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BrownThunderMK t1_iuzo4os wrote

Reply to comment by shirk-work in ‘Carbon timebomb’: climate crisis threatens to destroy Congo peatlands by sector3011

We also lost 70% of the world's animal population since 1970. Capitalism is actively destroying the planet, at this rate we're giving the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs a run for its money.

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shirk-work t1_iuzpqub wrote

We won't be the first organism to cause a mass extinction but we will be the first "intelligent life". The first photosynthesizing life poisoned the atmosphere with oxygen and nearly killed everything.

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f1del1us t1_iuzvd8l wrote

What will be interesting will be the life that evolves to deal with the mess we leave behind (looking at you, plastic)…

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MeisterLogi t1_iv0rbpd wrote

>"Plastic is not natural, it is made, this proves that their must have been intelligent life before the Sixth Mass Extinction Event."

>"Plastic is natural! It's absolutely everywhere. And if you don't understand where it comes from, maybe that was just Gods plan. And if life was so intelligent, where are they? They would have noticed the rising carbon levels and taken action. It's absolutely preposterous to say we are not the first intelligence on this planet."

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0b_101010 t1_iv0xgqa wrote

LOL. This would actually be a great prompt for a novel.

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Buddahrific t1_iv1160c wrote

Imo the real problem for the far future is when the plastic-dependent life uses up all the plastic we're leaving without any way to make more. We could be creating not one but two extinction events.

Makes me wonder what kind of evidence of this all will be left in millions of years. If there's anything that eventually digs up our fossils, will they know what caused the current extinction event? Would they be able to figure out a peak plastic extinction?

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EcoEchos t1_iv0td3k wrote

And yet, most people are perfectly happy financing the industries who are responsible for the mass extinctions of wildlife we are seeing in nature. Most people are financing these industries several times a day.

> “A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use,” said Joseph Poore, at the University of Oxford, UK, who led the research. “It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car,” he said, as these only cut greenhouse gas emissions."

The new research shows that without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75% – an area equivalent to the US, China, European Union and Australia combined – and still feed the world. Loss of wild areas to agriculture is the leading cause of the current mass extinction of wildlife.

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[deleted] t1_iv0x1ix wrote

[deleted]

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EcoEchos t1_iv1wfpl wrote

This suggestion is great, because it literally requires everyone to do absolutely nothing, thus resulting in zero change. All while they pat themselves on the back and congratulate themselves.

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joleme t1_iv16osf wrote

Let's hypothetically say everyone stopped consuming meat and dairy.

Do you (or anyone else) really think that the people that owns that land who are now going to be 100% broke because their livelihood has been taken away are going to just say "oh, I'll just start planting trees that will make me no money"?

Do you expect that the government would pay the going rate for the land? Should they just use eminent domain if the owners don't want to sell?

Throwing around "solutions" with no real way to implement them is pretty pointless. This isn't even touching on the fact that the elite with $$$$$$ rule the world. They've peddled misinformation for decades and decades. They got world governments wrapped around their fingers.

We can all do our little bits to try and help (I do, but it's a drop in the bucket) but unless the billionaires stop polluting we're fucked.

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Kemyst t1_iv2x6yk wrote

We’re fucked. Billionaires become billionaires by being greedy and greedy people don’t give a fuck about anything outside their bubble. It’s coming, the only question is when.

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EcoEchos t1_iv1w93q wrote

Ah, yes, the typical "my actions do not matter" response in the face of simple information. 🙄

Keep deluding yourself that it's OK to finance ecological destruction across the globe just for your temporary moment of pleasure. 👍

Again, these industries exist only to feed consumers, but you are so eager to ignore that fact, alongside the long list of variables that you ignored in your comment. Your comment literally only focuses on land use and ignores how animal agriculture is just raping and pillaging our planet across tons of other variables.

Keep financing these industries to destroy our planet then put on your shocked pikachu face when you see articles like the one OP posted. 🙄

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Odeeum t1_iv0qugz wrote

"But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of wealth for shareholders"

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EcoEchos t1_iv0tnf0 wrote

The shareholders are not the only ones responsible for the mass extinctions of wildlife we are seeing.

Animal agriculture is responsible for the mass extinctions we are facing and those industries would not be possible without their consumers financing them for it. These industries aren't digging up the bones of our planet just for fun, they do it for your dollars.

The real culprits are all of the people who are continuing to eat meat and animal products, since they are financing these industries to destroy our planet, several times a day.

edit: Yep, keep downvoting as if it changes the truth.

