuels, free trade in foodstuffs (yes, it sure is nice to eat salmon from Chile in the summer), and agricultural technology, then you won’t need a war to reduce the number of human beings on Earth. Starvation does that.
you just don’t get out much
No, but we might build space agriculture, and the shipping costs would be largely downhill.Nitrogen and phosphorus would be an issue.My guess is that doing this at scale is probably a hundred years away, by which time things will be pretty grim. But it’s possible that it’ll turn out to be pretty easy to move massive amounts of bulk materials around sooner than we think.
I’m a conservationist, so I get what you are saying.
Hi Goat, love your posts. Like I said, I am not sure if there is or ever will be a solution. At least one that is palatable. There is always someone dropping big rocks on the planet and causing the planetary extinction of mankind, but that is the unpalatable solution, and it would not help the animals anyway. Short of an event that causes an extreme drop in the human population, most of the animals are basically screwed. As for Hômo Cosmonautica, just a large population off planet would suffice in our own solar system. We could have many times the population of Earth living in space given enough time, but we have zero practical ways of moving enough people off planet to make a difference.
Squirrel!
In the book ‘Prescription for the Planet’, 3 technologies are described which would greatly mitigate most environmental problems if applied.The 1st is a variety of fast breeder reactor to produce cheap clean electricity.The 2nd is a plasma torch for dealing with garbage, it turns the organics into synthesis gas which can then be turned into liquid fuel, (not enough to run our transportation system but still nice to have) & the rest into slag which can be cast into useful shapes like bricks.These 1st two are pretty much ready to use now.The 3rd is using Boron as recyclable fuel, which requires some R&D to make practical, but might actually work.
Mmmm… the Earth is a really BIG place, it turns out. While you (did, and I don’t) argue that Space is “Even Bigger by FAR”, it is fraught with all nature in inhospitable problems. • Vacuum being the most obvious.• Radiation being almost as life-limiting. • Habitat maintenance in microgravity.• Ecosystem juggling to make food, energy.• Energy capture, heat release.• Element conservation (i.e. über-recycling).• Law enforcement without proximity.• Travel problems dwarfing pre-aircraft Earth travel.Now Science Fiction and Science both have been around for quite some time, proposing various possible-but-not-actual possibilities for lodging humans manifold in Space. Space stations. Hollowed out asteroids. Tueling into caverns on the Moon. Geoëngineering the Red Planet. The moons of Jup and Saturn. Free floating contraptions. Even the quite improbable Kuiper and Oört belts. Outer planets. You name it. When all is said and done, its quite a list of problems, and quite a list of possibilities. I find myself fighting “magical thinking” every time I closely consider how we-all as a species might escape our toxic consumption — as a species — or at least go off-planet and reinvent ourselves as Hômo Cosmonautica. A few SciFi wags have come up with not-so-magical gene manipulating Hômo Cosmonautica by borrowing from Pan’s gene pool, to get rid of legs-and-feet, and instead just have 4 competent arms. I think O. S. Card had something on that. In near zero G, it would make a lot of sense. It isn’t even clear that on Mars or the Moons of Jupiter, the adaptation wouldn’t be superior to the Ambling Man. Likewise, as long as we’re engaging in almost-magical gene augumentation futures, it isn’t far outside the credible to imagine hibernation-like-bears or even more significantly as a plan. For long trips. Because no, I don’t really believe we’re going to discover a way to travel substantially faster than light between points in space. No matter HOW much I want to believe otherwise. Long trips. We also better get used to the idea that an INTERSTELLAR Hômo Cosmonautica will definitely not have the opulent empire building as many of the Fathers of SciFi envisioned. I’m sorry… time is the enemy of empires. When it will take multiple — even if hiberation gene stretched, AND longevity enhanced — lifetimes to comport one’s enterprise to yet another suitable star system, well … having Imperial Centrism is really a whack idea. Each stellar system will be an island. Period.Anyway, that’s my fairly superficial, less-than–3000 character (VUUKLE limit) thought. I could write quite a bit more, but I’m tired, and there’s little evidence that anyone much reads what I write. Just saying,GoatGuy
This whole thing tore me up for years – I swear – this very issue. I grew up on water during the tail end of the extinction of the mid-Atlantic coastal fishery, which is now essentially complete. We pollute less now, but there are less fish. They don’t recover quickly when you remove the hunting pressure.
Short of forced migration of most of the human population to space and using small populations of people to keep up the genetic ability to survive on Earth, I am not sure if there is or ever will be a solution. I highly doubt we will build space stations for the express purpose of saving endangered species. We really are the sixth extinction event.
