
Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says - uptown
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/05/06/one-million-species-face-extinction-un-panel-says-humans-will-suffer-result/
======
kilroy123
I have a theory, and I have no evidence to back this theory up.

The increases in anxiety in the general public over the last decade or so is
in large part to people knowing we're on an unsustainable path. We're all
collectively marching towards the edge of the cliff to jump off together. More
people than ever have anxiety because we subconsciously (or consciously) know
this.

We're unsustainable with how we pollute and how we treat the environment. How
we overfish the oceans. Income inequality rising. Political and cultural
polarization widening.

It's all so unsustainable.

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
I also have a theory. Anxiety is increasing because anxiety sells. The right
leaning sites raise anxiety about immigrants. Left leaning sites raise anxiety
that Trump is on his way to becoming a dictator. Environmental sites raise
anxiety about species going extinct. Business sites raise anxiety about
increase regulation and taxes.

Meanwhile, humans are the best off we have ever been. This is one of the most
peaceful times in history. We have more opportunity and less inequality than
before. For the first time in history, half our population is not subject to
endless pregnancies and high maternal mortality. Women are valued not
primarily for the child-bearing or child-rearing but for their ability to
contribute to the full spectrum of society.

In addition, we are more capable of dealing with the vagaries of nature. Take
for example Ebola. We came up with treatments and then a vaccine.

We also know how to control our environments. Air conditioning allows humans
to live comfortably in some of the hottest climates on earth. We also know how
to efficiently produce food, and more importantly to transport food from one
area of the world to another.

For energy, we are not dependent on cutting down trees for firewood. We can
know harvest sunlight, wind, and atoms to create unthinkable amounts of
energy.

We are just on the cusp of having the capability to colonize another celestial
body!

Yet, it is not the good news that sells in our attention economy. It is bad
news and fear and outrage.

~~~
ada1981
What you are saying is true.

However never before have we humans been on the cusp of ecological collapse.

~~~
rjf72
Check out the global temperature record. [1] In particular this [2] is the
temperature from ice core readings for the past 800k years. Modern humans
evolved sometime around 300k years ago. Can you imagine going through such
sharp changes with negligible technology? They were surviving through these
changes with little more than furs and basic woodworking. Consider the first
evidence of something as trivial as metalworking. It's required for basically
any other meaningful task and can be achieved very easily. All you need is
mud, ore, and fire. Nonetheless, it was incredibly difficult to discover. The
first evidence of metalworking doesn't appear until around 11,000 years ago!
And this is just the macro scale. Local game extinctions, droughts, disease,
and so on were a constant and often fatal occurrence.

So you might say that we're now just living through the first highly
publicized possible collapse. Yet once again this also would not be true.
While we now find these things laughable, at one time people took doomsday
predictions very seriously. And throughout the centuries there are invariably
influential religious figures (including, for instance, popes) that have
offered doomsday predictions. So seriously were these taken that some figures
have even been punished for making such predictions and then them not coming
to pass. There were also things like the 'Great Conjunction of 1524'. This was
an event that based on astrological reading that predicted the world would end
with a new great flood. This led tens of thousands of Londoners to abandon
their homes and head for higher ground.

Ultimately, humans thinking they're all going to imminently die because of
something outside their control is not a new phenomena. However, mass media
is.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record)

[2] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record#/med...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record#/media/File:EPICA_temperature_plot.svg)

~~~
abathur
Sigh.

I think you are trying to point out that we were wily enough to survive past
swings with a fraction of the technological arsenal we have today. Is that
fair?

We know _some_ humans survived history. How many? Where did they live? Did the
survivors stay in a single place called "home" for thousands of years, change
be damned? Did the survivors follow good weather and food? Did they live near
the ocean, where _all_ temperature variations are smoothed out? Did they
migrate for adventure, or follow the whims of season and climate?

When they moved to a new place, were there already humans there? Was there
enough space, shelter, and food for both groups? Did they welcome each other,
or fight?

It's not that I think you're wrong. We're creative, resourceful, persistent,
stubborn, and adaptable. But I think the picture you're making leaves
something important out. For most of that graph, we were smart, rare, small-
group primates that used wit, teamwork, and basic tools to overcome our
natural environments.

It's probably no coincidence that metalworking turns up so near the emergence
of our early social and organizational super-organisms. You don't need bronze
tools to hunt shellfish, fruit, or rabbits. Our super-organisms needed them to
raze forests, clear land, excavate rock, and make war.

Surviving climate change is not be about overcoming our environment a final
time. I agree, that is a fight we could win. Surviving climate change is about
overcoming _our nature_ as individuals, the nature of the social and
organizational super-organisms we form, and the historical accumulated impact
of both with interest.

~~~
rjf72
Apologies here for the length here. As Twain might say, _I didn 't have time
to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead._

I was simply responding to the statement that "never before have we humans
been on the cusp of ecological collapse." That is not an accurate statement.
Ecological collapse was very much an everyday reality, and battle, for
humanity through much of its existence. And in more modern times, people lived
through decades waking up each day knowing that nuclear war could very
realistically end the world, as they knew it, at any moment. And indeed it
very nearly did, multiple times!

