Note that the human caused Holocene Extinction[1], among the 7 largest mass extinctions in the entire history of multi-celular life on Earth, is ongoing.
I've just finished watching the 'Planet Earth III' series, and it was quite shocking to see our impact on our planets biodiversity. I knew it was bad, but seeing, and hearing it told, in the amazing way only Sir David can deliver, was quite another level of shocking.
Moss may have caused the late Ordovician mass extinction, trees, and flowering plants both likely caused huge ecological changes when they evolved and spread, but I don’t know if they caused the mass extinctions that are roughly correlated to their rise.
As trees first appeared there was no organism that would have the adaptation to eat wood, so dead trees just piled and piled on for millions of years forming what we now dig out as coal. I think that roughly correlates with the Devonian extinction.
Flowers were supposedly one of the many factors wiping out the dinosaurs (aside from asteroid impacts and Deccan Traps), reducing the food supply for herbivores by outcompeting existing flora.
I love this hypothesis but it's mostly been disproven recently. Fungi were able to degrade it almost immediately
I did some reading and it seems the actual potential mass extinction caused by trees was this: Their roots/mycorrhiza dug deep into the earth and brought up large amounts of phosphorus. Occassional mudslides or other events would then cause this soil to slide into the ocean and create an algae bloom which deprived the ocean of oxygen. Very similar to what's happening today with agricultural runoff of fertilizers
Everyone needs their preferred brand of fear-porn I guess, but this one doesn't work on me. I believe in the ingenuity of Humanity to keep itself alive no matter the environmental challenges.
It's the "ingenuity of Humanity" that's causing the collapse, is it not? Our intelligence, or ingenuity, has outpaced our wisdom. Surely the advent of thermonuclear weapons, biological weapons, poisoning ourselves and our ecosystem, is a hint that our little branch of the evolutionary tree is beset with peril of our clever little hands and brains.
Tofu of all things doesn't really need to be synthetic. It's the meat eaters who are putting tons of time and effort into making their unsustainable diet possible with synthetic replacements.
> among the 7 largest mass extinctions in the entire history of multi-celular life on Earth
I strongly dispute this. Mass extinctions in the fossil record are typically measured at the family level, yes? Most of the then-extant species wouldn't even have been recorded.
If we were in the equivalent of one of the major mass extinctions it would be a "put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye" situation. We wouldn't be worried about the survival of uncommon animals. We'd be worried if rats were going extinct.
You misunderstand. It can't be true because if it were, the current situation would be vastly worse than it actually is. Ancient mass extinctions were almost unimaginably terrible. It's not that the current situation is ok.
Other than the infamous K-T extinction, most (all?) other mass extinction events unfolded over millions of years. Humanity managed to wipe out most of large animals in, like what, 10,000 years?
It's like watching a two hour horror movie and, thirty seconds in, you exclaim "Oh come on nobody died yet! I'm sure this will be very boring."
The current human caused ecological catastrophe is obviously slower than, e.g. a meteor impact or supervolcano blocking out the sun caused global ecological catastrophe, but that doesn't mean the ultimate effects won't be just as bad, even if we're not fully experiencing them yet.
Yes, the current situation could become much worse. But it's not committed to that, and it's not yet in that state. If it were, we wouldn't be having this conversation, as the game would already be over.
The effects of these type of events take a while to be fully realized, even when you are past the point of no return, e.g. where the species populations are too low to overcome the genetic bottleneck and survive long term, but aren't yet extinct.
If you were actually in most historical mass extinction events, I'd also say they seemed "not that bad yet" for quite a long time after the point of no return, much longer than all of human history even in some cases.
This is mere presumption, then, that the current experience will turn into something that is as bad as a mass extinction. It's also defeatism of the rankest kind. That outcome cannot both be inherent in the present and also avoidable.
It already is a large extinction event. It is also still possible to massively affect how much worse it gets, and the chances that our species is ultimately included in the extinction.
It’s not defeatist to acknowledge reality- it is necessary to choose a realistic course of action. "If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle" -Sun Tzu
Look at Figure 2 to see where we are now compared to past mass extinction events. We're well below the 75% of all species threshold, but that criteria is for a time frame of 2 million years in length. We can only guess at the future, we can't for example say for sure which species are already past the point of no return when they aren't yet extinct.
