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The pope's encyclical, overpopulation and overconsumption
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On what grounds do you base the idea that biodiversity needs agriculture? The exact opposite is the case. The very purpose of agriculture is to make land useful to one single species only, as exclusively as possible: us. Everything which does not suit us is removed or driven out: that means the vast majority of species.Saying that agriculture introduces biodiversity is like saying criminal gangs introduce economic activity.
At the end of the Korean war in 1953, a demilitarised zone was set up between the two warring sides that stretches across the entire Korean peninsula (155 miles), and is 2.5 miles wide. All the people living and farming in the zone, most of which which had been devastated by fighting, were forced to move away. Countless landmines were placed, and the area was surrounded on both sides by masses of barbed wire, fences, machine gun nests, and other deterrents to anyone entering.
In the six decades since, the rest of the peninsula has seen its remaining natural habitats and wildlife annihilated, with burgeoning human populations on both sides: 23 million in the north, 50 million in the south. By way of contrast, the demilitarised zone (DMZ) has - without any human assistance whatsoever - turned into a wildlife paradise, containing all of the biodiversity that has disappeared on the rest of the peninsula. One of the rarest cats in the world, the Amur Leopard, is found there, along with 2,700 other species of plants and animals, including Asiatic Brown Bears, Lynx, and Siberian Tigers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1teeqm9cwY
The lesson from the Korean DMZ and elsewhere could not be clearer: all that wildlife needs to flourish in certain areas is for human activity to cease longterm. We may need to involve ourselves to limit some of the damage we ourselves have caused, such as controlling invasive exotic species we have introduced, or bringing back species we have made locally extinct. But otherwise the best thing we can do to enhance ecosystems is to cease interfering with them, and the larger the areas involved the better.
The idea that wildlife 'needs' agriculture to survive, or that habitats need to be 'managed' for the sake of biodiversity, flies completely in the face of logic, and all of the empirical evidence available.0 -
The lesson from the Korean DMZ and elsewhere could not be clearer: all that wildlife needs to flourish in certain areas is for human activity to cease longterm. We may need to involve ourselves to limit some of the damage we ourselves have caused, such as controlling invasive exotic species we have introduced, or bringing back species we have made locally extinct. But otherwise the best thing we can do to enhance ecosystems is to cease interfering with them, and the larger the areas involved the better.
The idea that wildlife 'needs' agriculture to survive, or that habitats need to be 'managed' for the sake of biodiversity, flies completely in the face of logic, and all of the empirical evidence available.
Just to to be clear: I'm not arguing here that people should be forcibly removed from large areas, or prevented from enjoying nature reserves. The former has happened on occasion, apparently starting with the very first national park ever set aside: Yellowstone, from which several native American groups are said to have been put out. Apart from the fact that it's unjustifiable on the grounds of human rights, it also has the very negative effect of turning people against conservation, bringing accusations of 'green colonialism' and so on.
It makes far more sense to persuade people to do things voluntarily, for example by providing alternative land in a less sensitive area ecologically, where necessary. That has been happening in some places in India, in order to open up corridors of wildlands linking fragmented reserves, and increase the genetic viability of the wildlife populations they contain, such as elephants and tigers.
And it's vital that Joe Public feels that nature reserves are 'his' or 'hers' to respectfully enjoy as much as anyone else, thereby bringing an identification with wild places and the wild things that live there. The latter is increasingly lacking among broad sections of people, who are growing up with less and less contact with the natural world - a massive problem for those of us for whom these things are important.
With my Korean post above, I was more trying to put to bed the notion that wildlife somehow 'needs' people to look after, or manage it. There is only one sense in which that is true: it does need people to protect it from human interference, exploitation, and destruction. In the DMZ that was inadvertently achieved by millions of landmines, turning a huge area into a big ecological experiment, with very clear results.
But given the will, there is no reason why we couldn't achieve similar results elsewhere by more pacific means.0 -
I'm not so sure - the standard of living, crime, corruption levels etc. are far more favourable in low density African countries like Botswana, Namibia and Gabon compared to the likes of Nigeria, Egypt etc.
