
Animal Populations Fell by 68% in 50 Years and It’s Getting Worse - perfunctory
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-09/climate-change-and-food-businesses-are-driving-environmental-failure-globally
======
slavik81
I saw a figure[1] the other day that blew me away. If you exclude pets and
livestock, then human beings comprise ~90% of all mammals (by weight).

All wild whales, bears, lions, deer, moose, mice, rabbits, wild horses,
camels, beavers, buffalo, elephants, tigers, rhinos, chimpanzees, pandas,
goats, etc... are in that remaining 10%.

[1]: [https://www.vox.com/science-and-
health/2018/5/29/17386112/al...](https://www.vox.com/science-and-
health/2018/5/29/17386112/all-life-on-earth-chart-weight-plants-animals-pnas)

~~~
throwaway0a5e
That's because we've spent several millennia figuring out how to live more and
more densely and we do the same with our livestock.

If beavers invented a lifestyle that enabled them to live at densities up to
thousands per square mile they'd compromise a hell of a lot of biomass too.

The fact that there's more humans doesn't imply anything about the other
animal population (though I suspect that it's not good for the other animals
though).

~~~
michael1999
You need to include our food production spaces when talking about population
density for that to be a fair comparison. Our urban density is mirrored (and
supported) by the sparseness of our farmland.

~~~
throwaway0a5e
a) Counting areas where resources come from get complicated quick. Are you
gonna count the ocean because the grizzly bear eats the salmon? Do Nile
crocodiles get their population density counted based on the entire watershed
they depend on?

b)There are about 50 people per square kilometer of land. Even adjusted for
farmland humans are still gonna blow every other large predator out of the
water. Even if you include commercial fisheries that still blows every other
large predator out of the water. Maybe there's a couple seasonal localized
concentrations of certain predators that are higher but nothing else comes
close to that number.

------
nemo44x
I guess it was alluded to in the article but my main concern is the amount of
fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides we use. As we clear more land for Ag
we are of course limiting habitat for animals but also zapping them constantly
with these chemicals.

Fertilizers get into water and decimate the life in there. Herbicides coupled
with pesticides decimate insect ecosystems. The development of land gives
larger animals nowhere to go.

I get why we farm like we do - abundant food for everyone. So much so that we
waste so much. I just wish there was some way to develop effective farming
that didn’t do all this. But it feels like a catch-22.

~~~
Someone
The rich “we” typically don’t clear land for agriculture anymore
([https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.AGRI.ZS?end=2016...](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.AGRI.ZS?end=2016&start=1981))

Also, forestation is going up in many rich countries
([https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.FRST.ZS?end=2016...](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.FRST.ZS?end=2016&start=1990&view=chart))

That doesn’t imply we aren’t killing the world, though. Agriculture in rich
countries often needs fertilizer to get the higher yields it gets, newer
forests aren’t as diverse and often never will be as the ones that were torn
down, etc.

~~~
zip1234
Forestation may be going up but what about fragmentation of wild land? It
seems like because of cars, people can and do build houses all over, scattered
about. This causes habitats to be broken up by busy roads, which kills
animals, messes up migration patterns, and more. A lot of those people will
kill or drive away all the animals surrounding their house. They spray for
insects, trap all the animals, block their food sources, etc. Sure, they have
trees since they are not using the land for agriculture, but I'm not certain
that it is ultimately better for animals.

------
alangibson
Does anyone else > 40 years old remember there just being lots more animals
around when you were a kid? I don't know if it's just age blinders or
paranoia, but in particular I remember there being way more birds pretty much
everywhere.

~~~
misja111
No I remember the opposite. I'm over 50 and when I was young in the 70's the
water in ditches and canals was so polluted that nothing lived in it anymore
but algae. In Amsterdam, where I moved to after leaving home, you had to be
suicidal to be willing to take a swim in the canals.

Nowadays fish are back everywhere, even in the canals in Amsterdam. There seem
to be salmons swimming in the big rivers, this was unthinkable in my
childhood. Species higher in the food chain such as otters are slowly
returning to the Netherlands as well.

~~~
hannofcart
However, isn't a lot of the improvement you see in clean air and water in
Europe thanks to the fact that a lot of the manufacturing that used to happen
in Europe has now relocated to China after its efforts to open up its economy
that started in the 80s.

The net result may be a win for the environment in developed Western nations,
but considering how polluted China now is, I wonder if it's still a net
negative for the world as a whole.