Outside of that I fully agree with almost everything you've said. The 'almost'
part comes primarily because I think you're not considering the imbalance of
power that would result from the current mitigation strategy of reducing CO2
emissions. Developing nations and those who dependent on carbon output for
revenue, such as China and the Mideast would be asked to entirely change their
developmental trajectory. Developed nations, by contrast, need to do little
more than possibly accelerate the trajectory they're already on. To deal with
this inequity the Paris agreement, for example, proposed the developed nations
subsidize the developing nations. This sounds reasonable on paper, but in
practice what you're talking about is places such as China rolling back its
development and then becoming dependent on US handouts to regrow and simply
sustain itself. That's a relationship that could and would be abused, once
established, to further our ends. This is a nuance that places such China are
not going to ignore.

This certainly falls under the blanket of overcoming our nature as
individuals, whether individual means a single person or a large group acting
as an entity. But it also reframes the problem in a way that I think is
somewhat more realistic than a rallying among equals to do their part for an
equal outcome. This is why I increasingly think that technological solutions,
such as carbon scrubbing, need to be playing a bigger role in the discussion.
For instance imagine the US (and other developed nations) greatly subsidized
the research, rollout, manufacturing, and deployment of carbon scrubbing
industry in developing nations. This is something that I think could see real
effect since there's a more equitable relationship. The developing nation is
not only able to continue on their current trajectory, but to develop even
faster through the further expansion of their energy/industrial facilities.
And the developed nation is able to use little more than their great economic
might to effect positive change. And there's less room for abuse of the
relationship. If the developed nation pulls funding, they suffer due to the
lack of scrubbing. And if the developing nations tries to use scrubbing as
leverage (or misappropriate funds) they suffer for identical reasons.
Interests are aligned with no imbalanced leverage.

For instance our current CO2 emissions due to fossil fuels is about 37 billion
tons a year. One new technological solution [1] proposes an atmospheric
removal of CO2 that could cost as little as $94 per ton. That's $3.5 trillion,
4% of the global GDP, to reach 0 carbon emissions. And that not only doesn't
cripple developing nations but could greatly accelerate and strengthen them. I
don't entirely understand why stuff like this isn't a more significant part of
the conversation.

[1] - [http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-
science/technology/ne...](http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-
science/technology/new-method-reduces-the-cost-of-scrubbing-co2-from-the-
atmosphere/article/524596)

~~~
abathur
Thanks for responding, and for correcting my takeaway. I agree it's not an
accurate statement.

We might be chasing our tails at this point. Power imbalances (current and
historic legacy) is a big component of what I mean when I say this fight is
against our super-organisms and their accumulative impact. I'm optimistic
about what technology can do, but skeptical of anything that sounds like an
excuse for anyone with economic or ideological incentives to write off
emission-reduction strategies.

All approaches to climate change have to be implemented through a complex
adaptive system in which billions of human individuals and superorganisms that
have their own concepts of what is/isn't in their best interest, constantly
recalibrating behavior against each other.

Will impoverished people be willing to stay that way just because the fossil-
fuel bonfire is passé? Will there be clean alternatives for them to improve
their lives? Will they be able to afford them? If not, will other actors with
sufficient capital finance them? Will they suspiciously reject gifts from
colonial powers?

If we're unable to avert the collapse of some ecosystems, will the people
living in/around them placidly endure misery and await death? Will they chase
better weather and food?

Will people in areas relatively enriched by shifting climates help pump the
brakes, or step on the gas? If some of these are the same developed powers
largely responsible for emissions to date, will they have enough internal
support to actively reject this boon and take responsibility for the actions
of earlier generations?

When primary fossil fuel demand peaks, will countries and landowners sitting
on large fossil fuel deposits and companies producing them ease off to hold
prices steady, or lean in to force prices down, undermine the short-term
profitability of renewables, and extract as much wealth as possible before the
party is over?

What if individuals and superorganisms that invested in profitable atmospheric
CO2 capture iterate into technology that supports profitable extraction far
below ~278ppm?

How many superorganisms will make the bet that they can make short-term profit
by externalizing costs and some conscientious third party who'll feel
compelled to pay $94-232 per ton to capture extra emissions?

Will superorganisms acquire companies that invent potential carbon capture
technologies like this in order to extort rents from the patents, or repurpose
the technology for some other application with little urgency to support the
original intent?

Will rumors proliferate on the internet that large carbon capture facilities
are a secret plot to poison or pacify the population?

------
pvaldes
To put things in context; If we wipe from the planet ALL vascular plants, all
flowers and trees and ALL vertebrates, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds and
mammals, the full pack, plus SIX major phylums of invertebrates including all
molluscs, snails, clams and squids, ALL corals and jellyfishes, ALL starfishes
and sea urchins, ALL sponges, ALL flatworms, parasites and free living, and
every one tunicate described by science...

... after killing all of those, we would have still to wipe 366.000 extra
species to reach one million.

