[HN Gopher] Countries are gathering in an effort to stop a biodi...
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Countries are gathering in an effort to stop a biodiversity
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Author : adrian_mrd
Score : 178 points
Date : 2021-10-14 13:32 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| da39a3ee wrote:
| This is the huge problem with the focus on climate change: a
| generation of "environmentalists" is growing up who don't
| understand the importance and fragility of natural ecosystems and
| their organisms. Our primary objective is not to keep our planet
| within certain temperature ranges. Our primary objective is to
| not irreversibly destroy the natural world. We must succeed;
| failure is unacceptable.
|
| People are addressing climate change with afforestation projects
| using non-native trees and all sorts of other stuff that doesn't
| help save natural ecosystems. If the subset of people who think
| they "care about the environment" spends the next couple of
| decades supporting projects like that, and taking their eyes off
| the crisis of habitat destruction, then a terrible tragedy will
| result the shame of which humanity will never escape and which
| will make the world inherited by our children a pathetic memory
| of what it should have been, for ever.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/nD3c6
| xenocyon wrote:
| I'm paying close attention to the direction that (my native)
| India takes w.r.t. GM food crops, which have so far been illegal.
|
| Background: India went from colonialism-induced massive serial
| famines to self-sufficiency and then some, while entirely
| eschewing GM foods. (NB: this doesn't mean there is no
| malnutrition in India, where inequalities are rife, but it means
| that the country as a whole is able to produce more than needed.
| The causes of hunger are non-intuitive; for e.g. the dumping of
| cheap foods is more likely to _cause_ hunger than solve it, as
| hunger stems from poverty which stems from economic disablement -
| which is caused by dumping cheap foods.)
|
| Now, the Green Revolution did result in a loss of biodiversity
| (among other problems) but without creating the kind of
| monocultures you see in the US. For example, there are still
| numerous varieties of rice in India, especially locally variated.
|
| Despite this, the Indian government has been increasingly warming
| over recent years to introducing GM foods (which is largely a
| solution in search of a problem, in the Indian context). The
| threat from GM foods is almost always misunderstood. It is not
| about the individual health effects of eating GM foods; it is
| about the largescale replacement of a system where farmers own
| their biodiverse seed, with a top down monocultural approach that
| essentially makes farmers franchisees of a massive corporate
| behemoth and eliminates biodiversity, putting all eggs in one
| basket.
| fredgrott wrote:
| a question, could the nation of Indian start their onw GM food
| and make the IP of them free to everyone as an free-access
| solution for farmers?
| asdff wrote:
| Countries that eschew genetic modification of foodstocks will
| see famine in the next century. Traditional breeding techniques
| to introduce favorable traits simply do not work fast enough to
| keep up with changing ecological conditions in a changing
| climate. It's often too costly to waste acreage screening for
| favorable phenotypes after making a cross between two species
| in effort to couple favorable phenotypes from both (this is the
| traditional method to develop new cultivars, most of what we
| plant today are hybrids). Genetic modification is a shortcut
| that ultimately saves the farmer time, money, water, and land
| to achieve the same end result of an elite cultivar.
|
| What happens after with licensing and other legal issues is a
| fault of policymakers rather than any fault of this inherent
| lifesaving technology.
| infogulch wrote:
| I agree in general that GM is mostly a shortcut to a similar
| selective breeding that humans have been doing since pre-
| history, and banning it altogether is short sighted and
| reactionary. That said I think there is space for debate over
| _which_ phenotypes are bred into our food, and how some
| phenotypes enable drastic changes in how our food is
| harvested and processed. For example, the use of glyphostate
| as an essential component in weed control and harvesting of
| wheat is enabled by transferring phenotypes from very
| different organisms that would be impossible using natural
| breeding techniques. And note that this and similar
| modifications are now IP owned by the people who did it, and
| they have a vested interest in getting everyone to use it (by
| force if necessary) irregardless of the obvious looming
| health questions that arise.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| On paper, you are absolutely right. But we don't live in
| theoretical world, rather in one where corporations like
| Monsanto will use any technology available to extract as much
| profit from everybody as possible.
|
| Even if it means doing highly amoral stuff and tightly
| coupling crops enhanced for mass, immunity to pests and
| diseases with things like inability to breed, so farmers have
| to keep buying their seeds.
|
| Its not hard to see why everybody has issues with this - not
| many want to be slaves with the very thing that our lives
| depend on to company thats extremely greedy from the start.