We need to compare like with like. Botswana and Namibia's wealth is based on resources extraction. Precisely the green movement is discouraging. While Namibia also has a huge white minority which dramatically changes things also. The case remains that density of people is nearly always associated with innovation and economic growth. Just because those pockets of density may occur in states that have a lot of unpopulated lands does not change this.0 -
There is a substantial set of European biota that occurs due to human activity. Agriculture is necessary and perfectly sustainable if done correctly. You seem to be implying that agriculture thieves or is unjust like the way gangs do.Saying that agriculture introduces biodiversity is like saying criminal gangs introduce economic activity. Both are technically true but misleading.In Ireland, the biodiversity associated with agriculture was reasonably high in historical times but was very low compared to what was there before.
Biodiversity in Ireland before farming was probably pretty low so I would not assume this to be true but its hard to ascertain either way.0 -
Biodiversity in Ireland before farming was probably pretty low so I would not assume this to be true but its hard to ascertain either way.
If you mean modern farming, then you are very wrong.
As for historical biodiversity; Ireland has a very well documented history of great diversity of flora and fauna now sadly gone. The almost mono-culture of grass production in this country has left us with an extremely poor natural environment for diversity.0 -
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There is a substantial set of European biota that occurs due to human activity. Agriculture is necessary and perfectly sustainable if done correctly. You seem to be implying that agriculture thieves or is unjust like the way gangs do.
Biodiversity in Ireland before farming was probably pretty low so I would not assume this to be true but its hard to ascertain either way.
It is not at all hard to ascertain if you actually know anything about biodiversity and how it is measured. There are pollen and fragment records in bogs and in the soil that give us a fair idea of what was where and when. there are also historical records and we can tell from the remaining tiny fragments of relatively untouched land. Biodiversity in Ireland, in heavily farmed regions is now miniscule compared to what was there before and compared to farmed areas from 100 years ago. There were plant floras and bird lists made in Ireland that describe diversity from then.
Technically, there are species that are still associated with farming (although not many) but it is low compared to what was before and low compared to farmed ares in teh past.0 -
Agriculture is necessary and perfectly sustainable if done correctly. You seem to be implying that agriculture thieves or is unjust like the way gangs do.
Yes farming is necessary, and probably could be sustainable if it wasn't based almost entirely on fossil fuels and chemicals, and didn't have to try to supply food to an unsustainable and ever-increasing global human population.
I don't think anyone here has any real beef with farmers per se; most of them are just trying to survive like the rest of us. But neither can we ignore the fact that agriculture as it presently functions is one of the primary drivers of habitat and biodiversity loss right across the planet.0 -
You can't refer to before the last Ice Age as a baseline as the last Ice Age destroyed the vast majority of Irish biodiversity. In this case the amount of time that passed is too short for serious amounts of speciation and Ireland is probably too close to Europe for it to develop very differently then Europe. Thus a huge amount of biodiversity can only be attributed to human activity and our disappearance from Ireland would see the loss of some species. For example the corncrake, the grey partridge perhaps even the barn owl.In addition, the problem in Ireland is that very little is being done to promote the return of habitat, or species assemblages, resembling those which would have been here had people never arrived (with very
important exceptions, such as - no, especially - the raptor reintroductions). That is in stark contrast to what has been taking place in continental Europe, for example, partly because being an island hinders natural recolonisation by many species, but also because we have a much more blinkered attitude to extinct species, and to nature
in general.
