Reverse Nature's Decline or There is No Future, UN Says - Slashdot
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Reverse Nature's Decline or There is No Future, UN Says
Reverse Nature's Decline or There is No Future, UN Says (bbc.com) 89
Posted by msmash
on Thursday December 08, 2022 @11:00AM from the closer-look dept.The United Nations' biodiversity chief says global talks under way in Montreal are the "last chance" to reverse the destruction of the natural world. From a report: "Biodiversity is the foundation of life. Without it, there is no life," Elizabeth Maruma Mrema told BBC Radio 4's Inside Science programme. But she is worried about the amount of work still needed for the 196 countries to reach an agreement. The Global Biodiversity Framework, if agreed, represents fundamental change. It is the nature equivalent of the Paris Agreement, an international treaty to limit global temperature rise and arrest the climate crisis. "The targets in that [Global Biodiversity Framework] are a roadmap to, by 2030, reverse and halt the loss of biodiversity, which has reached rates unprecedented in the history of humankind" Ms Mrema said. The list of 20 targets includes quantifiable aims, such as a call for 30% of the Earth's land and sea to be conserved through the establishment of protected areas. But it also includes trickier political issues, such as protecting the rights and access of indigenous people to their territories. Indigenous communities are custodians of an estimated 85% of the world's biodiversity -- and where they have rights and access, it is significantly better protected from degradation and damage.
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"Biodiversity is the foundation of life. Without it, there is no life," Elizabeth Maruma Mrema told BBC Radio 4's Inside Science programme. But she is worried about the amount of work still needed for the 196 countries to reach an agreement.
I got downmodded hard for saying that COP27 was going to be another big jerkoff waste of time as world leaders came together to look busy. Do you know what the single largest group of people was at COP27? Fossil fuel lobbyists [theguardian.com]. They shouldn't even be there. They have literally no place in the discussion of what to do about them, because they literally never operate in good faith.
As long as we pretend that AGW is not an existential threat, there's nothing we can do about it. We will keep making decisions on a profit basis, and fund our own demise day by day, until it is obvious to the dumbest among us that it is too late. And it might already in fact be too late, and we're still arguing about whether we should do anything.
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by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08, 2022 @11:11AM (#63113506)
We all perish as individuals.
I will be no more troubled if we perish as a species.
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I don't particularly care about the species, except insofar as I'm a member of it and not a particularly privileged one, so I expect to suffer a lot more than the people causing the problems.
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Oh really? You live better today than John D Rockefeller did at his peak.
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Except: We won't.
Those same billionaires will find a suitable place for luxury mansions and a way to keep enough "consumers" alive to feed them no matter what hellish state the planet gets into.
Consumers don't need wildlife or nature, they'll be fine living in plastic and eating junk food forever.
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Maybe. The very atmosphere is less hospitable to life than it used to be. You know we're past the point at which people actually get dumber and more anxious due to CO2, right? Everyone is noticeably affected at 1000 ppm, but that doesn't mean there's no effects in the 400s, and some people are more affected than others. The rich are, for the most part, breathing the same air as the rest of us — and not smart enough to maintain systems like that, so they're dependent on staff. And at some point, you h
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Interesting... Particularly given that submarines typically operate with CO2 levels more than twice that, and "Acute Exposure to Low-to-Moderate Carbon Dioxide Levels and Submariner Decision Making" [nih.gov] (Aerosp Med Hum Perform. 2018 Jun 1;89(6):520-525. doi: 10.3357/AMHP.5010.2018, Christopher D Rodeheffer, Sarah Chabal, John M Clarke, David M Fothergill) was unable to replicate previously-claimed cognitive impairment at CO2 concentrations as high as 15,000 ppm.
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We all die; it sucks.
However, humanity -- or at least the good parts -- is worth keeping around.
We can always make ourselves better.
No point giving up just because of personal mortality.
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That's a very Human-centric view. Sure, we could make ourselves better, but the probability is no higher than a random money improving it's tool using skill.
There are in fact very few parts of humanity that is good and worth keeping. Take the last half millennium of Western history - take away the wars (especially the religious wars - literal ones) war industry, slavery, exploitation, destroying the environment,... and what do you have left? You might say how about technology, industrial revolution! Let
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There are in fact very few parts of humanity that is good and worth keeping.
We agree here, but without humanity, those parts will not exist.
Yes, the industrial revolution had its horrors, but people now live better lives. Our quest at this point is to figure out how to keep our advances without destroying nature or self-destructing civilization.
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Yes, the elites of humanity live better (and I consider myself to be at the very bottom of these elites), at the expense of the majority of humans and at huge cost to the vast majority of species.
As I say, Humanity has some good stuff, in the Human-centric view.
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Do you have children or care about other peoples' children. I for one am happy to be born and given the priceless gift of life on earth, and am very troubled about our species future.
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You didn't care before you were born, and you won't care after you're dead. Non-existence has a way of being completely void of everything.
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Yep, pretty much. The fossil-criminals should have all been lined against a wall a long time ago to honor their contribution adequately. Instead they are still running the show and all over the planet, bizarre death-cults are bowing to their every whim.
My personal evaluation, taking into account what has been done or not and looking at the present mindset is that this is pretty much over. There may be some pockets of humanity that can survive what is to come, but there will not be any high-tech civilization
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And it will be the fault of all those that now claim there is no problem or we are in no hurry to do anything effective.
Not the people whose need for tax revenue to fund entitlements created unrestricted growth?
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That never happened. There is no need for unrestricted growth to fund entitlements, just to tax the rich the same as the rest of us
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Indeed, the need for unrestricted growth comes from the stock market. It enables people to make money in the market without doing any useful work.
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It enables people to make money in the market without doing any useful work.