| GMs without those traits, having just weaknesses adressed
| might be much better sell for poor countries.
|
| Rich countries like Europe will react when its time to react,
| no need to freak out now when as you describe serious issues
| will be present in next century. Crops can be changed pretty
| fast if there is strong enough motivation and one has enough
| cash.
| goatlover wrote:
| Can't the Indian government promote it's own agricultural
| companies and ban Monsanto products? That would allow
| Indian GM crops without worrying about some other country's
| corporation making Indian farmers dependent. Prohibiting GM
| foods sounds like handicapping countries if the concern is
| merely becoming dependent on other countries.
| pphysch wrote:
| Doable, sure. But that is precisely how one gets labeled
| an "authoritarian regime" by Western capitalists.
| jpollock wrote:
| Not authoritarian, but it does tend to run up against
| free trade agreements where offshore products and
| companies need to be given equivalent treatment.
|
| However, I don't think India has many FTAs, and probably
| few of them include agricultural products.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bilateral_free-
| trade_a...
| pphysch wrote:
| If not authoritarian, do you have any counterexamples of
| "authoritarian" countries that do have a FTA with
| Washington?
| ImaCake wrote:
| I am not convinced this is actually true. GMOs in practice
| tend to be the introduction of a foreign gene into an
| organism. Breeding is different; you shuffle ~1 million small
| effect size variants around and see if you can get a
| combination that has a bigger effect size. This sounds
| inefficient, but done right it can have spectacular effects
| (i.e the green revolution).
|
| I also don't think we have pushed the limits of breeding yet.
| It is only in the last decade that genotyping tech has become
| cheap enough to employ it for a breeding program. Combine
| that big data analysis with breeding and I bet you can
| produce some spectacular results within 1 or 2 generations.
|
| I think the massive advantages of shuffling a million
| variants 1000 times is why GMOs are transgenics and not
| modifications of the existing genome. Traditional breeding is
| just so much better at this.
| m0zg wrote:
| > Countries that eschew genetic modification of foodstocks
| will see famine in the next century
|
| Even if we were to agree that GM crops help with that (which
| is debatable), I don't see how there'd be any "famine" seeing
| that they can change policy anytime in the future if they see
| problematic trends, and do the same thing they do with drugs
| - ignore US patents and start making their own GM seeds.
| siliconunit wrote:
| I think there are a lot of misconceptions about GM crops,
| most people think they are modified to be resist/repel vast
| types of insects/pests and what not, this is in average not
| the case and very complex to implement, what they are really
| engineered for is simply to be very resistant to specific
| pesticides, very easy to control/predict as you have to
| target only the few chemicals that you spray. Unfortunately
| we all know what this means... tenfold increase of pesticides
| and faster destruction of the environment. Not to say that
| there aren't GM modifications in that direction, but it's not
| the norm.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| LOL - Bayer-Monsanto looking at you!
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > it is about the largescale replacement of a system where
| farmers own their biodiverse seed with a top down monocultural
| approach that essentially makes farmers franchisees of a
| massive corporate behemoth and eliminates biodiversity, putting
| all eggs in one basket.
|
| No one is out there forcing people to switch to GM crops when
| those seeds become available. Now the business model of large
| agriculture in the US isn't necessarily the one you would want
| to import, but GM crops could happily coexist in a country's
| agricultural mix along side traditional crops. You could
| probably even tweak some of your traditional seeds domestically
| to be more pest/drought resistant, give those seeds out, and
| call it a win.
|
| It could be a really useful tech if people deployed it
| responsibly.
| chuckee wrote:
| > No one is out there forcing people to switch to GM crops
| when those seeds become available.
|
| Just like if steroids became legal in sports, no-one would be
| forcing top athletes to take them. If you want to maintain
| food sovereignty, you can't ignore market forces.
| jonahbenton wrote:
| Putting out a request for someone with knowledge of IP
| dynamics in this space to weigh in. My understanding is that
| nothing is "forced" but adoption of IP-protected seed has
| substantial downstream effects and risks, and that there is
| no real "happy coexistence." Looking to be educated...
| throw63738 wrote:
| GM modified seeds can not be usually replanted after
| harvest. Sometimes they need proprietary fertiliser.
|
| Genetic sequences are patented. There was a case where GM
| seeds spread to neighbours, and Monsato sued neighbour...
|
| It is horror show similar to software patents.