Several thousand years, or tens of thousands of years, may seem a lot to us, but in evolutionary terms it's only a blip. Now, you say that anthropogenic landscapes have been around much longer in Ireland than the forests that were here before we arrived. But that is to consider natural history in Ireland as if it began only at the end of the last Ice Age. If we look at it from a longer perspective, that whole picture changes. The last Ice Age, and the present interglacial, are part of an ebb and flow that has lasted millions of years; seen in those, more
meaningful (from a non-human point of view), terms, a human dominated landscape in Ireland is only a recent thing.0 -
Look, no one is trying to say all species require human intervention. there are many species that require pure pristine wilderness. That is why we need more national parks, much more national parks. This has to be central to Green 2.0. However not all species are in this category. We have been transforming environments for hundreds of thousands of years. So there has been a huge amount of time for a process of co-evolution with some species. In some species that has allowed a dependence on humans to emerge.At the end of the Korean war in 1953, a demilitarised zone was set up between the two warring sides that stretches across the entire Korean peninsula (155 miles), and is 2.5 miles wide. All the people living and farming in the zone, most of which which had been devastated by fighting, were forced to move away. Countless landmines were placed, and the area was surrounded on both sides by masses of barbed wire, fences, machine gun nests, and other deterrents to anyone entering.
In the six decades since, the rest of the peninsula has seen its remaining natural habitats and wildlife annihilated, with burgeoning human populations on both sides: 23 million in the north, 50 million in the south. By way of contrast, the demilitarised zone (DMZ) has - without any human assistance whatsoever - turned into a wildlife paradise, containing all of the biodiversity that has disappeared on the rest of the peninsula. One of the rarest cats in the world, the Amur Leopard, is found there, along with 2,700 other species of plants and animals, including Asiatic Brown Bears, Lynx, and Siberian Tigers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1teeqm9cwY
The lesson from the Korean DMZ and elsewhere could not be clearer: all that wildlife needs to flourish in certain areas is for human activity to cease longterm. We may need to involve ourselves to limit some of the damage we ourselves have caused, such as controlling invasive exotic species we have introduced, or bringing back species we have made locally extinct. But otherwise the best thing we can do to enhance ecosystems is to cease interfering with them, and the larger the areas involved the better.
The idea that wildlife 'needs' agriculture to survive, or that habitats need to be 'managed' for the sake of biodiversity, flies completely in the face of logic, and all of the empirical evidence available.
I have been to the DMZ. Its a very precious piece of wilderness but I'd be a bit sceptical that tigers could survive in such a small strip to be honest.0 -
You can't refer to before the last Ice Age as a baseline as the last Ice Age destroyed the vast majority of Irish biodiversity. In the case the time is too short for serious amounts of speciation and Ireland is probably too close to Europe for it to develop so different to Europe. Thus a huge amount of biodiversity can only be attributed to human activity and our disappearance from Ireland would see the loss of further species. For example the corncrake, the grey partridge perhaps even the barn owl.
You totally lost me there. Biodiversity in Ireland is at it's lowest in thousands of years right now. It is also the lowest in 500 years and 100 years.
Are you seriously suggesting that human activity, and farming in particular, are responsible for maintaining a population of corncrake, partridge and barn owl and that they would be all the poorer if we weren't here. Explain please as I am honestly lost for words.0 -
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It is not at all hard to ascertain if you actually know anything about biodiversity and how it is measured. There are pollen and fragment records in bogs and in the soil that give us a fair idea of what was where and when. there are also historical records and we can tell from the remaining tiny fragments of relatively untouched land. Biodiversity in Ireland, in heavily farmed regions is now miniscule compared to what was there before and compared to farmed areas from 100 years ago. There were plant floras and bird lists made in Ireland that describe diversity from then.
The modern vs traditional farming is a separate issue. I am referring to biodiversity before people came to Ireland. If we counted the number of flora species today compared to say 100 years before the first farmers you'd find a higher plant count today. That is what I was referring too. We certainly have lost some important charismatic species and some keystone species but some of these might not have been native. Most Irish biodiversity loss is probably poorly known invertebrates species. Despite this Irish fauna and flora is impoverished.0 -
I can't imagine corncrakes existing if we weren't here. They depend on meadow and meadows (in Ireland) depend on people. While the barn owl diet's today is mostly species we brought in like rats, shrews, mice or voles. I am not saying these species would become globally extinct but they at the very least they would see a huge change in their distribution if we disappeared.Malakai Aggressive Chess wrote: »You totally lost me there. Biodiversity in Ireland is at it's lowest in thousands of years right now. It is also the lowest in 500 years and 100 years.