People have a really hard time with things that exist on cosmic scales. We tend to think within the frame of a single human lifetime. 100 years is a long time for us. 1000 is so long that we don't even expect to have much information. 10,000 years might as well be 1 million for all we distinguish.
There is about as much time between the Tyrannosaurus Rex and humans than between the Tyrannosaurus Rex and Stegosaurus. If we took the entirety of the planet's existence and mapped it out on a single year, all of humanity takes place in the last 25 minutes of the last day. All of recorded history takes place in the thirty seconds before midnight on December 31st.
The Triassic/Jurassic extinction event took place "in less than 10,000 years". That's longer than recorded history. The KT extinction took place over 5000 years.
So "quick" is relative. We think in terms of weeks or months or years. But we're talking about a process that takes centuries or millennia.
Some particularly harrowing quotes from the linked Wikipedia article which make clear the scale of the current situation:
> The contemporary rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than the background extinction rate, the historically typical rate of extinction (in terms of the natural evolution of the planet); also, the current rate of extinction is 10 to 100 times higher than in any of the previous mass extinctions in the history of Earth.
> A 2018 study published in PNAS found that since the dawn of human civilization, the biomass of wild mammals has decreased by 83%.
> The World Wide Fund for Nature's 2020 Living Planet Report says that wildlife populations have declined by 68% since 1970
> A 2023 study published in Biological Reviews found that, of 70,000 monitored species, some 48% are experiencing population declines from anthropogenic pressures, whereas only 3% have increasing populations.
And finally, with regards to rats:
> Bramble Cay melomys were declared extinct in June 2016.
> Even worst cases of climate change and habitat destruction won't match historical mass extinction events.
Probably true, but it may just be the timescale is different.
> But there are a lot of people who are weirdly invested in humanity causing a mass extinction.
Well, we are causing mass extinctions! Just because it's not as bad as the dinosaurs got it doesn't mean it's not bad. And I love the natural world, why would I be anything other than invested in this ongoing tragedy, even if the eventual ceiling of our destruction isn't quite meteor-level outcomes?
That aside, ask yourself why so many people are aghast at the idea that humanity isn't causing a mass extinction. Is it really because they love nature? Does ranting about how awful humanity is help?
Anyway, if you really want to conserve nature, you should be positive. Some conservation efforts have succeeded. Focus on those and build on them; don't spend time ranting about how awful humanity is. I'm not saying you're doing that, but it is common to see.
Okay, sure. I'll define it as species going extinct at 50x or more the typical background rate. We're somewhere in the 100-1000x space. You want to define it differently and come to a different conclusion then so be it.
> why so many people are aghast at the idea that humanity isn't causing a mass extinction
I'll answer for me: it's the shock and dismay that the evidence is so abundant and multifactorial as to momentarily deprive me of hope that we'll take action on a timescale that prevents such destruction.
> Anyway, if you really want to conserve nature, you should be positive.
No, I (and you) should be active. I don't have to plaster a smile on my face as the ocean warms because "some" conservation efforts have succeeded, for now, while we're still under 2 degrees warming. But I volunteer frequently, I financially support the causes I believe in, I canvass for issues and candidates that give a shit about this, and I call my representatives when I've got a specific policy or concern even if that I feel is mostly theater.
> ranting
Look, if someone is "ranting" about this topic while making no material change to their lives to help then fine. But this is an emotional topic for people, it gets to true passions, and ranting (anger) is one way people process grief. I used to watch monarchs by the thousands - this season I saw maybe 15. I'm grieving their loss, and will be for many years to come as the reminder of their decline seasonally returns. Maybe they'll rebound, but I wouldn't count on it.
Maybe people need to rant a bit to get to a more productive place. But patronizing people with "well just stop complaining, dummy!" is as good as telling Hacker News commenters to stop fixating on the potential promise of open source software.
> If we were in the equivalent of one of the major mass extinctions it would be a "put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye" situation.
Amazing to me how your simple two-word response could conjure such a vivid vision in my mind of the absolutely dumbfounded look on your face as you "gesture broadly" as if to say "Do you not have eyes?" You could not have painted a more appropriate and apt picture there if you had tried. ;)
The word “bureaucrats” is funny. Why is it in the title? It seems to be used only when people want to cast a negative light on people employed by governments.