~~~
misja111
No, the improvements started in the 70's and 80's already due to more strict
regulations for companies. Although maybe this helped the industry in Asia get
a competitive advantage. Also a lot of the water pollution was due to washing
powder that used to contain phosphates. Those were forbidden in the 80's.

------
spodek
The Hacker News and geek community is weird. Ask them about reaching Mars or
fusion and they say it's inevitable. They're unqualified good results.

Suggest we have fewer children for a few generations and consume less and it's
absolutely impossible, against human nature. The One Child policy proves it.

We idolize people who change the world as entrepreneurs but say one person
can't make a difference in changing culture.

Yet many cultures have chosen to lower birthrates through peaceful, voluntary
means resulting in prosperity and stability. On a personal level, I've lowered
my footprint by about 90 percent in a few years according to online
calculators and every change improved my life. I figure most westerners could
drop 75 - 80 percent with just the low-hanging fruit, improving their lives --
buying less junk, wasting less food, living closer to family, camping instead
of visiting Timbuktu.

Changing course is a matter of belief and choice far more than technology.
While it's not monolithic, this community seems to choose to believe living
sustainably is harder than space travel. I'd argue space travel is more
attainable when we aren't pushing the Earth's limits to sustain life and human
society.

~~~
snarf21
You aren't wrong but to me you are focusing on the wrong things. As you say,
the west is already dropping the birth rate and being more and more focused on
sustainability, etc. Eventually, it will get there. Change takes time.

The big problem is the 3rd world. People there don't a have a choice. They
don't want their family to starve. Women are largely forced into a
reproduction role only. But we know that the way to reduce birth rate is to
educate women and give them jobs and careers. We know that if we can create
stable jobs in the 3rd world, they will stop clear cutting forests. To me,
that is where the billionaires should be putting their money. If we raise the
global standard of living enough, our high population problems will slowly
revert.

~~~
RockIslandLine
"They don't want their family to starve."

We know how to stop that. We don't have to sentence people to subsistence
agriculture. When you know better, you do better, and we know better.

We can farm in ways that build high carbon soils. We can do this even in the
3rd world. Teach people the proper techniques.

It's nonsense to claim that we just have to accept this kind of collapse.

~~~
inglor_cz
"Teach people the proper techniques."

I read quite a long article once, it was about efforts to teach Iraqi farmers
how to use modern techniques and modern equipment.

The main problem they encountered wasn't conservative mindset. No, the farmers
were willing to try something new.

It was missing infrastructure. Once you start using any sophisticated
equipment, you need repairs, distribution of spare parts, good documentation
in local language etc. Such a system is not easy to set up in a really foreign
country, much less so if security is problematic.

------
squibbles
The wolves eat the deer. The deer population collapses to the point that the
food supply for the wolves cannot support the wolves. The wolves starve and
the wolf population collapses. Without pressure from the wolves, the deer make
a comeback and flourish.

The population cycles occur in both large and small ecosystems. The process is
slow and steady. Often it seems like the embers of life have gone out.
However, something always comes back from the ashes.

Humans are just another animal in the food chain.

~~~
yogthos
Human population collapse is very likely in the near future.

~~~
squibbles
I don't know how near a collapse is, since catastrophes in systems tend to
come as a surprise, not a gradual event. I do agree, however, that there is
substantial evidence to suggest a collapse in the human population is
inevitable.

------
keiferski
_In addition, no one today remembered why the war had come about or who, if
anyone, had won. The dust which had contaminated most of the planet 's surface
had originated in no country and no one, even the wartime enemy, had planned
on it._

 _First, strangely, the owls had died. At the time it had seemed almost funny,
the fat, fluffy white birds lying here and there, in yards and on streets;
coming out no earlier than twilight as they had while alive the owls escaped
notice. Medieval plagues had manifested themselves in a similar way, in the
form of many dead rats. This plague, however, had descended from above. After
the owls, of course, the other birds followed, but by then the mystery had
been grasped and understood._

\- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)

One of the major themes in the story are animals; most species have been wiped
out and people own artificial versions instead. Decker himself is motivated by
a desire to own a "real" animal. Interesting that they mostly left this out of
the film version (Blade Runner) and only vaguely mentioned it. In general, the
book is very different, but discussion of animals takes up at least 1/4 of the
narrative.

~~~
perfunctory
“What we are facing now is a person whose crime dwarfs all of the crimes ever
committed in human history. We were unable to find a single law applicable to
his crime. So we recommend that the crime of Extinction of Life on Earth be
added to international law ...”