Are you seriously suggesting that human activity, and farming in particular, are responsible for maintaining a population of corncrake, partridge and barn owl and that they would be all the poorer if we weren't here. Explain please as I am honestly lost for words.
For the record my priority for Irish conservation would be encouraging very low interference forest.0 -
I can't imagine corncrakes existing if we weren't here. They depend on meadow and meadows (in ireland) depend on people. While the barn owl diet's today is mostly species we brought in like rats, shrews, mice or voles. I am not saying these species would become globally extinct but they at the very least they would see a huge change in their distribution if we disappeared.
BWI Barnowl report:
What part of modern human interference don't you get?The reasons for the Barn owls decline can most likely be attributed to the loss of suitable habitat due to various aspects of agricultural intensification and the increased use of harmful second generation anti-coagulant rodenticides. Other factors that have been implicated in their decline are the loss of suitable nest sites, an expansion of major road networks and the increased severity of winters.
Corncrake numbers in Ireland 400 years ago were many multiples of what they now are and that decline is 100% man-made.
And what meadows? We are systematically destroying what is left of them.0 -
I can't imagine corncrakes existing if we weren't here. They depend on meadow and meadows (in Ireland) depend on people. While the barn owl diet's today is mostly species we brought in like rats, shrews, mice or voles. I am not saying these species would become globally extinct but they at the very least they would see a huge change in their distribution if we disappeared.
For the record my priority for Irish conservation would be encouraging very low interference forest.
One of the biggest threats to Corncrake is land abandonment. If meadows are not mowed at least once every 2 years, they quickly become too rank and worthless. No people equals no corncrake. Flip it over and the biggest threats to corncrake are people. A rock and a hard place.0 -
Capercaillie wrote: »One of the biggest threats to Corncrake is land abandonment. If meadows are not mowed at least once every 2 years, they quickly become too rank and worthless. No people equals no corncrake. Flip it over and the biggest threats to corncrake are people. A rock and a hard place.
Hence the need for a balance. Modern agriculture rarely does balance.0 -
You can't refer to before the last Ice Age as a baseline as the last Ice Age destroyed the vast majority of Irish biodiversity.
I don't refer to before the last Ice Age - or any other moment in the past - as a baseline. What interests me is having fully-functional, biodiverse, ecosystems in some areas. The past is obviously going to be an essential reference point in any efforts to achieve that, for the very simple reason that the species that would have been found in this part of the world, i.e. northern Europe,* had we not arrived and changed things through extinction etc., had coevolved over 100s of 1,000s of years or more. It is coevolution between myriad organisms over long periods that produces rich biodiversity and ecosystems.
*Thinking in terms of a native 'Irish' fauna or flora probably isn't really so useful in this discussion, since those species that occured here when the first human settlers arrived were just the survivors of a massive wave of human-caused extinctions, particularly of megafauna, that took place in the pleistocene, as you yourself alluded to earlier on in this thread.Look, no one is trying to say all species require human intervention. there are many species that require pure pristine wilderness. That is why we need more national parks, much more national parks.
Couldn't agree more.We have been transforming environments for hundreds of thousands of years. So there has been a huge amount of time for a process of co-evolution with some species. In some species that has allowed a dependence on humans to emerge.
Other than in Africa, I don't see how we can have been transforming environments for 100s of 1,000s years, since our ancestors probably only left Africa c. 60,000 years ago or less.
But regardless of that, the fact that there is a desperate need for wild, rich, functional ecosytems to be allowed return in some places doesn't mean elsewhere we can't or shouldn't preserve those species - corncrake etc. - which have developed a strong association with human activites, such as more traditional farming practices.I have been to the DMZ. Its a very precious piece of wilderness but I'd be a bit sceptical that tigers could survive in such a small strip to be honest.