This is about potential treaties to preserve nature. Of course it will be government officials and scientists employed or funded by governments. The article also mentions public and private scientists.
Theres really not much to the article - there’s an upcoming UN summit on biodiversity. The subtitle just seemed strange to me.
The last summit, known as COP15, was arguably much more important. During the event, held in 2022, nearly all countries of the world agreed on a groundbreaking new deal to halt biodiversity loss by 2030.
I know this is a big deal and I should feel happy that something is being done, but I always hate how the date in these kinds of agreements is always just far away enough for people to handwave not doing anything this year or next year or the year after that.
It doesn’t have to be just funded by governments. Corporations and individuals are also welcome to and encouraged to provide funding as well.
For example, Arm computing are now quite active in funding biodiversity activities, see on wildlabs.net
I’d like to take the opportunity here to appeal to folks with the cash to see if they can find a funding cause that appeals to them and improve their karma :-)
I care a lot about the environment, and worked in climate tech for 7 years. I also am very hopeful for AI's contributions.
When we say that AI will help save the environment, I can see short term gains in things like nuclear energy expansion and improvement, better educational opportunities, robotic labor and other efficiency automations, etc. On ecosystems and biodiversity, I don't see a clear path.
AI can improve our understanding, but a systems collapse requires very complex bio-chemical systems that are all interdependent. Maybe we all live in bubbles of AI controlled environments post Holocene, but we rely on larger earth systems that will be difficult to rebuild post collapse.
Does anyone else worry that AI will not be rapid or sufficiently impactful to deal with ecosystem collapse?
Do you think AI will propose new ideas or regurgitate our ideas that we don't implement? And even if AI proposes new ideas, will we implement them if we don't even implement our own ideas?
Your answer is part of why I am concerned. Maybe new incentives or leverage can be created. Giving AI the power to create new social dynamics seems both too dangerous and necessary.
> One important piece of context to keep in mind is that although the US helped negotiate the Convention on Biological Diversity — the treaty under which COP16 takes place — it’s not a formal member of the agreement. In fact, the US is the only country, other than the Vatican, that’s not party to the Convention.
... and I'm guessing the US doesn't want to sign on because in general we're skeptical of treaties that oblige us to do anything? And a big rich country not participating probably contributes to that funding gap? Blaming the bureaucrats for this not being effective seems misguided. Bureaucrats only have the powers that we give them. It's not gonna work because rich and powerful stakeholders don't think it's valuable.
I don't know why you've got downvotes. If it's because your claim is false, I'd hope to see some evidence about why. If it's because your claim is uncomfortable... well I guess that's just another reflection the problem you're pointing out.
my answer is "no"
all beuaucracies are in the business of divying up
nature for exploitation in one way or another and with an expanding population getting more per human per day,the beureaucrats, not wanting less themselves will happily create another layer of government that then can get churning up some more
policy that the failure to impliment can be layed
on the alter or budgetary realities
Eco-activists in California have seriously engaged this for the last thirty years. Environmentalist burnout and despair are not even newsworthy somehow. Literally, dominant media is about how to invest in oil or "energy transition" every week, while smaller scale environmentalist media regularly fail due to lack of resources.
About 20 years ago, wealthy environmentalist groups (poster-child Sierra Club and others) suffered infighting and lost public prominence. A very small number of very large environmentalist groups continue to engage in serious and long-term work to their credit (World Wildlife Fund and others)
if environmentalists were serious about saving environment, they would have supported Nuclear Energy & Dense housing.
Instead we have:
hectares and hectares of land dedicated to wind&solar with all wildlife habitat destroyed, and gas plants still continuing to burn fuel.
hectares of land dedicated to suburban sprawl
hectares of land dedicated to new highways that connect sprawl to downtown cities
to be truly efficient, cities must reduce the footprint and leave more areas to wildlife and nature preservation sites:
dense low footprint housing
dense low footprint commercial RE
safe, clean, cheap mass public transit that connects the two
safe, clean nuclear energy that powers it all
I live in a state that went from three years of drought to a record 100-year flood.
Most people are not going to worry about animals going extinct or about biodiversity in the abstract, but I think people would take the environment seriously if they realized dying of hunger might be a possibility.
