Report: Earth has lost half its wildlife population since 1970. http://t.co/tQgGBUIxbo pic.twitter.com/5zv6mxT01o
— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) September 30, 2014
Hey, if you’re not dumb enough to lose your mind over the ebola, the WWF wants to make sure you’re properly depressed about the future. And they have the datasets to make the most depressing charts & graphs…
… The latest analysis was done by scientists at the wildlife group WWF, the Zoological Society of London and other organizations. Based on an analysis of thousands of vertebrate species, it concludes that overall animal populations fell by 52% between 1970 and 2010.
The decline was seen everywhere—in rivers, on land and in the seas—and is mainly the result of increased habitat destruction, commercial fishing and hunting, the report said. Climate change is also believed to be a factor, though its consequences are harder to measure….
The fastest declines were seen in rivers and other freshwaters systems, where populations have fallen 76% since 1970. By comparison, terrestrial and marine populations each fell 39%. While biodiversity continues to decline in both temperate and tropical parts of the world, the downward trend is greater in the tropics.
The most dramatic decline was in Latin America, where overall populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish fell 83%. Asia-Pacific wasn’t too far behind, though.
The new findings are calculated using the WWF’s “Living Planet Index,” a measure of biodiversity based on trends in 10,000 populations of about 3,000 animal species…
The report analyzes sustainability by calculating a global “ecological footprint,” which measures the area required to supply the ecological goods and services we use. It concludes that humanity currently needs the regenerative capacity of 1.5 Earths to supply these goods and services each year.
The study says: “This ‘overshoot’ is possible because—for now—we can cut trees faster than they mature, harvest more fish than the oceans can replenish, or emit more carbon into the atmosphere than the forests and oceans can absorb.” Since the 1990s, we have reached that overshoot by the ninth month of each year, it adds.
“It’s a very loud wake-up call,” said Carter Roberts, president and chief executive officer of WWF U.S., in an interview. “As we lose natural capital, people lose the ability to feed themselves and to provide for their families—it increases instability exponentially. When that happens, it ceases to be a local problem and becomes a global one.”
More detail at the link. I assume the WSJ pundits will now find some MBAs to call it right-sizing a grossly inefficient overstock of environmental units? Or streamlining inventory per best JIT management practices?
(And, yes, Ebola infection in humans is the result of environmental degradation in desperately poor tropical climes. Synergy!)
Schlemazel
Obviously they are just liberals trying to suck in more of that sweet government cash and destroy industry because they hate America.
Plus also too on top of that the bible says we have dominion over everything on earth so we couldn’t destroy it.
pat
I am so glad I don’t have kids and grandkids who will be living in the hellscape that the earth will become in the next decades. Greenland glaciers disappearing, no more rain in the Central Valley in California, the last of the African elephants hunted to provide ivory for the Chinese, etc. And that’s just what I’ve been exposed to in the last 24 hours.
We are doomed.
joel hanes
The most efficient, highest-leverage technology for conserving the natural world is human contraception.
Support Planned Parenthood.
Botsplainer
Why do Balloon Juicers hate Freedom, and Capitalism and God?
Botsplainer
@joel hanes:
But a conservative truthteller says that you can have every person on Earth live on their own acre in Texas. The Vatican agrees.
There’s plenty of room.
Baud
The World Wrestling Federation is more socially conscious than I gave them credit for. Kudos to them.
Schlemazel
And anyway with fewer animals there will be more room, more crop land and more water for humans so this is a good thing!
Baud
Thank god for soylent green.
Violet
The solution is obviously downsizing human units. All in the interest of efficiency, of course.
Anoniminous
@Botsplainer:
Human global population is now estimated to be 7 billion people. Texas is roughly 171,891,840 acres. In order to fit everybody in Texas with their own little acre you’d have to add 39 stories.
Arithmetic. So disheartening.
The Pale Scot
The angriest conversations I have have with the older members of my family are the ones about how even if we the younger cohort are financially successful, by the time we are their age there will be no place worth visiting in our retirement. They have all had the opportunities to go to the Venice, Alaska, the Yosemite etc. Those places will be gone by the time we are 65.
And then they bitch that none of us (except for the screwups), have had children. We’re all “defeatists”; Ah no.. we’re all realists.
Schlemazel
And anyway it is just liberal propaganda plus its too late to do anything about it anyway so its OK.