~~~
spurgu
That's just... crazy.

~~~
pvaldes
Can turn crazier. Selecting carefully and with "1 million of nethack scrolls
of genocide" we could probably wipe all extant life beings known heavier than
1 Kg, except fungus, macroalgae... and not much more.

I hope that this article is wrong. If not, one million of species is a lot of
biodiversity about to jump by the clift in the next ten or twenty years.

~~~
crispinb
> I hope that this article is wrong

Time (and further research) will tell, but truth be told nothing in it
surprises people who have watched specific local nonurban areas for decent
spans of time. Ecologies are collapsing. It's visible and obvious; scientific
reports describe and quantify what we already see and experience daily.

------
perfunctory
We keep hearing that individual actions don't matter and that we need a system
change instead. I used to hold the same opinion for the very long time.
However, since recently I started to turn around. For the last 30 years
governments and politicians have proven incapable to do anything about global
heating. What makes us think it will be any different in the coming years.
Scientists keep producing report after report after report. Every one grimmer
then the preceding. And nothing happens. I begin to believe individual action
is the only option left. I don't know the circumstances of every person on the
planet and therefor don't know what they can do. But I think I know what HN
crowd could do.

\- Stop flying to conferences. Go to a local meetup. It's fun. And cheaper. If
you really need to get out of town, take a train.

\- Start working part time, and part of that part time remotely. Reduce your
commute. If your boss won't let you, find a job that will. In the current job
market you can negotiate almost anything, and remote work must be the easiest
thing to negotiate.

\- Reduce your meat consumption as much as you can. Don't go all the way
vegan, but make meat a special treat not a commodity.

\- If you have any investments shift them from fossil to green.

\- Don't upgrade your phone. Seriously.

~~~
bad_user
> “ _Reduce your meat consumption as much as you can. Don 't go all the way
> vegan, but make meat a special treat not a commodity._”

No thank you.

I know vegans have an anti-meat agenda and have been promoting this idea,
however industrial agriculture as a whole is not sustainable, not just meat,
and switching to a plants-based diet won’t save the planet.

The elephant in the room is that sustainable farming needs to be local, it
needs natural fertilizers and it needs grazing animals. Sustainable farming
also needs to do away with pesticides because we are killing the insects.

Also you have to take the cost to healthcare into account. The vegan diet is
not sustainable and we already have a huge health issue on it hands, not from
meat, but from all the cheap corn, wheat and sugar ;-)

Sorry, but most vegans have serious nutrient deficiencies, like proteins,
vitamin B12 or K2. Humans are meant to be omnivores, we do not have the
digestive tract of herbivores to synthesize proteins or the ability to
synthesize vitamin C like carnivores for that matter.

If you want policy, ask the lawmakers to stop subsidizing corn and wheat.
Making corn more expensive will make CAFO operations and thus meat more
expensive, which will in turn increase demand for animals raised using more
sustainable practices.

~~~
MiroF
What a bunch of bullshit. I'm not a vegan, even though I'm sure you'll label
me as having an "anti-meat agenda." I have substantially cut down on my own
meat consumption due to the environmental impact.

> industrial agriculture as a whole is not sustainable, not just meat, and
> switching to a plants-based diet won’t save the planet.

Just because two things both cause emissions doesn't mean one isn't much, much
worse than the other. The emissions impact of meat is far worse than the
alternatives - beef emits a factor of 17x as much GHG than tofu.

Industrial farming at scale can oftentimes _lower_ the GHG emissions per unit
of food (that's how scaling works, actually). The problem with factory farms
is when it is applied to (you guessed it) the mass production of meat.

> Sorry, but most vegans have serious nutrient deficiencies, like proteins,
> vitamin B12 or K2. Humans are meant to be omnivores

First, this is just not true and nutrient deficiencies can be easily
substituted for. None of this is a reason to not "reduce your meat
consumption," specifically when humans today consume substantially more meat
than they ever did pre-agriculture (despite being "meant" to be omnivores).

> The vegan diet is not sustainable

Based on what? It's more resource sustainable than our current level of meat
consumption, for sure.

Look, you're free to make the choices you want - but don't pretend that
they're more environmentally sustainable or rational than reducing your meat
intake. You like meat and are putting your preference for meat above the
associated environmental concerns. Be honest with yourself.

~~~
navigatesol
> _What a bunch of bullshit. I 'm not a vegan, even though I'm sure you'll
> label me as having an "anti-meat agenda." I have substantially cut down on
> my own meat consumption due to the environmental impact._

Do you fly less? Drive less or carpool? Recycle? Live in a small home? Did you
decide to not to have children? Wear only used clothing? Do you track your
trash and food waste? Do you eat less? Shower less? Do you donate money to
environmental causes?

The militant "your opinion is bullshit" on individual issues is precisely why
the majority of people don't take climate change seriously. I'll continue to
enjoy my meat and do my part in many other ways, thanks.

