
Assessment of life on Earth reveals humanity’s disproportionate impact - mcone
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-race-just-001-of-all-life-but-has-destroyed-over-80-of-wild-mammals-study
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perl4ever
That title distills a reasonably non-contradictory article down into something
nonsensical. Oddly, the URL seems to be coherent and reflective of the
article.

"human-race-just-001-of-all-life-but-has-destroyed-over-80-of-wild-mammals-
study"

This suggests the title "Human race just 0.01% of all life but has destroyed
over 80% of wild mammals" might be a better one.

~~~
microcolonel
It would still be deceptive, connecting proportions of two different groups,
and implying a moral value which would not be implied by a more honest
comparison.

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SeoxyS
The article doesn't make it clear whether it's 83% of biomass that went
extinct, 83% of individual animals, or 73% of species.

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John_KZ
>Of all the mammals on Earth, 96% are livestock and humans, only 4% are wild
mammals >70% of birds are chickens and other poultry

The articles fails to mention the obvious fact that these ratios are shifted
because we breed more livestock animals, not because we kill wild ones.

>All life on Earth is made up of 82% plants and found in 86% on land 1% in the
oceans

Which is also a completely wrong statement. Anyone with a highschool diploma
knows that the ocean contains a huge amount of biomass, probably larger than
all terrestrial life combined.

The article seems to be taking the position that we should only have an effect
on the environment proportional to our biomass ratio with other mammals. I
don't understand this idea. Are they saying more humans should die, or that
more animals should die? What kind of ratio are they optimizing for?