Roger Moore
I think we need to right-size the human population. Actually, we can probably get our consumption back in line with what the planet can support by reducing overconsumption by the wealthiest few percent. So tumbrels for the 0.01% would help a lot in this department.
Schlemazel
@Anoniminous:
The bullshit maps have been making the rounds of the Intertubes. I forget the exact details but if we all agreed to live at the population density of Tokyo Japan we could all live in South Africa. Of course there is no discussion of the logistics of 7 billion toilets, 7 billion garbage cans or much of anything else.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
No, no, no. The McMahons’ sports entertainment thingy doesn’t go by those initials anymore. There was a court battle with the World Wildlife Fund years ago, and the wild-animal people won. Since then the fake sport of “pro wrestling” has had to call itself the WWE or something like that.
Oh, wait. You were snarking. Silly me.
Mike in NC
Just read “Atlantic” by Simon Winchester, in which some scientists were speculating the world’s commercial fisheries will have nothing left to catch after about 2040.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
I only remember the world as it existed in my youth.
Trollhattan
@Schlemazel:
XKCD has a viable graphic–us and ouur domestic critters vs. everything wild (land mammal edition).
RaflW
@Botsplainer: I’ve driven across west Texas. Believe me, fitting one person per acre would be easy. Having them survive more than a few days? Not easy.
ETA: OK, 7 Bn people would not actually fit, but my point remains: it’s a shitty, inhospitable place on many, many acres of this earth.
Botsplainer
The US of my youth had about 70% of the current population level and world population doubled in large part through the efforts of the boy-fuckers in Rome and that half senile liar Ronald Reagan.
It was a better world.
SatanicPanic
@The Pale Scot: they’ll still be there, but Yosemite will look like Zion, Zion will look like Joshua Tree, and Joshua Tree will just be a bunch of rocks.
Violet
@The Pale Scot:
How old are you? I think they’ll still be around in 20 years. 50 year, maybe not. And maybe you should visit one or two now while you can.
So the dumb people are having kids. Bodes well for humanity.
RaflW
@Schlemazel: Imagine vast factories of vat-grown mycoprotien being grown with the input being processed human waste. Sounds yummy, huh. Maybe that’s what Soylent Yellow is?
currants
Sixth Extinction. (Good read, and not depressing if you take it with geologic time in mind.)
More to the point, verb tense error, Anne Laurie. We *broke* it.
Anoniminous
@Schlemazel:
The whole thing is absurd, thunked-up by silly people.
SatanicPanic
@Botsplainer:
Why are they all complaining about the borders then? Plenty of room!
Mike J
@Schlemazel:
Cities are much more efficient and eco friendly than having everyone spread out over the countryside living in yurts. It just takes less energy to do things together if everyone is nearby. And it takes less energy to do things if we do them together.
Roboflipper
So what can we do to stop this?
Like, seriously… What can you or me do in our daily lives to even slow this down?
I have half a mind to root for the Ebola virus. A pandemic would suck but there are just too many people on this planet already.
Trollhattan
@Mike J:
Without cities the entire thing would have bee razed by now. Despite vast and damning inefficiencies, they’re the only way to provide the support systems you cite to large populations. A New Yorker’s environmental footprint is miniscule compared to, say, a Casper, Wyomingian’s or an Iowa farmer’s.
Howard Beale IV
@Trollhattan: It’s an amazing graphic-especially when you consider how much methane the bovine population throiws off. Combine that with clear-channel AM radio signals playing country music and/or rightwing whackjobs, imagine that any intelligent life forms picks up when they orbit the Earth will be cow farts and Rush Limbaugh…..
Lee Rudolph
Ten or fifteen years ago, I was passing through Paris, walking from one train station to another by a route that took me through a public park where WWF had a carousel. Each seat was an extinct bird or beast (I don’t remember any fish or amphibians, but they might have been there too). And the tune it played was that jolly old music hall favorite, “Tout Va Bien”, to which (I assume) all good little French children know the lyrics, as follows.
===
Allô, allô James !
Quelles nouvelles ?
Absente depuis quinze jours,
Au bout du fil
Je vous appelle ;
Que trouverai-je à mon retour ?
Tout va très bien, Madame la Marquise,
Tout va très bien, tout va très bien.
Pourtant, il faut, il faut que l’on vous dise,
On déplore un tout petit rien :
Un incident, une bêtise,
La mort de votre jument grise,
Mais, à part ça, Madame la Marquise
Tout va très bien, tout va très bien.
Allô, allô James !
Quelles nouvelles ?