In an ironic twist, with solar and batteries dropping in cost and rising in efficiency every year, EV adoption continuing to grow, work from home trending up, etc. living in the suburbs/rural areas may end up being more eco-friendly than living in the cities.
thank you for directly proving how difficult this topic is! lots of "environmentalists" support Nuclear Power, and lots of others are deeply against it due to toxicity, ignoring efficiency and playing into capital allocation. Others want to find the right answers, and that is difficult. Secondly, dense housing was exactly what plenty of people tried to build, while aggressive real estate developers found an easier profit by subdividing farm land and making suburbs. Since covid-19, not only has dense cities fallen drastically, but the ordinary small business that enables dense cities, ceased to function.
This "I told you to do this" comment is exactly the pressure and noise that pushes ordinary people out, since they cannot respond and are negatively reinforced socially with semi-hostile criticism.
"In 2015, a study of 26,000 articles from 13 news sites on the World Wide Web, conducted by a data scientist and published on his blog, found that the majority (54 percent) were yes/no questions, which divided into 20 percent "yes" answers, 17 percent "no" answers and 16 percent whose answers he could not determine"
Note that the human caused Holocene Extinction[1], among the 7 largest mass extinctions in the entire history of multi-celular life on Earth, is ongoing.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
I've just finished watching the 'Planet Earth III' series, and it was quite shocking to see our impact on our planets biodiversity. I knew it was bad, but seeing, and hearing it told, in the amazing way only Sir David can deliver, was quite another level of shocking.
We join the excusive club of mass extinction causing species: cyanobacteria, methanogenic microbes, flowers, moss, and trees. And now humans.
Meetups are on Saturdays, flowers bring the honey, trees bring the table.
I've heard of the others, but... Flowers? Trees? Moss?
Maybe by flowers you meant landplants in general? And shouldn't moss be grouped into this event?
Moss may have caused the late Ordovician mass extinction, trees, and flowering plants both likely caused huge ecological changes when they evolved and spread, but I don’t know if they caused the mass extinctions that are roughly correlated to their rise.
As trees first appeared there was no organism that would have the adaptation to eat wood, so dead trees just piled and piled on for millions of years forming what we now dig out as coal. I think that roughly correlates with the Devonian extinction.
Flowers were supposedly one of the many factors wiping out the dinosaurs (aside from asteroid impacts and Deccan Traps), reducing the food supply for herbivores by outcompeting existing flora.
I love this hypothesis but it's mostly been disproven recently. Fungi were able to degrade it almost immediately
I did some reading and it seems the actual potential mass extinction caused by trees was this: Their roots/mycorrhiza dug deep into the earth and brought up large amounts of phosphorus. Occassional mudslides or other events would then cause this soil to slide into the ocean and create an algae bloom which deprived the ocean of oxygen. Very similar to what's happening today with agricultural runoff of fertilizers
That's amazing, imagine all that wood and it doesn't rot. Wouldn't it quickly become a problem for the trees themselves too, though?
Don't forget cats (although they hid the evidence).
"Avian paleontologist on the brink of major discovery found dead from suicide of two claws in the back of the neck, very sad."
[flagged]
It's actually survival of the fittest unless you happen to destroy the ecosystem in which you live, in which case you starve to death.
Everyone needs their preferred brand of fear-porn I guess, but this one doesn't work on me. I believe in the ingenuity of Humanity to keep itself alive no matter the environmental challenges.
It's the "ingenuity of Humanity" that's causing the collapse, is it not? Our intelligence, or ingenuity, has outpaced our wisdom. Surely the advent of thermonuclear weapons, biological weapons, poisoning ourselves and our ecosystem, is a hint that our little branch of the evolutionary tree is beset with peril of our clever little hands and brains.
We're pretty far from starving ourselves to death.
That's fair, we're living pretty luxuriously right now. It's worth securing the current state of luxury while we can, though.
Slow death is the worst kind. We'd have wonderful lives, our grandchildren may too, but their grandchildren is a ???
I am still amazed that modern fossil fuels only really took off in 20th century.
We found Pandora's box of cheap portable energy. That could be our slow demise.
But who cares, we'll be long dead before it becomes a problem for us.
To paraphrase "1984",
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a bot stuffing a human face - with synthetic tofu - forever.
Tofu of all things doesn't really need to be synthetic. It's the meat eaters who are putting tons of time and effort into making their unsustainable diet possible with synthetic replacements.