— Cixin Liu, The Dark Forest

~~~
derwiki
They weren’t talking about animals per se though? This was the “cursed”
planet?

~~~
Johnjonjoan
Not animals in particular but it was Earth. They were charging the guy who
liked American action movies and getting stoned.

------
cmendel
It is going to be a rough rest of your life, buckle up.

~~~
echelon
For us, not really. The generations that come after us? Probably.

And therein lies the problem. The people making the rules and pulling the
strings don't have a bleeding, burning pressure to change course. And they
won't until it's too late.

Complain all you want about climate and biodiversity and pollution, but
nothing is going to be done until we've stunted the lives of the people at the
top. That's just how the short-sighted, hill climbing algorithm called
humanity works. We're like an ant colony, and we can't optimize for things
happening outside of an _N x (human lifespan)_ , where 0 < N < 1.

A better solution might be to increase human lifespan to the point where
people begin to worry about a hundred years from now. Because they're just not
going to care enough to act otherwise. Everything else is more immediate, more
pressing.

When's the last time you turned off your electricity? Or started a coup to
remove the policy makers?

Humans aren't equipped to solve this. It's because of the algorithm of
society.

Maybe that's the Great Filter.

~~~
itsoktocry
> _but nothing is going to be done until we 've stunted the lives of the
> people at the top_

Do people honestly believe "nothing" is being done? We are chipping away at
these problems, otherwise you wouldn't be reading about it in a mainstream
newspaper article. People (especially younger people) are more conscious about
these issues than at any time in _my_ lifetime. It's not like you can flip a
switch and change a society that has developed over millennia.

~~~
rcxdude
The concern is that compared to what's necessary to change the apparent course
of the planet, what has been done so far is basically nothing. On a global
scale the amount of change necessary is orders of magnitude larger than what
has changed so far, and it needs to happen fast (and the problem is getting
worse: the second derivative isn't even in the right direction in that carbon
emissions per year are still increasing globally. Given what we know about the
climate it's not clear if we would avoid substantial shifts even if we reset
the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to the levels from the start of the
century). And the fact is much more action could be easily taken even right
now, but some governments are still in denial that there's even a problem in
the first place (and the fact is this is a problem which needs government
action: individual consumers do not have the power to change the behaviour of
industry, even if well organised).

------
macspoofing
One of the issues of plunging headlong into solar and wind (and bio-fuels) is
that those sources require huge land-areas around mining of rare metals,
deployment, and finally waste. As our global population and energy needs grow,
this problem gets bigger and bigger and therefore place stress on existing,
and already stressed, ecosystems. On the other end, nuclear is energy dense,
and requires tiny amount of land for energy generation and waste storage.
Sooner or later we will be moving back to large scale nuclear deployment
because there isn't anything like nuclear power which checks the global
warming box and reduced stress on ecosystem box.

~~~
christiansakai
I was surprised that ESGV (Vanguard Index for responsible environmental
friendly investing) does not include nuclear power there. I wonder what's the
stigma bout nuclear?

~~~
badestrand
> I wonder what's the stigma bout nuclear?

I am sure you know the answer but because you ask for it: Radioactivity is
nasty. Example Germany: When I grew up my parents couldn't pick mushrooms and
I couldn't play in a sandbox because a few thousand kilometers away there was
a reactor incident and the wind blew it over. Today people living near a power
plant receive free jodium tablets in case there will be an accident. The
government spends endless years looking for places to store the nuclear waste
because nobody wants it in their backyard, obviously. The waste in the old
starage, designed to last 10000 years, leaked already and noone knows how to
handle it. France built most of their power plants directly at the border so
that hopefully we will receive all the fallout. Uranium mining is said to be
desastrous for the environment. Probably there's a lot more.

~~~
ajuc
You get more radioactive elements over your life from breathing air in coal-
burning country than you would from eating these mushrooms.

And it's no a one-time catastrophe result, but everyday operation.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Often quoted, and while it's true that coal fumes and (worse) the leftover
slag is a huge problem, the fear of nuclear is that it's a lot more sudden.
Slag is less of a risk than nuclear waste is but has to be treated similarly.
Fumes are dangerous and are basically destroying the world / ecosystem, but
it's a slow process as opposed to a nuclear power plant meltdown (Chernobyl,
Fukushima) which cause much shorter term issues.

Basically people live to a hundred even with pollution, but life expectancy
and quality of life is much lower near a meltdown site.

That said, if you look purely at numbers, nuclear (assuming it doesn't
explode) is better for humanity than coal.