Tigers have been seen in the DMZ, though their numbers are probably small.0 -
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Capercaillie wrote: »A female tiger needs 250km2 to 450km2 to rear cubs. DMZ is 250km long by 4km wide, which is only 1000km2. Unlikely a viable population exists.
The South Korean countryside nearby is heavily forested so maybe ...
Its actually remarkable how much cover and forest exists in some super densely populated countries like Korea. Its true where ever there are hills. In contrast their lowlands are very intensively farmed. In a way, it could be a vision of the distant future of European farming.0 -
Capercaillie wrote: »A female tiger needs 250km2 to 450km2 to rear cubs. DMZ is 250km long by 4km wide, which is only 1000km2. Unlikely a viable population exists.The lesson from the Korean DMZ and elsewhere could not be clearer: all that wildlife needs to flourish in certain areas is for human activity to cease longterm. We may need to involve ourselves to limit some of the damage we ourselves have caused, such as controlling invasive exotic species we have introduced, or bringing back species we have made locally extinct. But otherwise the best thing we can do to enhance ecosystems is to cease interfering with them, and the larger the areas involved the better.
The idea that wildlife 'needs' agriculture to survive, or that habitats need to be 'managed' for the sake of biodiversity, flies completely in the face of logic, and all of the empirical evidence available.
The DMZ wasn't designed as a refuge for tigers or for any other species, so obviously it's not going to be ideal. The bigger an area given over to wildlife is, the better, as I said above. And the main reason for that is that large carnivores, which are utterly essential to the long-term health and functionality of ecosystems, need lots of space for viable populations, as you point out regarding tigers. But fragmentation of landscapes by human action has detrimental effects on other species too.
Of all of the national parks in the US and Canada, only a single one hasn't lost mammal species such as Lynx, Wolves, Skunk, Mink, Otters, Fox, various species of deer, etc. since being founded: the combined area of Kootenay, Banff, Jasper and Yoho in Canada, an area of over 7,700 square miles. The smaller the park, the more species have usually been lost; for e.g., River Otter, Ermine, Mink, and Spotted Skunk have disappeared from Crater Lake NP in Oregon, which is 248 square miles. The implications of such facts are enormous for those who seek to protect wildlife anywhere in the world. MacArthur and Wilsons' Theory of Island Biogeography provides the basic scientific understanding of the problem of fragmentation.
The point I was making by mentioning the DMZ is that it accidentally demonstrates extremely well something else: that generally all that wildlife needs to flourish is an absence of human activity and interference. The same thing appears to have happened in the area around Chernobyl. Although some species may have been adversely affected by radiation (as with animals being killed or maimed by landmines in the DMZ), overall they are far better off than in the surrounding territories, simply because almost all of the people have left. As with the Korean DMZ, there is talk of turning the area into a national park in the future.0 -
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Malakai Aggressive Chess wrote: »What part of modern human interference don't you get?
In fairness I do think that in order to properly understand our present predicament we need to be aware that humans have always impacted negatively on wildlife, the size of that impact in early times being proportionate to population size and technology. Hence the Pleistocene extinctions as human development in general, and hunting techniques in particular, made the so-called 'Great Leap Forward' about 60,000 years ago.
It's important to understand this, because otherwise there is a risk of looking nostalgically to a past when 'people lived in harmony with their environment' that never existed.0 -
In fairness I do think that in order to properly understand our present predicament we need to be aware that humans have always impacted negatively on wildlife, the size of that impact in early times being proportionate to population size and technology. Hence the Pleistocene extinctions as human development in general, and hunting techniques in particular, made the so-called 'Great Leap Forward' about 60,000 years ago.
It's important to understand this, because otherwise there is a risk of looking nostalgically to a past when 'people lived in harmony with their environment' that never existed.
Hang on. As a lifelong student of Nature and history, I am perfectly aware of Ireland's natural history. For me modern does not mean the past 100 years: I mean much older than that.