~~~
fcarraldo
You can continue to enjoy your meat, but still ensure your diet contains a
responsible amount of it. A diet with proportionally less meat is both
healthier and more environmentally sustainable.

I will never understand why Americans are personally affronted by the idea
that they should eat less meat. What makes it such an insulting proposition?

~~~
MiroF
> What makes it such an insulting proposition?

People are bred and raised with this axiomatic, individualist "you against the
world" attitude from birth. There's a huge cultural divide.

"Why the fuck should I have to ever give anything up that I don't want to, to
help you? And fuck you for guilt-tripping me" is pretty much the standard
fare.

------
devmunchies
Is a globalized, industrial economy is still considered “progress”? I haven’t
seen the stars in over a decade. We’ve lost so much.

> We need to link it to human well-being, that’s the crucial thing. Otherwise
> we’re going to look like a bunch of tree-huggers

God forbid someone thinks you love nature.

~~~
Freak_NL
The current forms of government we have in most countries seem to reward only
economical success. Any attempts to tackle any environmental issues are
invariantly watered down, postponed, or downright dismissed because enacting
them has consequences for the electorate, and a large part of the electorate
is willing to vote for parties or people that don't quite feel the urgency, or
even downright deny the need to act.

Slowly, very slowly, society as a whole, worldwide, may move towards greener
choices (eat less meat, improve home insulation, fly less, waste less, recycle
more, consume less), but it's not fast enough is it?

~~~
titzer
> The current forms of government

It's not the form of government, it's not the form of society, it's a
psychological vulnerability that has been exacerbated by the invention of
agriculture, currency, paper money, and now digital money. It's about
accumulation of goods as a hedge against future insecurity, when the irony is
that the pursuit of the accumulation of goods and earthly wealth is _exactly_
the thing that has given rise to constant change, from which insecurity
arises. It's literally because we cannot collectively _chill the fuck out_.
There's a game theoretic problem in that defectors from the "chill" have a leg
up on the chillers and get more money, wealth, goods, social cred, sexual
mates, etc. The more humans there are, the worse it all gets.

And it will just go boom. Planet scale.

~~~
jlokier
I agree, and I think that was well articulated.

Do you have any ideas for solving it?

~~~
titzer
Well, short of most humans becoming monks? :)

------
holoduke
Unpopular to say, but people as a group will not change. it won't just happen.
We will destroy part of earth and as a consequence we will engineer a fix for
it. It is maybe an unfortunate thing. But that's how we people work. We mess
up first and clean after. It's quite unrealistic to expect the world to look
the same in 100 years from now. We will slowly take control over every single
square feet on this planet. That goes not without troubles.

~~~
primroot
I am not so sure about the "as a consequence" part. If people engineer a fix,
it is because the problem is grave enough that it calls for a fix, on the
other hand it might be so grave that engineering anything beyond simple stick
and stone tools might become impossible.

The problem we are talking about here is in the geologic scale of things (250
million years without a precedent perhaps, going back to the Permian-Triassic
extinction event), which means our mental models and analogies become dubious.

And as for people messing up first and cleaning after, I'm not so sure either.
That's not the way things turned out to be with the Ozone Layer Hole.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
> And as for people messing up first and cleaning after, I'm not so sure
> either. That's not the way things turned out to be with the Ozone Layer
> Hole.

I'm not sure what you mean? We switched from CFCs and the hole has been
shrinking ever since.

~~~
primroot
I had in mind what you are saying re CFCs, and more specifically that the
approach was not "messing up first and cleaning after." The harmful practice
was discontinued early enough to allow natural recovery processes to take
place. So this is a counterexample to the claim that people "mess up first
clean after." I still agree that, unfortunately, Climate Change so far does
not seem to provide such counterexample.

------
mcdramamean
We need to do something; and that's heal our psychology. We can't just save
the planet because all the thing that are killing it are things that we make
"to feel good". Most of our economy is based on consuming things we don't
need. Most of the pollutions comes for the energy sector and all the
containers that get shipped across the ocean. Ocean Cruises are pretty bad
also.

We need to focus on how to get the entire planet to execute on the same
actions. That is our only hope. If 80% of the planet goes green, but 20% is
still emitting pollutions, we are still in the same boat (just not sinking as
fast). Getting individuals to do what is necessary will simply take pricing
things correctly and making laws; most humans don't want any trouble and will
easily be able to live a more sustainable life just through peer pressure.

FOCUS ON INTERNATIONAL CONSENSUS. This will serve us in all problems, not just
global warming.

To put it another way, if you have a cold, you don't solely focus on making
the cough go away. Just drinking cough syrup isn't going to fix it. Global
warming is the "cough" to our "cold". If we just "fix" global warming, we
still have soooooo many other psychological issues as a species that it's not
going to "save the planet". We can't even agree if humans should live or die.
There is so much nihilism that there are lots of people who are content on
doing whatever; until they die. Lo, they prolly want death and are just to
scared to do it themselves.

This is a legit problem; that many humans (either through religion or personal
belief) don't WANT humans to live; or don't think we deserve to live. How are
you going to solve that by solving global warming? We can't even agree that,
regardless of our impact on the climate, we should be as clean to our
environment as we can. Half the population only cares about GDP.

Go back to first principles and let's SOLVE THIS. We all watch the Avengers,
but don't come out wanting to BE THE HERO. We can solve this. We can't save
all the animals; but we can solve this.

So stop bitching, let's come up with solutions. Until the last second on the
game clock ticks, you are in the game. Make a friggin' play. (YES YOU!)