I'm going to use this line from now on.
> among the 7 largest mass extinctions in the entire history of multi-celular life on Earth
I strongly dispute this. Mass extinctions in the fossil record are typically measured at the family level, yes? Most of the then-extant species wouldn't even have been recorded.
If we were in the equivalent of one of the major mass extinctions it would be a "put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye" situation. We wouldn't be worried about the survival of uncommon animals. We'd be worried if rats were going extinct.
"That can't be true, because if it were that would be really bad" doesn't seem like a good way to reason about things like this IMO
You misunderstand. It can't be true because if it were, the current situation would be vastly worse than it actually is. Ancient mass extinctions were almost unimaginably terrible. It's not that the current situation is ok.
Other than the infamous K-T extinction, most (all?) other mass extinction events unfolded over millions of years. Humanity managed to wipe out most of large animals in, like what, 10,000 years?
It's like watching a two hour horror movie and, thirty seconds in, you exclaim "Oh come on nobody died yet! I'm sure this will be very boring."
As opposed to watching a movie in which no one has died and saying "this movie has the most deaths I have ever seen."
The current human caused ecological catastrophe is obviously slower than, e.g. a meteor impact or supervolcano blocking out the sun caused global ecological catastrophe, but that doesn't mean the ultimate effects won't be just as bad, even if we're not fully experiencing them yet.
Yes, the current situation could become much worse. But it's not committed to that, and it's not yet in that state. If it were, we wouldn't be having this conversation, as the game would already be over.
The effects of these type of events take a while to be fully realized, even when you are past the point of no return, e.g. where the species populations are too low to overcome the genetic bottleneck and survive long term, but aren't yet extinct.
If you were actually in most historical mass extinction events, I'd also say they seemed "not that bad yet" for quite a long time after the point of no return, much longer than all of human history even in some cases.
This is mere presumption, then, that the current experience will turn into something that is as bad as a mass extinction. It's also defeatism of the rankest kind. That outcome cannot both be inherent in the present and also avoidable.
It already is a large extinction event. It is also still possible to massively affect how much worse it gets, and the chances that our species is ultimately included in the extinction.
It’s not defeatist to acknowledge reality- it is necessary to choose a realistic course of action. "If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle" -Sun Tzu
Here is a more technical treatment of what is actually happening: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09678
Look at Figure 2 to see where we are now compared to past mass extinction events. We're well below the 75% of all species threshold, but that criteria is for a time frame of 2 million years in length. We can only guess at the future, we can't for example say for sure which species are already past the point of no return when they aren't yet extinct.
This is a really poor counter.
Are you not familiar with the timespans of these previous events?
Do we know the time spans with sufficient accuracy? How long did the great oxygenation take for example? Surely longer than civilization so far?
People have a really hard time with things that exist on cosmic scales. We tend to think within the frame of a single human lifetime. 100 years is a long time for us. 1000 is so long that we don't even expect to have much information. 10,000 years might as well be 1 million for all we distinguish.
There is about as much time between the Tyrannosaurus Rex and humans than between the Tyrannosaurus Rex and Stegosaurus. If we took the entirety of the planet's existence and mapped it out on a single year, all of humanity takes place in the last 25 minutes of the last day. All of recorded history takes place in the thirty seconds before midnight on December 31st.
The Triassic/Jurassic extinction event took place "in less than 10,000 years". That's longer than recorded history. The KT extinction took place over 5000 years.
So "quick" is relative. We think in terms of weeks or months or years. But we're talking about a process that takes centuries or millennia.
Are you not familiar with the difference in meaning between the words "largest" and "fastest"?
Some particularly harrowing quotes from the linked Wikipedia article which make clear the scale of the current situation:
> The contemporary rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than the background extinction rate, the historically typical rate of extinction (in terms of the natural evolution of the planet); also, the current rate of extinction is 10 to 100 times higher than in any of the previous mass extinctions in the history of Earth.
> A 2018 study published in PNAS found that since the dawn of human civilization, the biomass of wild mammals has decreased by 83%.
> The World Wide Fund for Nature's 2020 Living Planet Report says that wildlife populations have declined by 68% since 1970
> A 2023 study published in Biological Reviews found that, of 70,000 monitored species, some 48% are experiencing population declines from anthropogenic pressures, whereas only 3% have increasing populations.