| Retric wrote:
| Market forces heavily push GM crops when you let them enter
| the market without labeling laws.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Market forces in this instance meaning cheaper food for
| people, just so we're clear.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| cheaper food, with the long tail risk that a single crop
| vulnerability to a new disease destroys all of it without
| warning
| asdff wrote:
| Why is that not an issue with traditional crops? At least
| with GM crops if there is a known blight you can
| introduce traits that confer resistance to said blight in
| a much faster process than attempting to cross a high
| yielding and blight resistant strain and getting both
| favorable phenotypes in your crops. Especially with crops
| where it can take years for the progeny to reach maturity
| to even assess the phenotypes of the hybrids.
| Retric wrote:
| GM crops have significantly less genetic diversity simply
| as a result of how their created and sold. This isn't a
| new problem, but fixing it significantly slows time to
| market.
|
| As to using GM to add blight resistance, that's not
| always an option. Cavendish bananas for example are at
| massive risk from Panama disease TR4 and have been for
| years.
| asdff wrote:
| I'm glad you brought up the Canvendish, what an excellent
| recent example of the success of genetic tools in
| agriculture. There are other bananas that are resistant
| to panama disease but have other traits such as thinner
| skin that make them unfit for export. In fact,
| researchers have turned to genetic modification, and
| created a Cavendish variety that is resistant to Panama
| disease by introducing a blight resistant gene from a
| blight resistant wild banana. (1) This is just one
| example of how we can use genetic tooling to do what
| would otherwise take a breeder a lifetime of work in the
| field with a single cross and generation of progeny per
| growing season.
|
| You can develop GM crops that harbor genetic diversity.
| You can mutagenize them to introduce random variation and
| yield a variety of novel phenotypes that can adapt to any
| sort of conditions. You can conduct analysis using
| statistical models to identify the genes and regulatory
| mechanisms involved with these phenotypes. You can
| introduce these phenotypes into your cultivar. You can
| cross your cultivar with wild landraces to introduce more
| diversity, and cross these with geographically distant
| populations to introduce more divergent and diverse
| genetic compositions than what would even be possible
| among the landraces. To put it simply, the box has been
| opened, and you can do pretty much anything to shape and
| alter the plant with genetic tooling.
|
| 1. https://www.wur.nl/en/newsarticle/World-first-Panama-
| disease...
| Retric wrote:
| That's from 2017 and they still haven't gotten it to
| work.
|
| Which was my point they tried GM and failed, maybe the
| next attempt works but at this point it's not a fast
| process.
| panta wrote:
| I wonder if a lock-in phenomenon could take place at some
| point in the future, where non-GM varieties become a no-
| go and the GM ones get very expensive?
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| GM crops can produce more yield in worse conditions. As
| the climate changes, humanity will become increasingly
| dependent on these crops for survival. And yes, at that
| point we will be locked in, in the same way we are locked
| into many other technological advances that make our
| lives possible. However I don't expect that will ever
| make the GM crops more expensive than non-GM, since the
| land that is capable of growing non-GM will only become
| more of a rare luxury.
| chuckee wrote:
| Becoming dependent on a foreign corporation for your food
| supply will cost you far more in the long run.
| caiobegotti wrote:
| As a brazilian I don't believe for a second that these are actual
| efforts unless Brazil (holding 1/5 of all planet's biodiversity
| alone) is held accountable enough to see economical sanctions
| being enforced by more developed countries. I can't think of
| other last resorts efforts other than economical ones and Brazil
| would surely listen to those if they were enforced right.
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| >As a brazilian I don't believe for a second that these are
| actual efforts unless Brazil (holding 1/5 of all planet's
| biodiversity alone) is held accountable enough to see
| economical sanctions being enforced by more developed
| countries. I can't think of other last resorts efforts other
| than economical ones and Brazil would surely listen to those if
| they were enforced right.
|
| How do you feel about external countries dictating your
| government policy? Often this won't go the way you want.
|
| Is Mercosur unpopular in Brazil? Eliminating it would be quite
| costly to the world.
| caiobegotti wrote:
| Personally I believe in full sovereignty and I want that, but
| it can still exist inside economical dynamics. Also, Mercosul
| is popular enough, I've never heard about people wanting it
| to be over for economical reasons or borders (only due to
| ideological politics fights).