We won’t need cows, pigs, or chickens by then.
Yep. World is goa be about as wild as England in a hundred years or less.People.Dogs.Cats.Chickens.Cows.Pigs.Rough fish.Maybe some Squirrels.
big headline, a bit short on evidence.
So… DOMESTIC WASTE?Well … I didn’t finish that one.In the 2nd and 3rd World countries, it is a disaster. A complete disaster. You’ve seen the people picking through trash pits all across the third world. It is everywhere. Rain comes, washs toxics from the piles, inevitably to the waterways, and to groundwater. Its a disaster. Thing is, it is THIS — domestic waste, agricultural runoff, soil mismanagement, industrial waste, mining waste… This is what needs address.And this is what caot (seriously) be externally mandated. Just as the IPCC really in the end is a tiger of neither claw or fang, depending on its signatories and mendicants to mutually AGREE to various lines of action, the same goes for “ruing one’s country”. If the sovereignty of nations means anything, then other nations caot mandate what internally a country much does. But at some point, habitat loss, species extinction, sustainability overuse, and all that … becomes a kind of Humanitarian Crisis. Then … at least by modern history … then the planet’s neighboring countries can pitch in to help remediate the situation. Yet, there is resistance — especially for people like ME — in providing such “assistance”. This nation’s peoples hadn’t a helping hand, ever. We created our own EPA, our own national-land-management departments. We fought AND FIGHT graft, corruption. We do not (generally) believe in pretty pictures conjured by mendacious interests to show how hard they’re (NOT) fighting environmentally irresponsible practices. We did this without the marvelous “help” given by Nigeria, Uruguay or Bulgaria. Yet, yet, I can and am swayed in practice. I might grumble about giving peies to urchins — only to have grubby hands out the following morning — but I too see the utility in doing so. The question is, is it enough?And apparently the ANSWER is a resounding (••• NO •••)Because clearly if it WERE enough, there wouldn’t be a problem. ∴ either much more help, or stronger means. Just saying,GoatGuy
So… GLOBAL WARMING?Nah, if anything, global warming has been so minor and iocuous that habitats might have nominally increased in range. Higher elevations are said to be more clement (dâhmn the glaciologists, full speed ahead) and all that. So… DEMOGRAPHICS?Actually, yes. More people ≡ more pressure on land-for-food and forests-for-cutting. And that spells death to almost all forest and margin species. So… INDUSTRIAL WASTE?Of course yes — especially for the waterways. America’s EPA. This agency, tho’ aoying sometimes to an extreme, actually is one of the poster-children for what responsible government CAN do to “administer the natural wealth” of a nation. The squashed obvious black smokestack emissions, not-so-obvious transparent SO₂ sulfur dioxide “acid rain” causing emissions; they’re the vanguard watching ozone emissions, nitric oxides, unburned hydrocarbons (“VOC’s”). They’ve got strict regulations and decent field enforcement for agricultural run-off, for power plant fly-ash waste processing, for all sorts of remediation of nasty-if-it-gets-into-the-waterways stuff. So… DOMESTIC WASTE?Not so much, in Europe and America and basically all the “First World” countries of the Planet. Domestic waste — while huge — is largely a “handled” commodity. Urban ore. Remarkably recyclable, and when not, usually fairly easy to sequester or pyrolyze. So… What then is the solution?Well “Obvious Man” (WITHOUT a conscience) has simple answers, none of which are tenable. Big War works. Not very effectively historically, but somewhat so. One-child-per-couple works. Slow, but sure, and remarkably egalitarian in the end. Untreated pandemics work. Quite effective historically. As I said, WITHOUT a conscience, Mr. Obvious is.But WITH a conscience? Literally — even though many of you will “know the Goat” as endlessly debating the Loony Libs and Tree Huggers on the Left, — even though that’s my normal position, IN THIS CASE, I do not think that’s the right plan. The right plan, WITH a conscience is for all the people of the world, not just the First Worlders, to rapidly rise up to living within our collective means. To live “cleanly”; to fight the inevitable, dark, persistent forces of wanton environmental over-use. To accept the organic-food principles: the store’s vegetables don’t need to look flawlessly perfect. Just good. And you don’t need to buy strawberries out of season. No growing these dâhmned things in countries with 4 zeros in their distance away. (i.e. 10,000 km or more!!!)This goes for all of what we consume. Every bit of it. Public transportation — if it can be shown to actually mitigate the problems of private vehicular use. Living small: NOT mentally investing in the new, New, NEW! throw-away mindset. BUT … also understand that it can NOT be imposed externally on the 3rd word. Just saying,GoatGuy
No, but we might build space agriculture, and the shipping costs would be largely downhill.