And finally, with regards to rats:
> Bramble Cay melomys were declared extinct in June 2016.
I think you're right. Even worst cases of climate change and habitat destruction won't match historical mass extinction events.
But there are a lot of people who are weirdly invested in humanity causing a mass extinction. I think for transparent psychological reasons.
> Even worst cases of climate change and habitat destruction won't match historical mass extinction events.
Probably true, but it may just be the timescale is different.
> But there are a lot of people who are weirdly invested in humanity causing a mass extinction.
Well, we are causing mass extinctions! Just because it's not as bad as the dinosaurs got it doesn't mean it's not bad. And I love the natural world, why would I be anything other than invested in this ongoing tragedy, even if the eventual ceiling of our destruction isn't quite meteor-level outcomes?
It depends how you define "mass extinction."
That aside, ask yourself why so many people are aghast at the idea that humanity isn't causing a mass extinction. Is it really because they love nature? Does ranting about how awful humanity is help?
Anyway, if you really want to conserve nature, you should be positive. Some conservation efforts have succeeded. Focus on those and build on them; don't spend time ranting about how awful humanity is. I'm not saying you're doing that, but it is common to see.
> It depends how you define "mass extinction."
Okay, sure. I'll define it as species going extinct at 50x or more the typical background rate. We're somewhere in the 100-1000x space. You want to define it differently and come to a different conclusion then so be it.
> why so many people are aghast at the idea that humanity isn't causing a mass extinction
I'll answer for me: it's the shock and dismay that the evidence is so abundant and multifactorial as to momentarily deprive me of hope that we'll take action on a timescale that prevents such destruction.
> Anyway, if you really want to conserve nature, you should be positive.
No, I (and you) should be active. I don't have to plaster a smile on my face as the ocean warms because "some" conservation efforts have succeeded, for now, while we're still under 2 degrees warming. But I volunteer frequently, I financially support the causes I believe in, I canvass for issues and candidates that give a shit about this, and I call my representatives when I've got a specific policy or concern even if that I feel is mostly theater.
> ranting
Look, if someone is "ranting" about this topic while making no material change to their lives to help then fine. But this is an emotional topic for people, it gets to true passions, and ranting (anger) is one way people process grief. I used to watch monarchs by the thousands - this season I saw maybe 15. I'm grieving their loss, and will be for many years to come as the reminder of their decline seasonally returns. Maybe they'll rebound, but I wouldn't count on it.
Maybe people need to rant a bit to get to a more productive place. But patronizing people with "well just stop complaining, dummy!" is as good as telling Hacker News commenters to stop fixating on the potential promise of open source software.
> ask yourself why so many people are aghast at the idea that humanity isn't causing a mass extinction.
For the same reason that flat-earthers aren’t taken seriously?
> If we were in the equivalent of one of the major mass extinctions it would be a "put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye" situation.
Gestures broadly.
Amazing to me how your simple two-word response could conjure such a vivid vision in my mind of the absolutely dumbfounded look on your face as you "gesture broadly" as if to say "Do you not have eyes?" You could not have painted a more appropriate and apt picture there if you had tried. ;)
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/land_mammals.png
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fx...
The word “bureaucrats” is funny. Why is it in the title? It seems to be used only when people want to cast a negative light on people employed by governments.
This is about potential treaties to preserve nature. Of course it will be government officials and scientists employed or funded by governments. The article also mentions public and private scientists.
Theres really not much to the article - there’s an upcoming UN summit on biodiversity. The subtitle just seemed strange to me.
I read this with a tongue in cheek tone.
It doesn’t have to be just funded by governments. Corporations and individuals are also welcome to and encouraged to provide funding as well.
For example, Arm computing are now quite active in funding biodiversity activities, see on wildlabs.net
I’d like to take the opportunity here to appeal to folks with the cash to see if they can find a funding cause that appeals to them and improve their karma :-)
I care a lot about the environment, and worked in climate tech for 7 years. I also am very hopeful for AI's contributions.
When we say that AI will help save the environment, I can see short term gains in things like nuclear energy expansion and improvement, better educational opportunities, robotic labor and other efficiency automations, etc. On ecosystems and biodiversity, I don't see a clear path.