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I'm not the GP (clearly), but... You mean, having the
| Brazilian people be denied chances of getting less poor by
| some high polluting countries that made the (implied correct)
| choice to destroy their biodiversity before the 20th century
| because we are unable to stop individuals from destroying
| part of what we preserved until today?
|
| I don't see any chance of this not going bad. It would set
| the climate to somebody much worse than Bolsonaro to get into
| power. I don't see how the GP could ever want it, but there
| is a small and loud political movement that does ask for it.
|
| (By the way, Mercosul is popular in Brazil. Preserving
| forests is too. Preserving non-forest biodiversity is less
| popular, but as soon as people see the choice, they like it.
| All of those have strong opposition from small groups.)
| mistrial9 wrote:
| "dictating" is a landmine word, and almost certainly causes
| an arguement
| esturk wrote:
| But isn't that what's happening in this entire thread?
| Everyone here seems to have their "opinion" on how other
| countries "should" behave. Most of which involving drastic
| changes in lifestyle like eating and procreation habits.
| Never once considering what those countries would feel
| about.
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| >"dictating" is a landmine word, and almost certainly
| causes an arguement
|
| I believe it's a fair statement. If you come in with
| economic sanctions with policy in mind. You have dictated
| what that policy is. There's no beating around the bush.
| demosito666 wrote:
| The problem with biodiversity loss is that people don't care
| about it en masse. We just don't give a shit about nature
| collectively and biodiversity has complex relationship with
| profit to humans, because we can largely compensate loss of
| wildlife with more fertilizers and more sophisticated agriculture
| and farming. Which makes it even harder politically to act on it.
|
| Now of course global ecosystem degradation will hit the poor in
| developing countries very hard. But it's not like anybody who can
| take meaningful action cares about them either. And as opposed to
| climate change, the rich are isolated of the effects, so they
| have no incentive to push here either.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| >the rich are isolated of the effects
|
| How? The bees and birds will migrate to rich countries? Corals
| will pop up in front of premium resorts so the fish can
| reproduce in their nets? Pandemics only travel in business
| class?
| carapace wrote:
| > "When you have two concurrent existential crises, you don't get
| to pick only one to focus on -- you must address both no matter
| how challenging," said Brian O'Donnell
|
| Climate change and biodiversity loss are aspects of _one_
| problem: we don 't _see_ the world. Ours is fundamentally a
| psychological or spiritual crisis.
|
| Civilization as we know it is a kind of hypnotic trance.
|
| The real world is fantastically beautiful.
|
| Nature supplies all our needs though a self-regulating autonomic
| system made of self-improving four-billion-year-old
| nanotechnology that's driven by a zero-maintenance fusion reactor
| so powerful that it can burn out your retinas from 150 gigameters
| away.
|
| "All the world's problems can be solved in a garden" - Geoff
| Lawton
|
| Food, medicine, clothing, structural materials all grow
| naturally.
|
| It's also very fun and fulfilling to live in harmony with nature.
|
| So the question is, what's preventing us from seeing that and
| changing our ways?
|
| Why doesn't e.g. Gabe Brown's neighbor adopt his methods?
|
| (Gabe Brown is a farmer in North Dakota who practices
| regenerative agriculture. He make more money, increases soil
| fertility and biodiversity, does less work, and his farm is more
| resilient than conventional farms, so why don't more people pick
| up on this faster? "Treating the Farm as an Ecosystem with Gabe
| Brown Part 1, The 5 Tenets of Soil Health"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmIdq0D6-A )
|
| We have all the technology we need already, so that's not the
| limiting factor.
|
| It seems to me to be, as I said above, a perceptual/psychological
| problem.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| I don't know what you're trying to say but whatever it is, try
| saying it more clearly and succinctly, or desist. No it is not
| a perceptual/psychological problem: the problem is that humans
| are destroying natural habitat.
| carapace wrote:
| That was pretty clear and succinct in my opinion.
|
| > the problem is that humans are destroying natural habitat.
|
| Right, but why?
| spacemark wrote:
| Despite the rude response from the previous commenter, I
| agree with the general response. It seems like you're
| suggesting we all revert to subsistence living by growing
| our own food on little family farms or something.
|
| Fact is people actually like civilization. Modern
| civilization has led to an unprecedented quality of life
| for a larger portion of the human population than ever
| before in recorded history. People are hard pressed to give
| that up. Put another way, humans prefer to reduce their
| current misery than ensure all the future's climate issues
| are solved.
|
| Stepping away from modern civilization and our systems
| would result in unimaginable suffering.
| carapace wrote:
| Cheers! I appreciate the constructive feedback.
|
| > It seems like you're suggesting we all revert to
| subsistence living by growing our own food on little
| family farms or something.