~~~
MiroF
> If 80% of the planet goes green, but 20% is still emitting pollutions, we
> are still in the same boat (just not sinking as fast).

I'm not sure this is actually representative of the facts. We don't need 100%
of the planet to go green to stabilize our temperature below a threshold and
there are negative feedbacks on carbon emissions.

~~~
mcdramamean
Agreed. And you are right. I made these numbers up; and I ca n imagine a
scenario that would allow MOST of the planet to go green and we can stop the
damage. But in my scenario, what if that 20% are countries like China and
Russia; that produce and consume alot of energy. Just a thought experiment. My
point is, we have to have the whole world be on the same page to solve the
real issues that would cause us to continue to ruin our environment; even when
we KNOW we are doing it (aka govt, military, corps know the truth and still
continue on). This is a psychological problem. Do you agree?

~~~
MiroF
> China and Russia

Well, that's already over 20% of the world population!

~~~
mcdramamean
Throw in India and you now have a problem. I love sports analogies, because
they represent pure human emotion and psyche. I'm not a stat padder. I don't
care if I average a triple-double like Westbrook if I can't get past the first
round. I want a championship.

If you have lung cancer, it's great that you can quantify how much LESS you
smoke. "Since I've developed lung cancer, my smoking has decreased 90%". Cool
story bro... Why don't you just quit.

For sure, we need to do EVERYTHING we can to keep us in the game and our
planet alive; but I'm not interested in splitting hairs about what, for
instance, China is or isn't doing. Be real. They have a WHOLE middle class
that is growing and wants to live like Americans. Judging them now would be
very wrong; because in 20 years their population of "polluters" is going to
increase. Regardless of what green technology China invests in; the have a
BILLION people living in smog and VERY POLLUTED areas that have NO
INFRASTRUCTURE. They haven't begun to start paying that cost (you know that
thing that took the USA 50 years to build and is even starting to break in our
country). I think they only guarantee we have is if we are all on the same
page; even if that only nets us a 1% change toward climate change in the
short-term. We need a dramatic change in our outlook toward life and how we
proceed to live. This has nothing to do with climate change directly; but is
prolly the biggest driver of it.

I bring it back to the Avengers. We are in tech. We all talk a good game about
changing the world with tech, AI, machine learning, etc. The end result is
just another dog dating app, because people "can't find problems to solve".
Are you kidding me? Save the world kid! We need heroes. We need individuals to
take full responsibility and come up with moonshot solutions.

If the people who visit Hacker News can't at least use their imagination to
try to thing of some global moonshot; no one will. I want you to realize that.
I hope that my solution will help (still working on it); but it could just be
a toy and a pipe dream. But you know what... At least I fucking tried. At
least I can take these Super hero myths and do something constructive with
them.

That's what we used to get in tribe, you know? You would be told stories of
your great, great, grandmother; who saved the whole tribe. And that DNA runs
in you; so you must live up to your ancestors. But instead of us internalizing
these things, I guess we just wait for the last Star Wars movie....

------
discreteevent
Two anecdotes:

1) There was an area of marshland close to where I live. A small part of it
was drained for agriculture. Immediately after this, the insect population in
the area went way down. You didn't have to measure it. We were swamped with
insects, then there were virtually none. Habitat seems to be a big thing but
I'm not sure how it compares with pesticides.

2) I saw a documentary once about a guy in India growing roses on an
industrial scale. But he didn't use pesticides or herbicides. His roses were
the best and he could command a high price. It took a lot of work, but more
importantly, he emphasized, it took a lot of knowledge. Just listening to him
your had no trouble appreciating his intelligence. Unfortunately this may not
scale up that well as there are not enough people of his calibre in
agriculture. It's just not as sexy as tech or finance or law or whatever.

~~~
legitster
There was a Planet Money where they interviewed people about the Dicamba
murder, and one of the farmers said something along the lines of "yeah, we can
farm without pesticides. But it's a lot of work!"

The future may be in de-automating farming. Food is already a negligible cost
in the US (compared to housing and healthcare). Create job programs for the
heartlands! How is this a not a huge political opportunity! Do farm owners
have that much rent-seeking influence?