Not trying to Godwin a discussion, but that was the National Socialist position against usury.
It has a point, but I don't like their methods at all. Bureaucracy and butchery, what a feast of stupidity!
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The problem is the top 1%, who own 27% of the wealth.
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Even if you extract all of their wealth, that will not offset our $3trillion a year budget and $30trillion+ debt.
This group seems to be mostly people earning over $500k/year [bloomberg.com].
Most of those are your doctors, lawyers, and CEOs. Do we want to penalize excellence?
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Marginal utility of money is in fact a thing, the top 20% pay more because they can afford to pay more.
Compared to similar developed nations a 37.5% top bracket is actually one of the lower tax rates.
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I'm not sure what you said there. You're saying that politicians are bowing to the fossil fuel industry because they need the tax revenue they get from fossil fuels?
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You're saying that politicians are bowing to the fossil fuel industry because they need the tax revenue they get from fossil fuels?
More broadly, the voters (through politicians) created a system dependent on growth because they need funding for entitlements (financial or in-kind gifts directly to citizens).
The more free stuff, the more tax money is needed, therefore the more people are needed.
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You might want to check out the subsidies for CO2 emitters. Especially fossil fuels.
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That's not what the word "entitlements" means. The largest "entitlements" in the US budget are benefits that people are entitled to because they paid for them, such as social security.
If the US really wanted to cut its budget, we could decide to have a military budget that's only as large as the next three nations put together, instead of the next ten. But the people who are interested in cutting the budget don't actually want to look at the budget.
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My personal evaluation, taking into account what has been done or not and looking at the present mindset is that this is pretty much over. There may be some pockets of humanity that can survive what is to come, but there will not be any high-tech civilization ever again on this planet
I'm not sure what your "personal evaluation" is based on, since I don't see science-based predictions saying this will be the end of civilization.
Things to consider:
1. Climate change due to the greenhouse effect is real. The science is well validated by measurements.
2. Climate change will have bad effects. It's already too late to make the effects zero, but we can, if we take positive actions, reduce the effects.
3. No, it's not the end of the civilization.For a look at the real world climate change effects, I continue to recommend the IPCC reports: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar4... [www.ipcc.ch]
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Well, all I can add is that you are one of those responsible.
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One of the 7.9 billion people responsible, to be precise, but yes.
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There is no much that can be done as the world population is 8 billion and growing. The resources are scarce, and, when presented with the choice of short-term survival or saving the planet, majority will chose short-term survival. We can postpone the inevitable but without population controls it is all in vain. But cheer up: while extinction-like event is likely, I expect humans will survive as species.
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conservatives self-describing as liberals, like Joe Biden
That is an interesting and nuanced view. I am not sure he is a conservative per se, but he does not seem to be a liberal, despite his support for many programs that the Communists also adored.
The best birth control is education, but the conservatives depend on poor education to get votes so they always attack it.
Education is a massive federal bureaucracy that produces liberals, so I think that is more their motivation. Those liberals often have later-
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There is no much that can be done as the world population is 8 billion and growing.
There are tons of things that could be done, if we could kick out the pricks profiting from our demise. As long as the destroyers are calling the shots, the only probable outcome is destruction.
The resources are scarce
Which resources? We're using extractive rather than regenerative farming practices not because it has to be that way, but because of greed. I suspect this planet could support significantly more people if we chose a more sustainable development model.
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The planet could support significantly more people if you put everyone in tiny houses feeding on protein mix. But, come on, we cannot even force homeless into shelters.
"The destroyers" are merely reacting to market forces. There are things we could try covertly or by force. For example, eugenics or population control. However, would you publicly support adding compounds to tap water to reduce sperm counts or tweaking vaccines to increase infertility rates?-
However, would you publicly support adding compounds to tap water to reduce sperm counts or tweaking vaccines to increase infertility rates?
I would support free sterilization for anyone who wants it, plus a government pension for anyone who is sterile/infertile, even if they're still working.
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You're saying like that's not already happening. Sperm counts *are* plummeting, reasons unknown, and the less is said here about the current batch of "vaccination" (mRNA doesn't count as that) , the better.
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Population is a red herring now, population levels are decoupled from pollution in most countries and most of the damage that got us here was done with less than half of the current population.
It's not a matter or resources being scarce, just a matter of using the wrong resources which happen to be kept artificially scarce for the profit of a few.
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That decision was made decades ago and the consensus of every country (but China) is:
We're all-in on Simon https://www.genolve.com/design... [genolve.com]
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wow if I could mod up to 6 I would. Totally 100% agree.
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We knew this was going to happen decades ago. It's just human nature to not act until it's too late. 1.5C? We're going to go way over that - somewhere between 3C and 5C.
When wet bulb temperatures go over body temps and you can no longer cool yourself by sweating, and you need to keep your cattle indoors in air conditioning, and your crops wilt under the sun, you're dead - you just don't know it yet.
We vastly overshot permanent human carrying capacity of the planet - now nature will correct it and we'll
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You got that wrong IMHO - experience taught me that only a small group of people are capable of recognizing and admitting their own mistakes, the cynical culprits ones will use their acquired wealth to protect themselves as long as possible, some others will keep lying to themselves, blaming others and creating fantasy stories to protect their ego - that's how the brain is in general wired, look back at the human history - in times of trouble there was always someone else to blame, and any voice of reason w
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There's a sci-fi out there with a scene on their equivalent of a sit-com making fun of this time period. The scene is of a dude that just bought a new laptop and is asked what the first thing was he did with it. "Turned off all that power saving bullshit because fuck the planet. We all gotta die sometime. Just as well do it together!"
That seems to be our plan at the moment. Some of us lesser creatures that the big decision makers barely notice are constantly told to save energy, while they all fly on privat
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