|
| Ah, no, not at all. I do think we should integrate
| natural systems into our homes and cities to a much
| greater degree. E.g. Village Homes, urban Permaculture,
| Integral Urban House, food forests, etc.
|
| > Village Homes is a planned community in Davis, Yolo
| County, California. It is designed to be ecologically
| sustainable by harnessing the energies and natural
| resources that exist in the landscape, especially
| stormwater and solar energy.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_Homes
|
| "Urban Permaculture with Geoff Lawton"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qXgbrIYcFE
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Urban_House
|
| "Amazing 23-Year-Old Permaculture Food Forest - An
| Invitation for Wildness"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GJFL0MD9fc
|
| I also think we should try to live within our "solar
| budget", the incoming solar energy per m2, rather than
| burning fossil fuels. However, I hope clean atomic power
| becomes available too. (And rockets.)
|
| > Modern civilization has led to an unprecedented quality
| of life for a larger portion of the human population than
| ever before in recorded history.
|
| I agree, but it's not without its discontents, eh? When I
| said "Civilization as we know it is a kind of hypnotic
| trance." I wasn't referring to the technology, rather to
| the cultural influences that keep us from applying
| science and technology to make our civilization work in
| harmony with Nature instead of against it.
|
| > Put another way, humans prefer to reduce their current
| misery than ensure all the future's climate issues are
| solved.
|
| That's my point: we can reduce misery _and_ solve our
| climate issues. It 's the same solution, eh? Living in
| harmony with nature feels great! It's fun and fulfilling.
| I don't want to go backwards to some previous harsh
| lifestyle, I want to go forwards to a better
| (technological) civilization. (For example, the folks in
| the "Amazing 23-Year-Old Permaculture Food Forest" video
| above seem pretty happy and fulfilled and they haven't
| turned their backs on the benefits of modern
| civilization, eh?)
|
| Ecology is a science, after all. We can apply what we've
| learned about how natural systems work to improve our
| civilization. We can reduce misery, increase happiness,
| protect and even increase biodiversity, solve our climate
| problems, all by application of ecology.
|
| My puzzle is why don't we? What's preventing the rapid
| and widespread application of ecological knowledge and
| practice?
| themacguffinman wrote:
| The state of the art for eco-tech is still prohibitively
| expensive and inefficient. Feel free to come up with
| better eco-tech, but what you've mentioned so far sucks.
| I don't want to live within a solar budget and I don't
| want to pay high food prices for ridiculously inefficient
| eco-farms. Organic food may yield higher profits per unit
| in the current system where they only occupy a niche, but
| that's because it only occupies a middle/upper class
| niche.
| carapace wrote:
| > The state of the art for eco-tech is still
| prohibitively expensive and inefficient.
|
| What are you talking about?
|
| > Feel free to come up with better eco-tech, but what
| you've mentioned so far sucks.
|
| Did you watch this video? "Treating the Farm as an
| Ecosystem with Gabe Brown Part 1, The 5 Tenets of Soil
| Health" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmIdq0D6-A
|
| He's more productive than conventional agriculture with
| fewer inputs.
|
| > I don't want to live within a solar budget
|
| So where do you want to get power w/o burning fossil
| fuels? The only other source of energy is nuclear, which
| would be fine but it won't help in time to tackle climate
| change.
|
| > and I don't want to pay high food prices for
| ridiculously inefficient eco-farms.
|
| Well fortunately that's not the trade off. Seriously, go
| check out what Gabe Brown is doing.
| imtringued wrote:
| I'm sorry but these people don't give a damn. They will
| just pretend that you can brute force the solution with
| "engineering".
| FerretFred wrote:
| " _What's next .. The working draft .. Create a plan_ "
|
| Yes, but the real problem is that the people in power have
| actually just realised that there _is_ a problem, and they can 't
| buy it off.
|
| The "plan" right now is to extend the needed extreme measures to
| 10 or 20 years time when the current generation of clued-up kids
| will be in power: I hate to think what they'll have to work with
| though.
| jaggederest wrote:
| Yeah my first thought was "the plan better involve a time
| machine and intervention about 200 years ago" - it's a little
| late to be closing the barn door now.
| tuatoru wrote:
| > the real problem
|
| The real problem is that the response _is_ to create the plan.
|
| Politicians know that we don't want to change our lifestyles at
| all, but we also want to feel virtuous. They're doing what we
| want.
| mc32 wrote:
| People keep saying we can feed 10 billion people. We can. But at
| what cost to the diversity of biological systems?