That said that said, loads of countries recognize how bad coal is, and it's
being phased out in favor of gas and renewables.

~~~
ajuc
> Slag is less of a risk than nuclear waste is but has to be treated similarly

Im my country (Poland) over 20 000 people die yearly of lung cancer.
Significant percent of them never smoked cigarettes and the main reason they
got that cancer was smog. Which in Poland is almost exclusively seen in
winters and caused by burning coal.

Chernobyl caused up to 4000 victims according to the worst estimates
(including cancer developed later).

Every year in just one country there's more victims of coal energetics than
victims of nuclear power in the whole world over all time.

------
eutropia
In the same period from 1970 to 2016, human population went from 3.7 billion
to 7.4 billion.

------
dominotw
I have to 'pick a lane' very soon re: having kids or not. This stuff really
weighs on my mind all the time.

People with young kids what are your feelings about this?

~~~
bluGill
I'm optimistic. I work in agriculture and so see all the advances coming -
right now there is more than enough food to go around despite bad weather, and
yields are still going up fast. In the mean time world population growth is
slowing down as third world countries advance to the point where more babies
is bad for the family.

~~~
dominotw
yea its def race against time. It is slowing down in places like india but
africa is just getting started.

------
leahey
Is there any reason to believe this may have turned around some in the years
since 2016? No, right? I feel stupid even asking.

------
wubbert
There's really no way of stopping or reversing this without billions of people
dying. Since the end of WWII, killing others for the survival of your own kind
has become extremely taboo (outside of Israel, that is), so nothing is going
to be done until it's way too late.

~~~
disown
Well the world population is expected to stabilize around 10 billion or so for
a long while. So that new normal may also stabilize the wild animal
population. The exponential population growth of the past 100 years seems to
have stopped so that is one good news.

------
sul_tasto
What would be helpful is a list of specific problems that need to be solved.

------
mensetmanusman
Vertical farming powered by renewable and nuclear, reforest the farm fields.

------
ximeng
Not too long before it's man versus man rather than man versus nature.

~~~
thecureforzits
Once the animals are gone, we won't last much longer. It is extremely naive to
think we can engineer ourselves a new biome that can sustain anything even
close to what we have now.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Don't people engineer new biomes pretty frequently? It seems pretty defeatist
to look at a world where we regularly transform dirt fields into grassy plains
into food and think that we'll never be able to sustain ourselves if the
climate changes.

~~~
RockIslandLine
Engineering new biomes for fun is different than having to do it every year or
you die.

What do you do when seasonal heat makes Pakistan and India uninhabitable for
large parts of the year? We're not prepared for that kind of migration, we
didn't even deal with Syria well.

Farming and other activities often require decades to truly show a profit.
When rainfall patterns are changing on short timescales, you will not be able
to plan for food production given the underlying churn in fertile locations.

------
merricksb
[https://archive.md/HpKZu](https://archive.md/HpKZu)

------
justcomments12
related:
[https://geoengineering.environment.harvard.edu/geoengineerin...](https://geoengineering.environment.harvard.edu/geoengineering)

------
rob74
Mandatory xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/1338/](https://xkcd.com/1338/)

That was a real eye-opener when I first saw it. Talk about Anthropocene...

~~~
nn3
I doubt that includes insects, bacteria and krill

Krill biomass alone is significantly bigger than humanity's. Insect's and
bacteria too.

This article discusses a study that claims humanity is ~1/10000 of total
biomass, including plants. [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/humans-
make-110000...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/humans-
make-110000th-earths-biomass-180969141/)

In general large animals have been already devastated by the last ice age and
then changes resulting from that. Even without humans large animals would be
significantly less diverse than in many periods before.

Of course human's killing spree is not helping either.

The xkcd article is probably about large animals, but that's a kind of large
animal chauvinism. Why do the small guys not matter? Yes they're in decline
too

~~~
rob74
Well, it's written right in the title: "Earth's _land mammals_ by weight". So
no, it doesn't include bacteria, insects, other invertebrates, or anything
living in the sea, but the point it's trying to make about the impact of
humans on the planet is still important...