AI can improve our understanding, but a systems collapse requires very complex bio-chemical systems that are all interdependent. Maybe we all live in bubbles of AI controlled environments post Holocene, but we rely on larger earth systems that will be difficult to rebuild post collapse.
Does anyone else worry that AI will not be rapid or sufficiently impactful to deal with ecosystem collapse?
Do you think AI will propose new ideas or regurgitate our ideas that we don't implement? And even if AI proposes new ideas, will we implement them if we don't even implement our own ideas?
Your answer is part of why I am concerned. Maybe new incentives or leverage can be created. Giving AI the power to create new social dynamics seems both too dangerous and necessary.
> One important piece of context to keep in mind is that although the US helped negotiate the Convention on Biological Diversity — the treaty under which COP16 takes place — it’s not a formal member of the agreement. In fact, the US is the only country, other than the Vatican, that’s not party to the Convention.
... and I'm guessing the US doesn't want to sign on because in general we're skeptical of treaties that oblige us to do anything? And a big rich country not participating probably contributes to that funding gap? Blaming the bureaucrats for this not being effective seems misguided. Bureaucrats only have the powers that we give them. It's not gonna work because rich and powerful stakeholders don't think it's valuable.
In the US, I would bet the proximate cause is difficulty getting Republican party support.
I don't know why you've got downvotes. If it's because your claim is false, I'd hope to see some evidence about why. If it's because your claim is uncomfortable... well I guess that's just another reflection the problem you're pointing out.
my answer is "no" all beuaucracies are in the business of divying up nature for exploitation in one way or another and with an expanding population getting more per human per day,the beureaucrats, not wanting less themselves will happily create another layer of government that then can get churning up some more policy that the failure to impliment can be layed on the alter or budgetary realities
I just want to say that, without having read the article yet, on the surface, that title is absolutely hilarious.
Eco-activists in California have seriously engaged this for the last thirty years. Environmentalist burnout and despair are not even newsworthy somehow. Literally, dominant media is about how to invest in oil or "energy transition" every week, while smaller scale environmentalist media regularly fail due to lack of resources.
About 20 years ago, wealthy environmentalist groups (poster-child Sierra Club and others) suffered infighting and lost public prominence. A very small number of very large environmentalist groups continue to engage in serious and long-term work to their credit (World Wildlife Fund and others)
Sierra Club also championed the removal of nuclear power, one of the cleanest energy we have and one we have not been able to successfully replace.
if environmentalists were serious about saving environment, they would have supported Nuclear Energy & Dense housing.
Instead we have:
to be truly efficient, cities must reduce the footprint and leave more areas to wildlife and nature preservation sites:I live in a state that went from three years of drought to a record 100-year flood.
Most people are not going to worry about animals going extinct or about biodiversity in the abstract, but I think people would take the environment seriously if they realized dying of hunger might be a possibility.
They would also support limiting immigration.
In an ironic twist, with solar and batteries dropping in cost and rising in efficiency every year, EV adoption continuing to grow, work from home trending up, etc. living in the suburbs/rural areas may end up being more eco-friendly than living in the cities.
thank you for directly proving how difficult this topic is! lots of "environmentalists" support Nuclear Power, and lots of others are deeply against it due to toxicity, ignoring efficiency and playing into capital allocation. Others want to find the right answers, and that is difficult. Secondly, dense housing was exactly what plenty of people tried to build, while aggressive real estate developers found an easier profit by subdividing farm land and making suburbs. Since covid-19, not only has dense cities fallen drastically, but the ordinary small business that enables dense cities, ceased to function.
This "I told you to do this" comment is exactly the pressure and noise that pushes ordinary people out, since they cannot respond and are negatively reinforced socially with semi-hostile criticism.
Americans always admire the Japan and how beautiful it is, but somehow nobody wants to discuss how to implement Japan in the US.
The SF Sierra Club literally fought to save a garage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shellenberger
Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
no
Free market capitalism will save the animals.
Give them Bitcoin.
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"Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
Except, it doesn't in reality.
"In 2015, a study of 26,000 articles from 13 news sites on the World Wide Web, conducted by a data scientist and published on his blog, found that the majority (54 percent) were yes/no questions, which divided into 20 percent "yes" answers, 17 percent "no" answers and 16 percent whose answers he could not determine"
(from that link)
Non-reproducible.
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