Nitrogen and phosphorus would be an issue.
My guess is that doing this at scale is probably a hundred years away, by which time things will be pretty grim. But it’s possible that it’ll turn out to be pretty easy to move massive amounts of bulk materials around sooner than we think.
I’m a conservationist, so I get what you are saying.
Hi Goat, love your posts. Like I said, I am not sure if there is or ever will be a solution. At least one that is palatable. There is always someone dropping big rocks on the planet and causing the planetary extinction of mankind, but that is the unpalatable solution, and it would not help the animals anyway. Short of an event that causes an extreme drop in the human population, most of the animals are basically screwed. As for Hômo Cosmonautica, just a large population off planet would suffice in our own solar system. We could have many times the population of Earth living in space given enough time, but we have zero practical ways of moving enough people off planet to make a difference.
Squirrel!
In the book ‘Prescription for the Planet’, 3 technologies are described which would greatly mitigate most environmental problems if applied.
The 1st is a variety of fast breeder reactor to produce cheap clean electricity.
The 2nd is a plasma torch for dealing with garbage, it turns the organics into synthesis gas which can then be turned into liquid fuel, (not enough to run our transportation system but still nice to have) & the rest into slag which can be cast into useful shapes like bricks.
These 1st two are pretty much ready to use now.
The 3rd is using Boron as recyclable fuel, which requires some R&D to make practical, but might actually work.
Mmmm… the Earth is a really BIG place, it turns out. While you (did, and I don’t) argue that Space is “Even Bigger by FAR”, it is fraught with all nature in inhospitable problems.
• Vacuum being the most obvious.
• Radiation being almost as life-limiting.
• Habitat maintenance in microgravity.
• Ecosystem juggling to make food, energy.
• Energy capture, heat release.
• Element conservation (i.e. über-recycling).
• Law enforcement without proximity.
• Travel problems dwarfing pre-aircraft Earth travel.
Now Science Fiction and Science both have been around for quite some time, proposing various possible-but-not-actual possibilities for lodging humans manifold in Space. Space stations. Hollowed out asteroids. Tunneling into caverns on the Moon. Geoëngineering the Red Planet. The moons of Jup and Saturn. Free floating contraptions. Even the quite improbable Kuiper and Oört belts. Outer planets. You name it.
When all is said and done, its quite a list of problems, and quite a list of possibilities.
I find myself fighting “magical thinking” every time I closely consider how we-all as a species might escape our toxic consumption — as a species — or at least go off-planet and reinvent ourselves as Hômo Cosmonautica. A few SciFi wags have come up with not-so-magical gene manipulating Hômo Cosmonautica by borrowing from Pan’s gene pool, to get rid of legs-and-feet, and instead just have 4 competent arms. I think O. S. Card had something on that.
In near zero G, it would make a lot of sense. It isn’t even clear that on Mars or the Moons of Jupiter, the adaptation wouldn’t be superior to the Ambling Man.
Likewise, as long as we’re engaging in almost-magical gene augumentation futures, it isn’t far outside the credible to imagine hibernation-like-bears or even more significantly as a plan. For long trips. Because no, I don’t really believe we’re going to discover a way to travel substantially faster than light between points in space. No matter HOW much I want to believe otherwise.
Long trips.
We also better get used to the idea that an INTERSTELLAR Hômo Cosmonautica will definitely not have the opulent empire building as many of the Fathers of SciFi envisioned. I’m sorry… time is the enemy of empires. When it will take multiple — even if hiberation gene stretched, AND longevity enhanced — lifetimes to comport one’s enterprise to yet another suitable star system, well … having Imperial Centrism is really a whack idea. Each stellar system will be an island. Period.
Anyway, that’s my fairly superficial, less-than–3000 character (VUUKLE limit) thought. I could write quite a bit more, but I’m tired, and there’s little evidence that anyone much reads what I write.
Just saying,
GoatGuy
This whole thing tore me up for years – I swear – this very issue. I grew up on water during the tail end of the extinction of the mid-Atlantic coastal fishery, which is now essentially complete. We pollute less now, but there are less fish. They don’t recover quickly when you remove the hunting pressure.
Short of forced migration of most of the human population to space and using small populations of people to keep up the genetic ability to survive on Earth, I am not sure if there is or ever will be a solution. I highly doubt we will build space stations for the express purpose of saving endangered species. We really are the sixth extinction event.
We won’t need cows, pigs, or chickens by then.
Yep. World is gonna be about as wild as England in a hundred years or less.