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bluesquare2543 t1_iv2j82b wrote

It’s cognitive dissonance. The shareholder observation is just as truthful as the fact that the animal agriculture industry is raping animals and our planet.

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Gemini884 t1_iv21wr6 wrote

“In the last 50 years, Earth has lost 68% of wildlife, all thanks to us humans” (India Times)
“Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970, report finds” (The Guardian)
“We’ve lost 60% of wildlife in less than 50 years” (World Economic Forum)
These are just three of many headlines covering the Living Planet Index. But they are all wrong. They are based on a misunderstanding of what the Living Planet Index shows.

https://ourworldindata.org/living-planet-index-decline - explainer article from ourworldindata

"Recent analyses have reported catastrophic global declines in vertebrate populations. However, the distillation of many trends into a global mean index obscures the variation that can inform conservation measures and can be sensitive to analytical decisions. For example, previous analyses have estimated a mean vertebrate decline of more than 50% since 1970 (Living Planet Index).Here we show, however, that this estimate is driven by less than 3% of vertebrate populations; if these extremely declining populations are excluded, the global trend switches to an increase. The sensitivity of global mean trends to outliers suggests that more informative indices are needed. We propose an alternative approach, which identifies clusters of extreme decline (or increase) that differ statistically from the majority of population trends.We show that, of taxonomic–geographic systems in the Living Planet Index, 16 systems contain clusters of extreme decline (comprising around 1% of populations; these extreme declines occur disproportionately in larger animals) and 7 contain extreme increases (around 0.4% of populations). The remaining 98.6% of populations across all systems showed no mean global trend."

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2920-6

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ShelSilverstain t1_iuzsaon wrote

There's too many people. If we didn't even eat food or use fossil fuels, our impact on other species is nothing but selfish

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cutekitty1029 t1_iv051iu wrote

It's really lazy and harmful to just say "there's too many people" as though some poor subsistence farmer in the global south has the same culpability as a gas guzzling westerner with two cars and a meat based diet.

There are too many hyperconsumers in the west. That's the primary issue and driver of emissions and the thing we need to stop immediately.

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masala_mayhem t1_iv07cmk wrote

Thank you @cutekitty1029 for saying that. Have had an opportunity to travel across villages in rural India, sri lanka, Bangladesh and their impact on the planet is absolutely negligible when compared to the impact of the average Redditor.

Also, there are far too many hyper consumers everywhere - and now Manila and Mumbai want the same level of consumption as Manchester and Memphis. We need to cut down consumption

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Artanthos t1_iv0xh0c wrote

Any species will expand to the destruction of its environment without natural controls.

Humans are no exception.

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CaseyTS t1_iv11sp2 wrote

Yes, we all see this happening. The question is how to not do that as humans. We have made HUGE strides in the past century. Probably won't be enough, who knows. Certainly not you or me.

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ImJustSo t1_iv0xq4z wrote

Well, I'd like to point out the culpability of corporations as well...

Unchecked and unregulated corporations. They're "producers" of carnage and consumers of the planet to feed their profits. Nestle? Enron? Gazprom?

Corporations (and entire industries) give those "hyperconsumers" the means to consume their product.

The oil/auto industry murdered early public transportation and early EVs. If these leaches on society hadn't set up shop and pillaged the planet, then the United States would have passenger trains and bus access to every inch of the country without anymore impact than your neighbor and his neighbor and hers.

What about Nestle? Bottling water and selling it back to the people the steal it out from under?

I don't think people should be driving around real life Tonka trucks to their 9-5 jobs, but I don't think they should even exist in the first place. It's murder.

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TarantinoFan23 t1_iv0ez58 wrote

How about sports? Athletes should just be farmers.

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Mediocremon t1_iv0qn9a wrote

Make them play football with hoes strapped to their back, and move the field every day.

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ImJustSo t1_iv0ycex wrote

Push plows are a thing. Football sleds are also a thing. I feel that they're just a few nuts and bolts away from being a great way for rural football teams to help out their farming communities.

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Mediocremon t1_iv0yxgv wrote

We're solving world issues one goofy sport at a time.

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ImJustSo t1_iv10lrn wrote

Right to repair? Who needs tractors when you've got teenagers that want a state championship?

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Mediocremon t1_iv11ds1 wrote

The fight for the "right to repair" suddenly becomes "healthcare for all" to fix the broken child labourers

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