------
WalterBright
It was pretty obvious to me 40-50 years ago that a mass extinction event was
coming soon. I figured few animals larger than a dog would be left.

~~~
kortex
Excluding pets and livestock, yep, pretty much. Obligatory xkcd

[https://xkcd.com/1338/](https://xkcd.com/1338/)

------
throwaway5752
Remember how everyone made fun of Al Gore? Manbearpig? Leaving the Paris
accord?

Remember how they are mocking the Green New Deal?

Remember Dominionism, making fun of "soy boys", and everything else?

You should remember this when they try to pretend they do everything they
could to remove environmental regulations and delay dealing with global
warming until it was too late.

Also remember a good percentage of them believe in End-Time Theology (ever
wonder why Evangelicals care so much about a Jerusalem embassy?)

edit: California is burning down just like Australia did earlier. So is
Siberia. Pay attention to methane emissions from permafrost and shallow
clathrates. This article is a different facet of the same problem. We are
beyond the Earth's carrying capacity and it's because the wealthiest wanted to
keep getting wealthy and because some religious fanatics believe in the
Rapture (including a fair number of the top members of the current US
administration).

~~~
MisterBastahrd
I think the end-time theology thing is understated. There's a significant part
of the US population who actually believes that the reason they don't need to
be concerned about the environment is because God will rapture them up before
the shit hits the fan. This also allows a fringe of that fringe to actively
ignore political leaders who don't cater to their specific subset of interests
because they "might be the anti-christ."

Between Obama + Antichrist and Trump + Antichrist alone there are over 7
million results on google including a ton of kindle books.

------
growlist
Yet somehow, magically, there are no environmental impacts from mass
migration.

------
dangus
From the details in the article it seems that the best thing you on an
individual level can do to help is stop eating meat.

------
ecmascript
When the effects of global warming and extinction finally will hit us hard,
people will die of in billions and life will begin to come back.

Of course a lot of species will be extinct forever, but so is the natural
cycle of life. Almost all species that ever existed has already gone extinct
and it's foolish to think that we won't have the same destiny, especially how
we're treating our food chain.

~~~
hdjdbtbgwjsn
Assuming some negative feedback mechanism kicks in. There is a chance a
positive feedback occurs, global warming spirals and Earth becomes
uninhabitable. See Venus for an example.

~~~
Aunche
You realize that all of the carbon in fossil fuels was once in the atmosphere
right? The earth spits out a little bit of CO2 naturally, and the sun is a bit
hotter than it was 100 million years ago, but we aren't turning into Venus
anytime soon.

~~~
hdjdbtbgwjsn
Back then the continents were configured rather differently. That has a huge
effect on hothouse vs icehouse regime. Right now we are in a continental
configuration that should be icehouse (circumpolar currents with cold deep
water). If we force the climate into hothouse against its natural state what
will happen?

It's very much not settled how balanced the mantle vs surface carbon cycle is.
How much carbon is in MORB? Is subducted sediment actually entrained into the
mantle?

A major store of CO2 is sedimentary dolomite. We did't even really understand
how that formed! (Last time I checked but I'm no sedimentologist so that might
have been solved.)

Speaking as a geologist your statement is dangerously naive. I'm not saying
Venus and the end of all life is definite but it is the worst case scenario of
a situation that we don't understand and that will soon be (maybe already is)
out of our control.

~~~
macspoofing
>Speaking as a geologist your statement is dangerously naive.

I'm skeptical of you being a working geologist because I haven't seen any
credible claims that there is any reason to believe Earth could turn into
Venus. But even outside of that, scaremongering with incredibly unlikely
scenarios is also dangerous and detrimental to fighting climate change,
because somebody is going to call bullshit on you and will result in your and
even the general credibility of climate scientists, to be diminished.

~~~
hdjdbtbgwjsn
You should speak to some more Geologists then. We really don't understand the
systems of our planet and we are currently sticking a big spanner into them.
Many of us are more concerned than we can publish - precisely because we don't
want to scaremonger.

Will the Earth definitely turn into an out of control hothouse with a Venus -
like climate? Very probably not there are many differences between Earth and
Venus.

Can we be sure than some positive feedback mechanism might make life as we
know it untenable on Earth? I'm not sure myself and I don't think anyone can
know.

~~~
aww_dang
"We really don't understand the systems of our planet and we are currently
sticking a big spanner into them."

There's a presumption that man is somehow an unnatural creature divorced from
nature here.

If only we had multiple Earths to experiment with. One without humans as a
control, another with humans as we are now and a third with humanity following
whatever dictates the warmist technocrats prescribe.

Hypothetically speaking, I wonder how one would measure the utility of
humanity existing at all? Some environmentalists may suggest that the Earth
without humanity is the "best" of them all. There is a proximity between
warmists and population control advocates.