People.
Dogs.
Cats.
Chickens.
Cows.
Pigs.
Rough fish.
Maybe some Squirrels.
So… DOMESTIC WASTE?
Well … I didn’t finish that one.
In the 2nd and 3rd World countries, it is a disaster. A complete disaster. You’ve seen the people picking through trash pits all across the third world. It is everywhere. Rain comes, washs toxics from the piles, inevitably to the waterways, and to groundwater. Its a disaster.
Thing is, it is THIS — domestic waste, agricultural runoff, soil mismanagement, industrial waste, mining waste…
This is what needs address.
And this is what cannot (seriously) be externally mandated.
Just as the IPCC really in the end is a tiger of neither claw or fang, depending on its signatories and mendicants to mutually AGREE to various lines of action, the same goes for “running one’s country”. If the sovereignty of nations means anything, then other nations cannot mandate what internally a country much does.
But at some point, habitat loss, species extinction, sustainability overuse, and all that … becomes a kind of Humanitarian Crisis. Then … at least by modern history … then the planet’s neighboring countries can pitch in to help remediate the situation.
Yet, there is resistance — especially for people like ME — in providing such “assistance”. This nation’s peoples hadn’t a helping hand, ever. We created our own EPA, our own national-land-management departments. We fought AND FIGHT graft, corruption. We do not (generally) believe in pretty pictures conjured by mendacious interests to show how hard they’re (NOT) fighting environmentally irresponsible practices. We did this without the marvelous “help” given by Nigeria, Uruguay or Bulgaria.
Yet, yet, I can and am swayed in practice. I might grumble about giving pennies to urchins — only to have grubby hands out the following morning — but I too see the utility in doing so.
The question is, is it enough?
And apparently the ANSWER is a resounding (••• NO •••)
Because clearly if it WERE enough, there wouldn’t be a problem.
∴ either much more help, or stronger means.
Just saying,
GoatGuy
So… GLOBAL WARMING?
Nah, if anything, global warming has been so minor and innocuous that habitats might have nominally increased in range. Higher elevations are said to be more clement (dâhmn the glaciologists, full speed ahead) and all that.
So… DEMOGRAPHICS?
Actually, yes. More people ≡ more pressure on land-for-food and forests-for-cutting. And that spells death to almost all forest and margin species.
So… INDUSTRIAL WASTE?
Of course yes — especially for the waterways.
America’s EPA. This agency, tho’ annoying sometimes to an extreme, actually is one of the poster-children for what responsible government CAN do to “administer the natural wealth” of a nation. The squashed obvious black smokestack emissions, not-so-obvious transparent SO₂ sulfur dioxide “acid rain” causing emissions; they’re the vanguard watching ozone emissions, nitric oxides, unburned hydrocarbons (“VOC’s”). They’ve got strict regulations and decent field enforcement for agricultural run-off, for power plant fly-ash waste processing, for all sorts of remediation of nasty-if-it-gets-into-the-waterways stuff.
So… DOMESTIC WASTE?
Not so much, in Europe and America and basically all the “First World” countries of the Planet. Domestic waste — while huge — is largely a “handled” commodity. Urban ore. Remarkably recyclable, and when not, usually fairly easy to sequester or pyrolyze.
So…
What then is the solution?
Well “Obvious Man” (WITHOUT a conscience) has simple answers, none of which are tenable. Big War works. Not very effectively historically, but somewhat so. One-child-per-couple works. Slow, but sure, and remarkably egalitarian in the end. Untreated pandemics work. Quite effective historically.
As I said, WITHOUT a conscience, Mr. Obvious is.
But WITH a conscience? Literally — even though many of you will “know the Goat” as endlessly debating the Loony Libs and Tree Huggers on the Left, — even though that’s my normal position, IN THIS CASE, I do not think that’s the right plan.
The right plan, WITH a conscience is for all the people of the world, not just the First Worlders, to rapidly rise up to living within our collective means. To live “cleanly”; to fight the inevitable, dark, persistent forces of wanton environmental over-use. To accept the organic-food principles: the store’s vegetables don’t need to look flawlessly perfect. Just good. And you don’t need to buy strawberries out of season. No growing these dâhmned things in countries with 4 zeros in their distance away. (i.e. 10,000 km or more!!!)
This goes for all of what we consume. Every bit of it. Public transportation — if it can be shown to actually mitigate the problems of private vehicular use. Living small: NOT mentally investing in the new, New, NEW! throw-away mindset.
BUT … also understand that it can NOT be imposed externally on the 3rd word.
Just saying,
GoatGuy