Ma jument gris’ morte aujourd’hui !
Expliquez-moi
Valet fidèle,
Comment cela s’est-il produit ,
Cela n’est rien, Madame la Marquise,
Cela n’est rien, tout va très bien.
Pourtant il faut, il faut que l’on vous dise,
On déplore un tout petit rien :
Elle a péri
Dans l’incendie
Qui détruisit vos écuries.
Mais, à part ça, Madame la Marquise
Tout va très bien, tout va très bien.
Allô, allô James !
Quelles nouvelles ?
Mes écuries ont donc brûlé ?
Expliquez-moi
Valet modèle,
Comment cela s’est-il passé ?
Cela n’est rien, Madame la Marquise,
Cela n’est rien, tout va très bien.
Pourtant il faut, il faut que l’on vous dise,
On déplore un tout petit rien :
Si l’écurie brûla, Madame,
C’est qu’le château était en flammes.
Mais, à part ça, Madame la Marquise
Tout va très bien, tout va très bien.
Allô, allô James !
Quelles nouvelles ?
Notre château est donc détruit !
Expliquez-moi
Car je chancelle
Comment cela s’est-il produit ?
Eh bien ! Voila, Madame la Marquise,
Apprenant qu’il était ruiné,
A pein’ fut-il rev’nu de sa surprise
Que M’sieur l’Marquis s’est suicidé,
Et c’est en ramassant la pell’
Qu’il renversa tout’s les chandelles,
Mettant le feu à tout l’château
Qui s’consuma de bas en haut ;
Le vent soufflant sur l’incendie,
Le propagea sur l’écurie,
Et c’est ainsi qu’en un moment
On vit périr votre jument !
Mais, à part ça, Madame la Marquise,
Tout va très bien, tout va très bien.
===
My prose translation:
“Hello, hello, James!
What is the news?
I’ve been away two weeks.
Phoning long distance,
I ask you:
What will I find when I come back?”
“Everything’s fine, Madame la Marquise,
Everything’s fine, all’s going well.
And yet one must, one must tell you one small thing,
One must deplore just a very small nothing,
An incident, a stupidity,
The death of your gray mare.
But, that aside, Madame la Marquise,
Everything’s fine, all’s going very well.”
“Hello, hello, James!
What is the news?
My gray mare dead today?
Explain to me,
My faithful butler,
How this happened.”
“Oh, it’s nothing, Madame la Marquise,
It’s really nothing, everything is fine.
And yet one must, one must tell you one small thing,
One must deplore just a very small nothing,
She died
In the fire
That destroyed the stable.
But that aside, Madame la Marquise
Everything’s fine, all’s going very well.”
“Hello, hello, James!
What is the news?
My stables have burned down?
Explain to me,
My model butler,
How did that happen?”
“Oh, it’s nothing, Madame la Marquise,
It’s really nothing, everything is fine.
And yet one must, one must tell you one small thing,
One must deplore just a very small nothing,
If the stable burned, Madame,
It was because the castle was in flames.
But that aside, Madame la Marquise
Everything’s fine, all’s going very well.”
“Hello, hello, James!
What is the news?
Our castle is destroyed!
Explain to me,
Because I’m tottering,
How did that happen?”
“All right! Look here, Madame la Marquise.
Realizing that he was ruined,
Hardly recovered from his surprise,
Monsieur le Marquis killed himself,
And it was in falling down
That he knocked over all the candles,
Setting fire to the entire castle
Which was destroyed from top to bottom;
The wind blowing on the fire
Carried it to the stables,
And thus it was than in an instant
Your mare perished!
But, aside from that, Madame la Marquise,
Everything’s fine, all’s going very well.”
schrodinger's cat
What does JIT have to do with wildlife? I am not getting the joke.
srv
@RaflW:
Ogallala Aquifer is right underfoot.
Schlemazel
@Mike J:
Perhaps in the millions that is true, although the conditions in most super cities are not all that wonderful. The population of (and this is from memory so feel free to correct me if wrong) is NYC is 27,000/mi2, Chicago less than half that. I can’t imagine what life would be like with 7 billion people packed that close. Mumbi I believe is 100,000/mi2. I would not enjoy living like that at any rate, how large would the sewage treatment plants need to be? Water supply? Where would people work? It may be more ecologically friendly up to a point but the infrastructure to support that density would be mind boggling.
RaflW
I know that there are bigger emitters of CO2 than airplanes. I also acknowledge that I fly (95% in coach).