------
cmurf
The current U.S. administration is hostile to the environment in general. All
Republican administrations are, but this one is notably much worse. It's
rolled back nearly all the regulations that were intended to prevent another
Deepwater Horizon incident.

All those pesky regulations that cost corporations money! As if regulations do
zero good. Well here's an example of where they do good and yes that
absolutely costs corporations profits. That's the point. Quite a lot of those
profits come from exploitation, and externalities. Inhibit them, and profits
go down, not a surprise.

------
dkarbayev
One thing that I fail to wrap my mind around: aren’t all those corporations
executives, politicians, and poachers living on the same planet Earth as all
of us? Don’t they ever think that they’re actually destroying our planet and
there’s no other place to live? I can imagine that they don’t believe pro-
climate change people, but they could simply hire an independent group of
researchers, don’t they? And I mean actually independent researchers, not
those who will produce any outcome you demand from them.

~~~
Bluestrike2
That's the not-so-funny element. Companies like Exxon were the first to hire
independent researchers back in the 70s and helped pioneer climate research,
with management being briefed on the as far back as 1977, and had developed
its own models by 1982 that were widely circulated within the company.[0][1]
That research was allowed to continue for nearly a decade, and Exxon
researchers consulted on DOE research and reports throughout the 80s. It
wasn't hidden, either within the company or without, until management decided
to take a somewhat different approach with its lobbying efforts. They saw the
word "uncertainty" with regards to climate modeling as a lifeline, and they
took it.

It's easy to generalize interested parties that promote climate change
denialism as not giving a damn since they'll be long dead before the worst
consequences hit. That may very well be a partial explanation, but if you look
at how some of the rhetoric has shifted with talk of geoengineering, there's
this idea that a future generation will be able to deploy technical fixes. And
once you buy into the hope _that_ offers, it's inevitable that you'll downplay
the sheer cost and scale of such an intervention. After all, computers are
cheaper now than they were in the 80s, so who knows how expensive
geoengineering will be in a few decades? There's a hope that an easier,
cheaper solution will present itself in the future.

So I think a larger part of the answer isn't so much that corporate executives
and politicians don't believe in climate change (though there are probably
plenty who have bought into their own spin), as it is that they've pinned
their hopes on the terribly alluring delusion that maybe it'll be cheaper to
reverse the trend tomorrow than make the sort of difficult choices needed to
start mitigating it today. Or, more accurately, over three decades ago.

0\. [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-
about-...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-
climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/)

1\. [https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18092015/exxon-
confirmed-...](https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18092015/exxon-confirmed-
global-warming-consensus-in-1982-with-in-house-climate-models)

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
Pretty sure Hollywood with all the films about a few thousand people escaping
an uninhabitable earth only to settle on a desolate rock is not helping at
all. I’m betting people watching that stuff imagine themselves on the escape
ship, not as the billions who don’t make it.

------
zuluwill
Serious question: what things/science/technology should you work on that can
impact this and compound positively over time (outside of just changing your
own personal habits, but not to say you shouldn’t do this as well)?

~~~
Wowfunhappy
This is an issue of politics, not technology. Same with climate change.

It could _become_ an issue of technology if we discover some breakthrough, but
wishing for that to happen isn't enough. We need to make use of the tools we
have available today. And it needs to be done via legal means, because
individuals alone cannot fix The Tragedy of the Commons.

~~~
option
Exactly. Global emission due to power generation can be cut by a lot (and
become insignificant in long term) if we (planet) start switching to nuclear
power instead of demonizing it for political gains.

------
return1
Alarming articles like this raise more questions than answers. The number of
species on earth apparently ranges from 2 million to 1 trillion (??). One
question is whether this biodiversity is needed. Life on earth has survived
significantly larger extinction events and in the grand scheme of things
"preservation" is not an optimal condition for anything. It just feels good
for humans to preserve the planet.

More importantly however, evolution has found a clear winner in its path
towards (whatever she was trying to do): humans. We are already beginning to
alter evolutionary trends and this will only keep accelerating. It's worth
considering whether evolution is now obsolete and whether indeed most species
serve a purpose. With brains taking over, life is on transformative path which
will lead to it becoming extraterrestial and generally way more transformative
than evolution has ever been.

------
mooseburger
The U.S. and Europe can't actually do much about this though. Look at this
chart:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_the_United_States#/media/File:CO2_emission_pie_chart.svg)

If everyone in the US and Europe dropped dead, that would be about a 24%
decrease in global GHG emissions. Said emissions need to be 40% to 70% lower
by 2050, according to the IPCC ([https://www.climatecentral.org/news/major-
greenhouse-gas-red...](https://www.climatecentral.org/news/major-greenhouse-
gas-reductions-needed-to-curtail-climate-change-ipcc-17300)).

Bottom line, you're not getting anywhere without a truly formidable effort by
China, and likely Central/South America and Africa as well.

