We might be killing ourselves much faster than "climate science" suggests

[Husar]

That's right, forget about the global warming thing about how we're all going to die of too much heat in 50 or 100 years.
Apparently we are now killing other species that are vital to our survival much faster than that.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/...l-insects-gone

Changes in land use surrounding the reserves are probably playing a role. "We've lost huge amounts of habitat, which has certainly contributed to all these declines," Goulson says. "If we turn all the seminatural habitats to wheat and cornfields, then there will be virtually no life in those fields." As fields expand and hedgerows disappear, the isolated islands of habitat left can support fewer species. Increased fertilizer on remaining grazing lands favors grasses over the diverse wildflowers that many insects prefer. And when development replaces countryside, streets and buildings generate light pollution that leads nocturnal insects astray and interrupts their mating.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2...-dead-insects/

Experts mostly blame intensive agriculture and the use of pesticides over the past 50 years.

Since 2006, beekeepers in Britain have lost about a third of their managed bee colonies each year largely due to the loss of flower-rich grassland which has declined by 97 per cent from the 1930s, and the increased use of insecticides on crops.

http://www.dw.com/en/insect-and-bird...any/a-41030897

A study by the German Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU) concludes that the total number of birds in Germany has been declining dramatically in recent years.
In the past twelve years an estimated 12.7 million pairs of breeding birds have disappeared. That's roughly 15 percent of the total bird population. The study is based on data provided to the European Union by Germany's federal government in 2013.

In that light it is always interesting to see people claim the planet can easily feed 11 or more billions of people when our agriculture, economy and behavior are terribly self-destructive at 7 billion already. How are we going to feed 11 billion people with either no biosphere around us or without chemicals and monocultures?

We need a one-child policy and an economic system that favors decline instead of growth.

Either way these developments seem quite worrying and could have an enormous impact relatively soon. And most of the solutions cannot be merged with more economic optimization and growth so far.

[Beskar]

Adopting a vegan diet means the land-use for animals can be changed to crops. A lot more land use is needed for animal farming than strange from vegetation. That is how you could feed 11 billion or so population.

[Kagemusha]

Adopting a vegan diet means the land-use for animals can be changed to crops. A lot more land use is needed for animal farming than strange from vegetation. That is how you could feed 11 billion or so population.

And what will you do when the population growth does not stop there?

[Sarmatian]

And what will you do when the population growth does not stop there?

People will start committing suicides en masse if forced to be vegan.

[Montmorency]

People will start committing suicides en masse if forced to be vegan.

l o l

But what if gun control, mental health services, and public safety improve to the point that we're stopping or preventing too many suicides?



There's one vegan perspective that says, well, vegan outreach and activism in the West has been an almost unmitigated failure over the past generation: full-fledged, long-term veganism is less prevalent than transgenderism, and with vegetarianism it's only marginally better.

Therefore, instead of taking an exclusionary or maximalist stance that emphatically condemns anyone who consumes a spoonful of yogurt or honey now and then to the same extent as someone who eats 50-lb steaks for breakfast, a more successful strategy might be to nudge people into making small modifications to their diet without having to fully embrace the vegan or vegetarian lifestyle.

Strangely though, one suggested nudge is to encourage eating products of large livestock rather than of small, the logic being that the suffering of two chickens (2 organisms) is worse than the suffering of one cow (1 organism). Unfortunately, this principled animal utilitarianism fails to account for the fact that chickens are relatively more ecologically sustainable with respect to our food production and the health of the world's ecosystems than cows or other large livestock...

So optimizing vegan and animal rights priorities is probably going to be tougher than 'more organisms = more suffering'.

[Sarmatian]

Well, first of all, I have to ask - what the heck kind of chickens do you have over there when it is 2 chickens = 1 cow?

Secondly, wouldn't that discriminate against cows? It' s not their fault they're so big. You try dealing with all those fat jokes.

[Husar]

I still think if people could be happy with just one or two children, many problems would solve themselves.

The biggest problem in the way of one child however, seem to be poverty, and to a lesser extent emotions and traditions. The wealthy parts of Europe already do shrink without immigration, even though some families still get 5 children. They're just not enough. As far as I am aware, in poorer countries children are often a retirement plan and one that can die away, too. So people have more incentives to get many children. That money is a factor can also be seen in countries where girls may later require payment(s) to the husband and abortions of girls are very high.

One could assume that if we solve poverty, we may reach the top of a bell curve almost naturally...

[Husar]

Adopting a vegan diet means the land-use for animals can be changed to crops. A lot more land use is needed for animal farming than strange from vegetation. That is how you could feed 11 billion or so population.

What Kage said and what about the use of pesticides to grow all the veggies in monocultures? You'd still be killing insects left and right, for them it does not seem to matter too much whether you take away the flowers to grow pigs or to grow salad. And swarms of locusts or other insects that may adapt probably can't replace bees either.