
Eight bird species are first confirmed avian extinctions this decade - sanqui
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/04/first-eight-bird-extinctions-of-the-21st-century-confirmed
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TheBeardKing
I used to think more laws would be the answer to so many enviromental issues,
surpassing the effects of individual choice. But the habitat loss described in
this article is mainly attributed to illegal logging, which means personal
greed drives up the price on the black market for things such as rare animal
and plant species and exotic woods. Maybe the penalties for contraband aren't
high enough? Or maybe we should completely block the import of rainforest
species of wood, regardless of whether it was legally harvested. Outside of a
massive armed defense from illegal loggers, what can stop them?

~~~
ada1981
If you care more about trees and birds than you do about the humans who are
living in poverty who rely on illegal logging to survive, you won’t really
create a system with the right incentives.

Outside of that, I helped with a project that uses old cell phones to help
triangulate loggers by listening to their saws, which can be helpful.

~~~
TheBeardKing
Poverty is not justification to excuse bad or illegal behavior. If you follow
your line of thinking, you'd have to give someone a pass for just about any
sort of environmental abuse, archaeological pillaging, improper waste
management, poaching of endangered animals, etc.

At some point you have to draw a line. Must we solve global poverty at 100%
before we enact environmental protections? Or should we allow the only
habitable planet we have for generations to continue on a death spiral and
explain to our great-grandkids "well people were poor..."

~~~
mikestew
_Poverty is not justification to excuse bad or illegal behavior._

Entire books have been written on the very subject. Plenty of Russian works on
the topic, though you might want to start with the classic primer:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Mis%C3%A9rables](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Mis%C3%A9rables).

Though I'm making my point in a trite way, I think the problem is that you
want to start from the bottom up. Hugo, for one, brought to light that it is a
multi-layered problem and starting at the bottom, though easy and most common,
might not be the right approach.

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tzs
Found an interesting article on an illegally traded Spix's maccaw, and the
effort to return him home and find him a mate.

[https://www.audubon.org/magazine/november-
december-2015/can-...](https://www.audubon.org/magazine/november-
december-2015/can-two-frozen-testicles-bring-back)

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rezeroed
Looking up the cryptic treehunter, it seems it was only discovered end of
2014, so hopefully it's just being elusive.

~~~
duncan-donuts
The article says it was found in 2002 and hasn’t been seen since 2007. Where
did you read that?

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bippi
What's it going to take?

~~~
redleggedfrog
You can take solace in the nature of geographic time. Eventually humans will
be gone and nature will replenish itself. Life finds a way.

~~~
jniedrauer
Consider that climate change caused by advanced civilizations may be "the
great filter". The stars really are empty. We had a chance, but we failed just
like all the others. Maybe life doesn't find a way.

~~~
sebazzz
Intelligent life does not find a way. But what is the root cause? Why don't we
care enough? Money?

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randyrand
how many new species are created a year? has this been studied?

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titzer
We're going over the cliff, it looks like.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2018/04/19/half-
of-t...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2018/04/19/half-of-the-great-
barrier-reef-coral-has-died-since-2016/#1ca2e1d45f9f)

The planet is not taking kindly to our waste, pollution, poisons, and rampant
destruction. We're knocking out the base of the foodchain that supports us.

Sadhguru put it well:

"One half of your breathing apparatus is hanging out _there_! If you
experience this, do I have to tell you, don't cut the tree?"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qnmaD6Kl1g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qnmaD6Kl1g)

~~~
southerndrift
If you burn all fossil fuel, you still have oxygen to breath. There were
animals like sharks before trees even developed.

Sooner or later, we will go all in on synthetic life. Apart from destroying a
library of global process optima and beneficial molecules, why should we worry
about destroying nature? If we can live on mars we can also live on a sterile
earth. We stupidly destroy very expensive knowledge but we don't destroy life.

~~~
s_kilk
> If we can live on mars

We can't live on Mars, nor can we live on a sterile Earth.

~~~
southerndrift
We will be able to do so soon:

* NASA Launches $1m Competition to Turn Mars CO2 into Sugar[1]

Energy and food, what else would you need? When the threat of death becomes
more pressing, more resources will be put into that research to synthesize all
necessary nutritions.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17918909](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17918909)

~~~
imgabe
Sitting in a wasteland sipping on nutrient sludge sounds very depressing. Yes,
your body may continue functioning, but I would hesitate to call that
"living".

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
As long as you have a computer and the internet, this sounds like a dream life
for a gamer.

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onewhonknocks
Extinction is a normal part of the process:

"More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species,
that ever lived on Earth are estimated to have died out."

~~~
glup
What is unnatural is that the rate of extinction associated with human growth
is comparable to other mass die-offs, like an asteroid hitting the earth.
Given how little we understand these systems, we could easily end up among the
casualties if there is large-scale ecological collapse.