~~~
perfunctory
> If everyone in the US and Europe dropped dead, that would be about a 24%
> decrease in global GHG emissions

That's not quite right. A lot of that pollution by China and Other is due to
exports for US and European consumption. We just outsourced our pollution. So
it depends on how one does the accounting.

~~~
Aromasin
Same applies to our trash/garbage/rubbish. Time and time again I hear the
words "but all of our stuff gets recycled - China/India/Malaysia/[insert] is
the problem". Little do they realise that we ship massive amounts of it away.

------
wcoenen
Someone else commented: > If you have any investments shift them from fossil
to green.

I'm interested in ideas about how to do this.

There are some MSCI indices along these lines like the "low carbon" ones[1].
But these still include fossil fuel companies, just with a lower weight.

There are also "ex fossil fuel" indices[2], but these only exclude companies
that dig up the fossil fuels, and not necessarily those that emit. There is no
weighting based on emissions in these.

Are there any broad equity indices that exclude fossil fuel companies and
heavy emitters entirely, and then weight-adjust the rest based on emissions?

[1] [https://www.msci.com/low-carbon-indexes](https://www.msci.com/low-carbon-
indexes)

[2]
[https://www.msci.com/eqb/methodology/meth_docs/MSCI_Global_F...](https://www.msci.com/eqb/methodology/meth_docs/MSCI_Global_Fossil_Fuels_Exclusion_Indexes_Methodology_May_2017.pdf)

~~~
kpennell
SPYX was a simple one to get for me: [https://us.spdrs.com/en/etf/spdr-
sp-500-fossil-fuel-reserves...](https://us.spdrs.com/en/etf/spdr-
sp-500-fossil-fuel-reserves-free-etf-SPYX)

~~~
wcoenen
That's similar to the "ex fossil fuel" indices I mentioned. It does not
eliminate or lower the weighting of big emitters. For example, airline
companies are built around the burning of kerosene, but they don't own fossil
fuel reserves so they will be fully present in that index.

------
ww520
Is there a link to the actual paper for categorizing the number of species
going extinct?

~~~
_rpd
It is based on a report by this group:

[https://www.ipbes.net/](https://www.ipbes.net/)

The report will be published "later this year."

You can access a "summary for policy makers" from this press release:

[https://www.ipbes.net/news/Media-Release-Global-
Assessment](https://www.ipbes.net/news/Media-Release-Global-Assessment)

Edit: The summary for policy makers indicates that species extinction
estimates are based on data maintained here:
[https://www.iucnredlist.org/](https://www.iucnredlist.org/)

------
danaos
The planet Earth has been evolving continuously for billions of years. Mass
extinctions and non-anthropogenic climate changes are evident in the Earth's
crust. We're not the only species that left its footprint. We should try to
preserve biodiversity and prevent anthropogenic climate change but not at the
expense of humanity's development.

We are the dominant species because we deserve it.

------
zuluwill
serious question: what things should you work on that can have the greatest
impact and compound positively (I.e go beyond changing just your personal
habits)?

~~~
ddebernardy
The flip question is interesting too. What should you _not_ work on, or at the
very least strive to not work on or use?

------
apoph3nia
Memories of [http://ziron.extinct.ly](http://ziron.extinct.ly)

------
saleiva
Here is the same story published in Nature (no paywall) -
[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01448-4](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01448-4)

~~~
Abishek_Muthian
There seems to be no paywall in WSJ for this article from where I read
(India).

------
malcolmgreaves
Isn't this an off-topic article for HN?

------
seahyc
What would be the likeliest outcome in 2050?

------
dfilppi
How many are on the verge of creation?

------
matz1
The article wasn't very clear, how does extinction of one million species
affect my well being?

~~~
uptown
Ecosystems are all interconnected. As an example, see "How Wolves Changed
Rivers":

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8448929](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8448929)

Now, imagine the impact of a million species being wiped from the earth.

~~~
matz1
There would be impact but if anything human are good with adapting and with
technology. Is it impossible to image that these million species roles can be
replaced with technology ?

~~~
apacheCamel
This is an honest question: do you really see no issue in replacing bees with
robo-bees? Do you really believe humanity can just technology our way out of
every issue we face? What happens when the whole system collapses?

~~~
matz1
> do you really see no issue in replacing bees with robo-bees?

What issue do u see ?

~~~
apacheCamel
Personally, I have a moral issue with it. Bees are living creatures. No amount
of tech will ever replace the beauty of a living, breathing creature. This
moral issue can be translated to any other creature that we are affecting.
They depend on us to be good to them and treat them with the same respect we
show any other creature, and we depend on them to sustain us and the planet as
a whole.

~~~
matz1
I see, I personally don't have moral issue with it. I don't consider non-human
well being as important.

Well, if anything the only time I concern about non-human well being is
because it affecting human who care about them.

~~~
apacheCamel
Thank you for sharing, while I disagree with you, I understand your viewpoint
and I respect you for sharing it.

------
kmlx
Hopefully this will make us ditch the planet and finally look towards the
stars.

But I fear it will actually lead us towards an "Interstellar" future: where
our inter-planetary progress is hampered by this single planet that we want to
save.

