evidence for 1950 as the turning point, showing that a 20th century paradigm for conservation no longer applies:
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fundamental invalidity of a-priori ecological models:
http://daneshyari.com/article/preview/5130516.pdf
I think there is a solution, at least in theory. But there is no historical precedence, and change certainly doesn't come overnight (if ever) when you're trying to change something that hasn't changed since the industrial revolution.
Not to sound dramatic, but the solution would be to change the only way of life that we know. In practical terms this would probably mean some pretty mundane-sounding methods like better waste management in large parts of the world becoming a norm, along with the transformation of industries and cultures to become less invasive and burdening to the planet's wildlife and environment.
Easier said than done, for sure. But we have the means for change and for anything we want, all because we are human.
This would require a global authoritarian regime and would almost undoubtedly lead to mass famine.
We are just burning through all of our resources and sooner or later we're gonna run out and be stuck here on a now ruined planet because we got too greedy.
I don't think we'll ever make it to colonizing space.
Modern medicine and similar genuinely life-improving advancements don't have nearly as much of an impact as our wasteful, consumerist ways, which serve no purpose other than convenience, laziness or lust for luxury.
Species aren't going extinct because we want a cure for cancer or to increase our longevity, they are because we want to eat meat every day, because we want the comfort of individual cars instead of public transportation, because we want to buy better and faster high tech wares regularly rather than robust, long lasting stuff once. Because companies stand to profit a lot more by selling disposable shit than buy-it-for-life items, because they have everything to gain by manipulating you to make you want crap you don't need.
If everything in our society was genuinely done to improve our common lot in life and health, we wouldn't have an ecological crisis in the first place.
Right now humans produce a huge margin more goods than they consume, and they consume another huge margin more than they need to live comfortably, which is more than what is required for simple survival. "How will a sustainable consumption of resources support all the people" isn't even a problem to consider. There's plenty enough if we're smart and modest, which we're not.
The real problem is how do we change society so that people will stop wasting nature and resources.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/10/have-we-really-killed-60-percent-animals-1970/574549/
This was an interesting article that showed up on my browser home-page. As dire as the situation is, it should come as no surprise that much of the media - which tends to be rather scientifically illiterate - has been sensationalizing the claims of this study while disregarding a lot of the specific nuance (we saw the results of this play in this actual thread, because a lot of people took the headline in the OP literally, despite the fact that it's not accurate if taken that way). Among other things, the study only collated estimates from only 6.4 percet of the total number of vertebrate species, and then adjusted the final figures to account for any biases in the data. That resulted in a final figure of 60 percent decline in vertebrate population on AVERAGE - which means that at least some of the species are likely increasing in population.
Why is this important? To quote the article:
Bottom line: Things are bad. One could argue, then, that it is unnecessarily pedantic to correct the 60 percent figure. Why nitpick in the face of catastrophe? Surely what matters is waking people up, and if an inexactly communicated statistic can do that, isn’t that okay?I don’t think it is. Especially now, in an era when conspiracy theories run rampant and lies flow readily from the highest seats of government, it’s more important than ever for those issuing warnings about the planet’s fate to be precise about what they mean. Characterizing the problem, and its scope, correctly matters. If accuracy can be ignored for the sake of a gut punch, we might as well pull random numbers out of the ether. And notably, several news organizations, such as Vox and NBC,managed to convey the alarming nature of the Living Planet Index while accurately stating its findings. The dichotomy between precision and impact is a false one.
But still, all that damage within the span of only 40 years sounds extremely alarming. Like holy fuck.
Oh man do these edgy fatalist shitposts get old.
Stop hunting animals, and this won't happen.
This isn't "capitalism", the blame isn't that easy to pin. This is an issue with ANY market system. This is the result of externalities going completely unchecked/being improperly checked in many sectors.
Total free market capitalism could be to blame if that were what is in place; but it isn't in any developed country. We need to step up regularlation on pollution and make sure that the market is actually adjusting for the true costs of production.
Current implementations of Capitalism around the world are absolutely to blame. We don't have a 'full free market' but it doesn't matter. The style of Capitalism pursued since the 80s is heavily consumption based, with freedom being the choice of where to spend your wage, personal responsibility, personal consumption, more markets, less government - even now the mindset associated with this has largely been ingrained into people as common sense. The way it all works has become less of a style and more of a forced fact, you can see as much in degree Economics courses. Just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of carbon emissions, and despite developing countries, the richest 10% in the world are overwhelmingly responsible for carbon emissions. The WWF report rightly points this out - it's "exploding human consumption" fuelling the crisis.
What is the crucial link between the culture, economics and production models we have today? I'm becoming increasingly convinced that there is no happy and ideal solution to this.
Taxation. It really is as simple as forcing companies to upright and personally face the true costs associated with production.
Because companies don't have a long history of avoiding taxation like the plague and finding the scummiest ways to bypass them.
Taxes aint gonna stop them from avoidance and lobbying to get them lowered.
Just accept that there are inherent flaws in a system designed for infinite expansion on a finite planet. Weve wasted too much time trying to reform or humanize a system that is cold and inhuman. Even temprorary fixes eventually lead back into corruption and crashes.
Captialism did this.
Highly alarming, but a sensationalist headline.
The use of the word extinct here is pretty misleading. Tactics like that only discredit what is a real issue.
If you're just going to assume that companies will cheat and avoid the law no matter what, then literally all systems are equally invalid.
Regulation might often be subverted... but even more commonly, it is followed. The vast majority of corporations fall at least close to legal parameters laid out.
Every time we regulate it it stays hospitable for a while and then reverts to its natural state.
see the great depression, gilded age, 2008, etc
Have we? History has shown that any tack ons you attempt to make to capitalism always have it tend back towards baseline given enough time. Most Social Democracies have unfortunately failed besides a few prospering examples. Not necessarily due to the system not working (though that has been the case in some places), but more because of how democracy works. Even in the Nordic states there is a rising anti socdem sentiment.
The amount of change required in such a short amount of time, the huge amount of immediate and drastic international cooperation and probably, the subversion of democracy required to achieve this would beg the question, why are we doing this again? Why Capitalism even?
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