I've been out driving across Europe for the past year. What strikes you about Europe is that almost every square meter of it is man controlled. The most wildlife they have are a few deer and wild boar. Even squirrels are rare.
Besides bio-diversity being 'nice' it is also a source of stability. The fewer species there are and the more of those few species we have the more susceptible those few species are to pathogens that wipe out those species. Monocultures are a risk.
Of course there are some counter-balancing effects as well, such as that if you really only have those few species plenty of diseases will lose their reservoir hosts.
Eco-systems are fragile, any attempt so far to create a stand-alone biosphere that I know about has failed.
I also miss the oceans in your little table and I think those + all the oxygen generating plants and trees are really rather important for life on Earth. And those plants rely on insects for their pollination. And those insects in turn are kept in check by all the predators on insects which are missing from your list as well. And so on...
> Eco-systems are fragile, any attempt so far to create a stand-alone biosphere that I know about has failed.
From another perspective, the earth's ecosystems are robust. Life on this planet has yet to become extinct, despite the universe's "trying" several times. When one species declines, another takes its place. One ecosystem declines, another increases.
Isn't this just the Lion King, the Circle of Life and all that?
Life will continue, that's for sure. Even a nuclear wipe-out will very likely not erase all traces of life from Earth.
Keep in mind that humans are also just a single species and with global air travel and enormous numbers we're setting ourselves up for a pandemic. Nature loves large numbers of well connected individuals in close proximity.
And the way we're using anti-biotics could come back to bite us.
I too am highly disturbed by the loss of ecosystems. I'm just describing the reality of what the planet is becoming & will probably continue to become. Very sad, but quite possibly true.
In reality, we could all probably continue to live on a planet that has just 20 or so species left.
Everything else, we'll have to describe to children with stories.
You mis-read that sentence and the one before it I think. That was related to all the other oxygen generating plants and trees that rely on insects for their pollination.
> The most wildlife they have are a few deer and wild boar. Even squirrels are rare.
If true, that's a symptom.
Your very small list is not self-sustaining. Every living thing evolved in the context of every other living thing around it. While the current mix is not the only essential configuration, a large mix is essential for there to be anything from your list.
At the least: it took millions of years to get the all but uncountable list of life we have today. Why destroy it when it's not at all necessary to do so. We can never put it back, or create anything even close to it. The best we can do is to not fuck up.
* bananas because in some countries are the main "cereal"
* soy because it naturally fixates nitrogen
I'm not sure what to select to get all the vitamins. And remember to add lot of fungus and beetles to eat the scraps. And a few fishes for the dolphins.
Corn, wheat, rice.
What else do you need?
I've been out driving across Europe for the past year. What strikes you about Europe is that almost every square meter of it is man controlled. The most wildlife they have are a few deer and wild boar. Even squirrels are rare.