As we were discussing Irish biodiversity your recourse to the Great leap forward is moot.
I am certainly not nostalgic for a recent idyll. I accept we have gotten worse in Ireland in the past 150 years but that was not the era I was referring to by a long shot.
With that I'm out of this thread as people seem determined to argue just for the sake of it. I'm off to do some work to actually protect some species now.0 -
Malakai Aggressive Chess wrote: »Hang on. As a lifelong student of Nature and history, I am perfectly aware of Ireland's natural history. For me modern does not mean the past 100 years: I mean much older than that.
As we were discussing Irish biodiversity your recourse to the Great leap forward is moot.
I am certainly not nostalgic for a recent idyll. I accept we have gotten worse in Ireland in the past 150 years but that was not the era I was referring to by a long shot.
With that I'm out of this thread as people seem determined to argue just for the sake of it. I'm off to do some work to actually protect some species now.
I've seen some of your posts Malakai Aggressive Chess, and it's obvious to me that you are not only a serious student of nature - and have been for far longer than me, for that matter - but that you are passionate, committed, and are not afraid to get down and work in a concrete and practical way at the coal face(s). As such you deserve nothing but respect. So if you feel these discussions are only about arguing for its own sake, I'm sincerely sorry to hear that.
However I disagree that these issues are unimportant. I feel that understanding past human interaction with the natural world is absolutely fundamental to an understanding of where we're at now, and how to go forward in a way that has a chance of conserving what remains and, even better, bringing back some of what has been lost.
Talk of the great leap forward, pleistocene extinctions etc., may seem irrelevent, but these things are actually crucial to: a realisation of how we characteristically behave as species towards the natural world; to just how much has been lost; and to just how long that has been going on for. The reason for my post #52 was that in a couple of your posts in this thread you specifically mentioned 'modern' human interference or agriculture as the problem, implying that earlier human activities didn't impact catastrophically on the natural world, which they clearly did.
Now, I'm off to do some work to actually protect species too!0 -
The modern vs traditional farming is a separate issue. I am referring to biodiversity before people came to Ireland. If we counted the number of flora species today compared to say 100 years before the first farmers you'd find a higher plant count today. That is what I was referring too. We certainly have lost some important charismatic species and some keystone species but some of these might not have been native. Most Irish biodiversity loss is probably poorly known invertebrates species. Despite this Irish fauna and flora is impoverished.
Ehhh the 100 years ago vs. today is kind of what we were originally arguing about.
Remember? We were arguing about human population growth and its effects.
One effect that we have seen over the past 100 years is a disastrous loss of biodiversity. Another is potentially catastrophic environment damage such as climate change. Agriculture is a major driver of climate change and is much more so now than 100 years ago, through habitat change and the greenhouse gasses from livestock. Agriculture may indeed have species associated with farming but these are now very few and reducing fast.0 -
Ehhh the 100 years ago vs. today is kind of what we were originally arguing about.
Remember? We were arguing about human population growth and its effects.
One effect that we have seen over the past 100 years is a disastrous loss of biodiversity. Another is potentially catastrophic environment damage such as climate change. Agriculture is a major driver of climate change and is much more so now than 100 years ago, through habitat change and the greenhouse gasses from livestock. Agriculture may indeed have species associated with farming but these are now very few and reducing fast.
Yes farming 100 years ago vs. today is very relevant to biodiversity loss but not for the specific issue I was examine (i.e the biodiversity of present vs unpopulated Ireland either a hypothetical one or 8,000BC before people came').
The huge changes that have come with modern farming has been a huge driver of biodiversity loss. But new ways of arming is not all bad. The plus of these changes is the elimination of food insecurity in huge swathes of the globe. So I would say change is inevitable but I don't all the species lost through changes in farming were inevitably a lost cause and I hope the powers at be learn from their mistakes.0 -
Yes farming 100 years ago vs. today is very relevant to biodiversity loss but not for the specific issue I was examine (i.e the biodiversity of present vs unpopulated Ireland either a hypothetical one or 8,000BC before people came').