Unfortunately, we don't have that luxury. From my perspective the "spanner in
the works" analogy better fits with the economic centralization & suffering
the warmist dictates may cause.

~~~
hdjdbtbgwjsn
I'm politically very in favour of personal liberty. Climate change being a
real and causing problems is a fact at this point (we are mainly working out
how big the problems will be). I wish that some liberterian politicians would
start to accept that so we can get some freedom respecting solutions!

~~~
aww_dang
Humanity created agricultural systems. Likewise beavers modify their
environment and create ecological systems. The Internet only moralizes about
the former.

I'm inclined to agree that climates change. Whether the weather is wrong,
correct or otherwise undesirable due to immoral actions of men seems like a
separate issue. As you mentioned, we don't fully understand the systems
involved. Consequently, I prefer to err on the side of humility rather than
judgement.

That said, responsible forestry management and storage of carbon in the form
of cut lumber has a profit incentive. For those inclined to accept the
premises of global warming, this is a solution which respects freedom.
Interestingly, it is downplayed and dismissed as untenable. Even further
afield are environmentalists who oppose logging and propose regulations which
set the stage for CO2 emitting forest fires.

~~~
hdjdbtbgwjsn
I don't see climate change as a moral issue. To me it's a practical issue.
Best case climate change will seriously mess up our way of life. Worst case is
very bad.

I'm not sure that we can grow and store enough trees to bring CO2 levels down
to non dangerous levels in time. If we could it would certainly be worth
doing. Can you point me to any calculations?

Even if this specific solution isn't viable, it is an example of what we need
to do to solve this problem. Fundamentally we need to scrub a huge amount of
carbon out of the atmosphere as soon as possible. Everything else is just
moving the deckchairs.

~~~
aww_dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19712705](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19712705)

There's several of these if you look. I believe one outlines how much land
exactly needs to be used.

I see it as a philosophical issue. For me the warmist perspective is
incoherent.

A bug's lifetime is measured in weeks. He cannot see beyond the next tuft of
grass. His world is few meters in diameter and inches in height. If the
aforementioned beaver floods the meadow, is it "unnatural" for the bug? Does
this qualify as "sticking a spanner into a natural system"? Clearly the bug
would be justified in doomsaying from his perspective.

Luckily, we are not bugs. We have the ability to adapt and gain larger
perspectives than just looking at the next hedge. What we don't have is an
omnipotent ability to understand the complex details of nature. Thus, we are
ill qualified to make statements like, "putting a spanner in the works". Who
are we to say that man's activity is worse or somehow different than nature's?

There's so much doomsaying. As you admit, we don't understand the complex
systems of the Earth. A warmer period might be better for us all. We don't
know. If you ascribe to the apocalyptic vision it is hard to claim that
controlling other's consumption habits is not a moral issue. Either they
follow the advice of their betters or are complicit in manifesting the climate
apocalypse.

If we start with the moral premise that men are free, then restrictions upon
that become a moral issue.

Maybe I'm just a cynic, but "cui bono" provides a more coherent explanation of
the warmist agenda. It also explains why solutions like tree planting are not
more popular. Carbon credits issued by a supranational entity raises alarm
bells for me.

------
geden
Time for Game B. And fast. Come on HN. Time to bring your A Game to Game B and
get stuck into John Vervaeke, Daniel Schmachtenberger, Jordan Hall etc.

[https://youtu.be/8Es_WTEgZHE](https://youtu.be/8Es_WTEgZHE)

------
angel_j
The only solution to is to live in harmony with more animals. People think
wild animals can't be domesticated, but they are wrong. Living in the wild
makes any animal wild, including humans, but raised from birth, generations of
animals can learn to cohabit with humans. We could even train the more
intelligence animals to assist us. Imagine local monkeys trained to collect
trash and recyclables, rewarded with food to bring bottles and cans to a local
depository.

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feralimal
Unfortunately, these sorts of claims are impossible to verify. Did they
measure like we do? Have the numbers been adjusted? Because everything is
politicised, I have low levels of trust in any of these voices that self-
purport themselves to be authorities. It seems so far away from my personal,
anecdotal experience.

It seems clear to me that rural areas are far less populated nowadays - small
rural farms the world over, are being run by parents (or now, grandparents!)
in their 80's it seems - the younger generation are in cities. From my school
class no one has more that 3 children, and most have none. That should bode
for a crashing population, but instead we are told it is increasing
drastically.

So, while cities may feel busy, I tend to think the population is in decline.
And that if lots of rural areas are in decline, that animal populations are
probably on the increase, only there's no one there to see it.