But this is the sort of thing that symbolizes for me the extent of man’s ability (and, occasionally, woman’s, but I think much less so) to just rampage over the environment in total oblivion to the impacts.
Lots of photos of the suites, which (I’m guessing) are probably equivalent to about 40 or 50 coach seats as far as CO2, heck maybe more since it’s not just the sqft of the suite, but all the wood, the probably 2:1 flight attendant ratio, the umpteen kinds of china on which to serve each morsel of rare and expensive meats, cheeses, wines and such.
RaflW
@srv:
And it’s stressed.
The high planes part is doing worse.
Eric U.
@Mike J: all you have to do is drive into a remote canyon in Utah and note a cabin with a yard every 1/4 mile to know why wildlife isn’t doing to well. In 1970, you probably only saw a few of those cabins. Here in Pennsylvania, it’s the same story, but I find that less surprising and there aren’t as many new houses out in the woods.
SatanicPanic
@Schlemazel: Manhattan is closer to 70K/sq mi and home to some of the most expensive real estate in the world.
Violet
@RaflW: They can fancy it up as much as they want. You’re still on a plane. Ugh.
Seanly
If we require 1.5 earths every year that says to me that there should be only 2/3 as many humans.
I know there are lots of numbers out there for how many humans the earth can sustain. Maybe 10 billion – but that would be many more of us living in much more dire circumstances. Some experts project that we’d need to be well under 3 billion to allow everyone to live with European standard of living.
So much of our current environmental woes can be tied directly to overpopulation. There are too many people and we’re destroying the planet.
Botsplainer
@Mike J:
SOC!ALIST!!!! Eleventy!!!!!!
Smiling Mortician
@schrodinger’s cat: Not really thinking ahead? Just a guess.
RaflW
@Seanly: Possibly more dire, but certainly more circumspect. Germans use about 45% less energy per capita than we Americans. Brits, about 3/7ths as much.
And that’s just comparing us to a few of our comfy, good quality of life first world allies.
schrodinger's cat
@Smiling Mortician: JIT in supply chain management means keeping just enough inventory at hand as needed, to reduce waste. Dell was able to apply JIT production and bring down the cost of PCs substantially, for example. I think AL has just thrown in the term here as an example of evil MBA jargon.
ETA: In the sentence quoted above JIT doesn’t make much sense.
schrodinger's cat
@RaflW: People don’t do simple things like turning off the lights after them when they leave. People leave computers on even when they are not using it and so on.
Amir Khalid
@RaflW:
Back in the 1990s when IT companies like IBM and HP and Sun Microsystems had more money than they knew what to do with, they’d waste some of it on flying ink-stained wretches like me to company media events, some of them on their side (well, your side) of the planet. They’d fly us out business class and put us up in surprisingly fancy hotels; I would have been content with economy class, and any room free of cockroaches. Once, I got a huge room with all the trimmings and my own valet — for just an overnight stay. I must admit, I’ve never understood the appeal of super luxury.
Smiling Mortician
@schrodinger’s cat: I know what JIT is. It’s also been employed in less suitable environments, to less positive effect. It’s often a disaster, for example, in education. Again, I was just guessing at what AL might have meant.
Shakezula
WHY HASN’T OBAMA DECLARED WAR ON THESE DISEASE-PRODUCING NATIONS?!
schrodinger's cat
@Smiling Mortician: I came off as a bit preachy, sorry, my bad. And I do agree that some JIT applications have been disastrous.
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: You should have sent your kitteh, they totally get the appeal of luxury and comfort.
RaflW
Totally off topic*, but this thread needs some schadenfreude.
Noted wide-stance advocate and possible men’s toilet cruiser, former Sen. Larry Craig ordered to pay $242,000 for misuse of campaign funds.
I still think of him when I am on the main concourse at MSP. If only to have a brief chuckle at his creative defense.
*Possibly on-topic in that the planet is going down the drain.
ETA: Love the Seattle PI for just joyfully flinging nearly random poo at Idaho politicians:
schrodinger's cat
@efgoldman: The ones used in France had a negligible carbon foot print.
Baud
@Smiling Mortician:
JIT is how I prepared for exams!
Roger Moore
@schrodinger’s cat:
I think the joke is that WSJ will try to spin environmental disaster as a positive by using business jargon about screwing employees and suppliers.
schrodinger's cat
@Baud: Also known as last minute panic cramming.