The huge changes that have come with modern farming has been a huge driver of biodiversity loss. But new ways of arming is not all bad. The plus of these changes is the elimination of food insecurity in huge swathes of the globe. So I would say change is inevitable but I don't all the species lost through changes in farming were inevitably a lost cause and I hope the powers at be learn from their mistakes.
These losses through agriculture are also happening at a time of unbelievable environmental stress and habitat loss in general. We are losing species at an accelerating rate and the great miracle of modern farming might not be sustainable and might be wrecking our climate. A cow has a much greater effect on the climate than a car and the productivity miracle relies heavily on fossil fuels. And what for? A global pyramid scheme to fuel economic success?0 -
Well this is an interesting one that you hear now and again. The methane from a cow has a stronger global warming effect than the CO2 from a car. So the small amount of methane from a cow does have nearly the effect of a car, though slightly less.A cow has a much greater effect on the climate than a car
But there is much more methane produced from natural wetlands than from ruminants. And there is as much produced from rice paddyfields as from cows.
The other aspect of it is the length of the cycle. Methane breaks down in the atmosphere. So if all methane production stopped today, there would be none in the atmosphere after a few months. There is no danger of it building up there permanently. At the same time, every extra cow does add to it, because the rate at which it breaks down is still the same. Possibly the rate of breakdown could be increased artificially by pumping ozone into the atmosphere, which reacts with the methane.
The thing about fossil fuels is that we are releasing C02 back into the atmosphere that was taken out of it millions of years ago. So levels of that are building up.
The most dangerous thing of all is to release stored methane (and C02) from the permafrosted wetlands in the northern latitudes, the tundra. Which will happen as these areas warm, even only slightly, thereby triggering an accelerating chain reaction.0 -
Well this is an interesting one that you hear now and again. The methane from a cow has a stronger global warming effect than the CO2 from a car. So the small amount of methane from a cow does have nearly the effect of a car, though slightly less.
To relate these issues back to one of the central questions of this thread, population, here's an interesting way of looking at things arising from a study reported by the New York Times:
"Take, for example, a hypothetical American woman who switches to a more fuel-efficient car, drives less, recycles, installs more efficient light bulbs, and replaces her refrigerator and windows with energy-saving models. If she has two children, the researchers found, her carbon legacy would eventually rise to nearly 40 times what she had saved by those actions."
(Kate Galbraith, 'Having Children Brings High Carbon Impact', NYT, Aug. 7, 2009.)
As a parent of two kids myself, I would be found guilty as charged. And the carbon footprint is only one of many ways that having children impacts negatively on the natural world.
But perhaps there's another possible angle to this: if only those people who are insensitive to the natural world have kids, wouldn't that guarantee that future generations care less and less about non-human life? I suppose the latter is true only to the extent that we manage to actually transmit a love of nature to our kids, which isn't always easy in a world stuffed with cheap disposable plastic toys, t.v., computer games, all sorts of other meaningless rubbish and, not least, peer pressure to conform all through the school years.The most dangerous thing of all is to release stored methane (and C02) from the permafrosted wetlands in the northern latitudes, the tundra. Which will happen as these areas warm, even only slightly, thereby triggering an accelerating chain reaction.
That's already happening at an alarming rate: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/30_months_h/0 -
I would not agree with the 2 children thing though. Replacement rate is around 2.1 children I think, per childrearing family (to take account of those who don't have any) So at 2 children, that is still a declining population = a lowering CO2 emissions. This is the kind of situation they have in Japan, where there is very little immigration.0
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As a parent of two kids myself, I would be found guilty as charged. And the carbon footprint is only one of many ways that having children impacts negatively on the natural world.I would not agree with the 2 children thing though. Replacement rate is around 2.1 children I think, per childrearing family (to take account of those who don't have any) So at 2 children, that is still a declining population = a lowering CO2 emissions.
So do you think it's time I stopped beating up on myself about my mispent irresponsible youth now?0
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