|
| It's not popular to say but we need to stabilize population
| growth and stop encroaching on natural habitats and put a brake
| on consumerism.
|
| The developed world has in many parts allowed previously used
| areas to revert to a natural state. However in high pop growth
| countries the opposite is happening as both thd developed world
| and developing world both need as well as demand more resource
| extraction. We're depleting ocean fisheries, contributing to soil
| erosion, having water shortages, etc.
|
| Stabilize populations to 1960s or whatever, but we need to do the
| same as we're doing for pollution set a benchmark and aim for it.
| Get those people educated, provide them with prophylactics and
| get them out of a pop explosion curve and get to ZPG like Italy
| and Japan (US as well if we didn't import pop growth).
| slothtrop wrote:
| Isn't global population already projected to stabilize in 100
| years? The only way you could accelerate this is through
| aggressive policy measures to allow universal access to
| contraceptives, and investments to hasten development of
| manufacturing or other (which, in the interim, will raise
| emissions - but it would be unethical to disallow it) in the
| 3rd world. I'm for it but I don't expect it. The alternative is
| what China opted for which is likely not possible in developing
| countries.
|
| There's a class conflict in the backdrop and I see this as the
| reason media is planting the idea that consumers ought to be
| content with less, not because of the environment. They still
| want and expect you to consume, but will spin lower quality of
| life (owing to unaffordability of housing and certain
| lifestyles) as a virtue. Realistically your carbon footprint
| +/- on an individual level stays in the same rough ballpark if
| you live in the West since a lot of it is due to city
| infrastructure, electricity, gas. It's just compounded by sheer
| population. In my view everyone ought be able to live and
| pursue a life of high quality; reducing quality of life is not
| the solution, it's a problem. The solution will lie in
| innovation, population stagnation, growing economy for
| developing nations, etc.
| kiba wrote:
| Consuming less can be associated with better quality of life.
|
| More walkable neighborhoods mean you need cars for less
| errands, which means less money spent on road infrastructure
| and more money being invested in more efficient solutions.
| agumonkey wrote:
| seconded, most "modern" cities evolved blindly but there's
| almost nothing required in dense urban areas in terms of
| mobility. biking, walking can do a lot. thinking people pay
| expensive cars and gym club to forget about their bills is
| such a sad joke.
| slothtrop wrote:
| It's understood that opting to live in high-density areas
| means smaller living space in general. The urban/rural
| price disparity today is massive however and many could
| scarcely afford a room the size of a closet, but
| notwithstanding, whether this provides a "better quality"
| depends on what a person values. If you value what a
| detached home brings, that's what increases your quality of
| life. Having the choice matters.
| kiba wrote:
| Having choice matters if the option wasn't only single
| family homes where you live. There are no middle housing
| options for the vast majority of the country or options
| to expand your existing property into duplexes.
| slothtrop wrote:
| You're digressing into a zoning problem.
| mc32 wrote:
| Obviously we don't want to go the route China went (even
| without their bad policy, most people there we having fewer
| children). But as you say contraceptive availability and
| education coupled with opportunities.
| alexgmcm wrote:
| I mean "Stop at two" isn't a particularly awful policy, yet
| that is sufficient to curtail population growth.
|
| I doubt it even needs to be a policy in many countries - I
| don't know many people with more than two kids.
| mc32 wrote:
| Agreed. Two even three. The issue is when most people go
| over that. It's not usually because they _want to_ but
| because they don 't have the means or options to control
| their family's growth.
| skywal_l wrote:
| Population will stabilized. But the question is how it will
| be stabilized. We could do it in a controlled way or through
| environmental collapse, war, pandemic...
| slothtrop wrote:
| The projection is owing to improved quality of life through
| global trade. Since the 20th Century the rate of extreme
| poverty has been decimated and continues to drop.
|
| In 1st world countries the fertility rates are already
| stagnant. The growth rate is targeted and achieved through
| immigration, from countries with lower quality of life and
| higher child mortality.
| throwawayfear wrote:
| With vertical farming, we can feed any number of people with
| less and less inputs. It's a solved problem, if we just scale
| up this technology everywhere.
|
| "It's also indoors, can be placed anywhere on the planet, is
| heavily integrated with robots and AI, and produces better
| fruits and vegetables while using 95% less water and 99% less
| land."