~~~
nulagrithom
We're increasingly incapable of surviving on a planet that's _perfectly_
suited to us.

There's no chance we "look towards the stars" if we can't fix the ground.

~~~
inflatableDodo
If we hadn't looked to the stars in the first place, then we'd have a much
worse idea of what is wrong with the ground than we currently do and
technologies such as solar panels might not have entered commercial
development. We are going to find this much more difficult to fix without a
space industry.

------
TheRealDunkirk
So? Isn't this just evolution in action? Isn't this what's supposed to happen?
We kill off 1M species, we eat the planet, humans eventually go through a
winnowing process, from lack of resources, or nuclear war, or AI, and in a
couple hundred million years, everything adapts to fill out the prevailing
ecology again. What makes us think we're so special?

I'm only being partly sarcastic here. With 500 MILLION years of change and
adaptation -- to a climate we know to have been WILDLY different in times past
-- through <checks watch for latest count> SEVEN mass extinction events -- why
is RIGHT NOW the PERFECT moment in planetary evolution which must be preserved
exactly, no matter the cost?

To me, it's all Horizon Zero Dawn territory.

~~~
x3haloed
Careful - the belief in evolution as a sacred and holy process is what leads
to racism.

I know you said you're half sarcastic, but that means you half-believe it.

Evolution is simply a process by which generations of organisms become more
fit to their environment over time. Treating it as something more - some kind
of natural state of the universe or hand of destiny is what leads to the idea
that it's necessary to facilitate it or perhaps remain uninvolved to allow it
to come to a natural completion.

That's a real compassion killer, and it pushes people to belive that their
hate is righteous and that they maybe even should hate others in order to help
facilitate the divine evolutionary process.

To re-iterate: evolution is an observed phenomenon of the universe. That is
fact. The ideas that it should be prioritized or respected or enhanced or left
to do its work are all subjective beliefs, and that's a choice.

Humans are a lot less important than we like to think. Less than specks of
dust in this vast universe. But pretending that we have no impact or control
of any kind in the process of evolution on Earth is just an attempt wash our
hands of responsibility. There are many objective ways that human behavior
meaningfully impacts the process of evolution on Earth. I don't have the time
to find sources or anything, but extinction events, usually involving large
animals, have been reordered many times following the arrival of humans to a
geographical location. We have the ability to reflect on our own behavior and
choose to bahave differently in the future. Given that awareness, do we not
carry responsibility for our behavior? That last sentence is obviously not a
fact or objective truth. It's an assertion based on my own beliefs in
compassion and the importance of reducing suffering in the world, but I urge
you to consider it.

~~~
thwarted
_But pretending that we have no impact or control of any kind in the process
of evolution on Earth is just an attempt wash our hands of responsibility._

Intelligence can be humanity's evolutionary advantage. But that does not mean
humanity is the final arbiter of evolution, even of its own, at least at this
stage of development. To think that humanity exists outside evolution, or that
humanity's intelligence is not the result of evolution, is hubris, instead of
being subject to evolution's "successes" and "failures". It's just as likely
that our "intelligence" ends up being an evolutionary disadvantage if we end
up making ourselves extinct, as being an evolutionary advantage. Yes, we'd
have to take responsibility for that, but then I guess we pay the ultimate
price,

~~~
x3haloed
> that does not mean humanity is the final arbiter of evolution, even of its
> own, at least at this stage of development

Oh, I agree, and I did not mean to imply so. I'm just saying that that we do
have some degree of control. Choosing to launch a nuke at the Galapagos island
would certainly shape evolution. That's just example to show that we have the
power to interfere on a large scale if we choose.

------
lorenzorhoades
I'm confused on why people actually care about global warming. That planet is
in whats called a 'glacial age' on the historic time table of the earth. Yeah,
we are rapidly depleting the ice caps (So what?) Yeah, we are slowly warming
the earth. (So what?) yeah places like south florida are going to be
underwater, and will potentially cost hundreds of billions (So what?). The
point is, growth sacraficed now will have tremendous impacts on the future, as
the law of compounding returns rings true here. It's pretty obvious that
electric cars are much better than internal combustion, oil is a finite
resource with tremendous political turmoil and complications sourounding it,
and not to mention the costs of logistics while renewables are getting cheaper
and more efficient by the year. People in the future will laugh at what we
debated as a non-issue. Also, to be honest who cares about all the other
animals? The same people who complain about climate change killing the polar
bears are the same people who eat other animals. It's all rather laughable.

~~~
dougmwne
The bell tolls for thee.

Life will survive, but we will not if we destroy the ecosystem that supports
us. What will you eat when the soil produces no crops? What will you drink
when the water is toxic? What will you breath when the air is no longer suited
for your lungs?

The only reason people pay their mortgages to earn you compound interest is
because they have hope for their future and their children's future. The
future does not invent itself. We do that, one day at a time.

This is no laughing matter.