Elie
As for downsizing human units, that will happen. The symbolic knife we turn on our animals is actually turned on us. Ebola is a warning. Like the disappearing wildlife and plants and bees — “you have been warned, humans”…
I’d say removing about 4-5 billion of us will happen. While I do not relish the horror of it — we have only ourselves to blame… Earth and nature will have its re-balancing. WE are not the Lords of this planet. Not now and not ever.
Smiling Mortician
@Baud: Which explains why I don’t give exams. Bazinga!
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
If you’d like a small nightmare for tonight, Dr. Kate Hutton gave a talk here for our disaster preparedness month and said that JIT inventory could cause a major problem for us in the case of a big disaster, especially if it’s the long-predicted major earthquake along the San Andreas Fault. Back in 1994, grocery stores kept big warehouses full of food in places like Riverside County. Now they use JIT, which means that only as much food as is needed daily is trucked in. And if the roads are impassable …
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
The appeal is that it makes you feel special. That’s why so much of luxury is built around having many people do even minor tasks for you; only a small minority can be waited on hand and foot because of the disproportion between the servants and the served. Knowing you get to be one of the special people who get that treatment is supposed to make you feel powerful and important, which a lot of people enjoy.
Jeffro
76% decline in under 50 years…not even a heartbeat of time, biologically speaking (much less geologically).
Jeffro
@Seanly: Yup. See also, “The World Without Us”
Anne Laurie
@schrodinger’s cat:
In my experience — office work, headed by Dilbert’s Pointy-Haired Bosses — “JIT” means never having more than one case of printer paper on hand, no purchase order issued until evidence that the last ream has been opened. Not even just before the yearly audit when company protocol mandates that every text revision requires a new print-out of the (several dozen page) document. Then, when the last ream is being used at 4:40pm on the Friday before the Monday deadline, “somebody” from the purchasing department is “tasked” to go find more of that exact weight, quality, and brand, which means they drive to multiple office-supply stores to pay a full retail mark-up, if the stuff’s available at all. (And half the staff scrambles to reschedule their evening plans, while waiting for the courier to show up.)
I had an image of the Pointy-Haired Boss demanding someone bring him new, fresh, replacement elephants/tigers/redwoods/salamanders, and then being outraged when it turns out there is no Magic Supply Cabinet from such things can be requisitioned on demand. Did nobody read the procedures manual?!?
Of course this is unfair to the engineers who invented the JIT concept, but that’s how people tend to stress-test concepts.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
The few times I’ve had anything similar, I felt infantilized, but I strongly suspect that’s an (unspoken) part of the appeal.
schrodinger's cat
@Anne Laurie: Ok now your snark makes some sense.
billb
so really all we need are some rational scientists who can program killa-drones to go to the wealthiest zip codes and neutralize all bi-pedal life. naturally the dogs and cats are free to go. then per XCZD we need to sterilize the cattle, and they stop breeding and being eaten by the mindless hordes. then we need to get into the eating of insects, there won’t be fish, cows or birds and pigs to eat, deal with it.
Fred
Last year our vegetarian son visited and I had to learn to cook for two weeks without meat. Things went pretty well and we have been mostly meat free since.
This year he brought his vegan girl friend and I thought, ‘Oh no. How can I swing this?’ So I looked around the super market and they had all kindsa vegan staples like oat milk, oat whipping cream, vegan burgers, even vegan swedish meatballs. With all that and a liberal bunch of wine, a splendid time was had by all.
So we can go vegan leaving more food to go around. The only thing is the cheese. I think I’m gonna start making my own cheese substitute. I know I can make it taste better than the stuff they are selling down at the Maxi.
Smaller houses, smaller cars, renewable energy, vegan diet,… One step at a time and maybe we might just make it. As Thom Hartmann says, “Despair is not an option.”
Now if we can just send all those conservatives to live on one acre in Texas and then build that fence they keep jawing about. We can call it “Freedom Acres” and market it as an open carry/stand your ground paradise. All the ground hogs and neighbors you kin shoot! “Git offen mah lawn, an’ stay off!”
Paul in KY
It’s the saddest thing. I think most large wild animals will all be dead in the wild within 100 years. To me, the main culprit is human overpopulation. There’s just too damn many of us.
E.
Good Lord, is anyone here reading “This Changes Everything” by Naomi Klein? It is so frightening I had to put it down for a few days. I have never read anything this frightening.
Rasputin's Evil Twin
@Botsplainer: Is that what the GOP considers the Holy Trinity now? Where do guns fit in here?