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/11/20/this-2-...
| carapace wrote:
| I recently came across this pretty awesome system for
| vertical hydroponics. It's designed to be self-contained,
| with minimal labor and power requirements (systems can be run
| off-grid.) It's a bit capital intensive, and you have to get
| your nutrients from somewhere, of course, but it seems really
| promising.
|
| https://ezgrogarden.com/
|
| > Johnson says the system will grow 700 plants, using 15
| towers, in a space of just 2 by 18 feet. Today, he sells kits
| ranging from single tower patio gardens to 10-tower deck
| gardens to commercial-sized set-ups like those being used by
| a Miami football stadium for concession meals, by a Whole
| Foods Market in New Jersey, and by rooftop farmers in Lagos,
| Nigeria. ... This closed-loop system uses less than 10% of
| the water of a traditional garden. ... To create a system
| robust enough for even off-grid farmers, Johnson has spent
| the last 2 decades developing his trihelix solar windmill.
|
| "Mad scientist's homestead is parking size, off-grid system"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSnHShly5R0
| imtringued wrote:
| Ok but first you have to show us your fusion reactors.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| With actual land use planning, the tension between production
| and conservation is a false dichotomy.
|
| Second, agricultural products are already produced to meet
| needs
|
| Third, the "reduce people" argument is almost always a losing
| one
| i_haz_rabies wrote:
| It's not a false dichotomy, there's just some slack in the
| current system. Eventually, no matter how hard you try, you
| hit a point where population and conservation are
| incompatible. We just don't know what that point is.
| mc32 wrote:
| We could handle 10 billion if we consumed as people consumed
| in 1901, but not at the rate middle class people consume in
| even middle of the road developed countries.
|
| Japan, Italy and the US are "reducing the people" naturally.
| We're there already. Yes our pop happens to be "growing" but
| that's due to others exporting their excess to us.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > We could handle 10 billion if we consumed as people
| consumed in 1901, but not at the rate middle class people
| consume in even middle of the road developed countries.
|
| How do you figure? Certainly we can't afford to keep
| emitting at the rate we're emitting, but if we transition
| to entirely clean energy and use our existing farmland more
| efficiently (rather than encroaching on important
| ecosystems) then I'm not sure what the remaining
| bottlenecks are. Lumber?
| goatlover wrote:
| Yes, We will probably figure out fusion and AGI within a
| century along with advanced molecular nanotech. So yes,
| if civilization can make it through the 21st, we should
| be able to transition to a highly efficient, clean
| civilization, while restoring part of the biosphere.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| It doesn't matter what the US/Japan/Europe are doing
| population wise.
|
| The big issue with the future is that China and India was
| to be first world countries with first world luxuries.
|
| India is currently 1.3 billion people and still growing
| 1-2% per year.
|
| China is currently 1.4 billion people. Still growing .3%
| per year (US is .4%)
|
| Dismissing first world population growth as "just being
| overflow" / immigration ignores the fact that people that
| immigrate to the US will quickly start consuming resources
| like an American.
|
| Population growth doesn't matter that much. What really
| matters is the resource consumption rates of the
| population.
|
| The environmental future is basically a conflict between
| India and China aspiring to Western resource consumption
| rates and luxury, and us praying they figure out how to do
| it sustainably.
|
| Otherwise: WAR.
| [deleted]
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| >People keep saying we can feed 10 billion people. We can. But
| at what cost to the diversity of biological systems? > >It's
| not popular to say but we need to stabilize population growth
| and stop encroaching on natural habitats and put a brake on
| consumerism.
|
| This is not popular because it assumes that everyone has an
| excessive footprint. I'm vegetarian, I get most of my food from
| a local, organic farm. My footprint is minimal (no car, zero
| commute, no flight, etc). We could be billions more if we chose
| to live this way. Why ask/force people not to have a family
| where we could have happy family living responsibly? Asking
| others to die / not reproduce is a great way not to challenge
| our way of life.
|
| For some reasons, all the people I know who campaign for
| population stabilization/reduction are among those with the
| worst footprint.
| akudha wrote:
| I too have no car, zero commute, maybe take one flight every
| other year etc. I still think we should stabilize human
| population. I don't know what is the maximum number of humans
| mother earth can support without completely fucking up the
| planet, but I don't want to find out. Do you?
|
| I don't have kids and don't plan to have. Nobody is forcing
| me not to have kids, in fact the opposite. I am the black
| sheep of my family and social circle, people look at me weird
| for not having kids (not that I care).
|
| The problem with asking people to live responsibly is that it
| hasn't worked so far. Ever tried asking a meat eater to
| reduce a _tiny_ bit of their meat consumption? Another issue
| is that even if it worked, it will take a long time for
| people to change their habits. We should of course educate
| people about responsible living, but we should also remember
| that it is a long, hard process.
|
| I don't know what the solution is, but we are at a point that
| we should try _everything_ we can think of, including asking
| people to have less kids, live responsibly etc etc
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| This is basically the problem. To constrain human growth so
| it is sustainable requires a lot of limitations.
|
| Environmentalism is unfortunately a liberal issue, not a
| conservative one (or an all-people one which is
| fundamentally is), population controls is basically a war
| on the poor, especially in the modern world, and that
| policy can't coexist in the liberal sphere right now.
|
| Environmentalism historically is basically conflict with
| corporations, and was really about localized
| environmentalism (pollution of a lake, etc), or it was a
| small number of corporations (CFCs for ozone).
|
| Global warming and species destruction is a totally
| different ballgame politically.
| m0zg wrote:
| > Environmentalism is unfortunately a liberal issue
|
| Only the "performative" kind. Conservatives are quite in
| favor of nuclear power for example, which is arguably the
| most "environmental" thing one can be in favor of. What
| they are against are reductions in business caused by
| higher energy prices, and worse quality of life. Both are
| a hard sell in the long term unless you're just virtue
| signaling and lower QOL and higher cost of living won't
| affect you (that is if you're Leo DiCaprio, Al Gore, or
| John Kerry for example).
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Constraining human growth seems to be very easy, though,
| and requires /more freedom/ not less: Increase access to
| education, reproductive freedom, and career
| opportunities.
|
| This trifecta has brought reproduction below the
| replacement rate in large parts of the globe. US
| population goes up only via immigration.
| goatlover wrote:
| But that's already factored into projected population
| growth. We still end up with a 1-2+ billion more people
| for the next century or so before the replacement rate is
| negative.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| So... Do it more. Places with good access to education
| and family planning /already have/ negative population
| growth rates. The problem is uneven access, and that's
| something that can be worked on.
|
| Open borders to move people more quickly into more-
| developed countries, and increase funding and pressure
| for initiatives to raise standards in other countries.
| akudha wrote:
| I don't see that working. Right wing has been on the rise
| the past few years and countries like Japan didn't have a
| decent immigration system to begin with. Racism was a big
| factor in Brexit vote too. It just seems that with every
| passing year, immigration (even for well educated and
| qualified people) is becoming more and more difficult
| (even before covid), the opposite of what we need.
| timthorn wrote:
| Environmentalism as currently practiced is a liberal
| issue, but protecting the environment is a deeply
| conservative notion - the mechanisms by which it is
| achieved may differ, though.
|
| Margaret Thatcher, a Conservative to her core, raised
| environmental issues on the world stage and worked for
| action well before it was a politically fashionable
| cause.
| abraae wrote:
| British Conservatism != American Conservatism.
|
| Not even close.
| vnorilo wrote:
| I grew up eating meat twice a day and quite like the taste.
| I cut that to once a week (and ramping down) once I
| understood the co2 numbers. I have always been carless but
| was naive with regard to diet. Dairy is now the WIP.
|
| Turns out I also quite like tofu, falafels and soy crumble.
| GhostVII wrote:
| Being vegetation obviously has a huge impact on your
| footprint, but I'd imagine that buying from a local organic
| farm actually has a much higher footprint than buying from a
| larger non-organic farm, since non-organic can grow more in a
| smaller space.
| perfunctory wrote:
| > We could be billions more if we chose to live this way.
|
| This line of reasoning is problematic as it just delays the
| stabilization. Maybe we could have a few billion more people
| now but surely there must be a limit somewhere. 10B, 50, 100?
| Sooner or later we'll have to stabilize.
|
| > For some reasons, all the people I know who campaign for
| population stabilization/reduction are among those with the
| worst footprint.
|
| To be clear, I personally believe we have to both stabilize
| the population AND dramatically reduce footprint per capita.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| >This line of reasoning is problematic as it just delays
| the stabilization. Maybe we could have a few billion more
| people now but surely there must be a limit somewhere. 10B,
| 50, 100? Sooner or later we'll have to stabilize.
|
| The thing is, people will only reproduce less if they
| adhere to the cause. So if we get people to realize we all
| must care for our environment in order to live well, then
| you don't have to limit population growth. Limiting
| population growth will always be less effective than
| changing a way of life (which makes people not want too
| many children).
|
| If you restrict reproduction, expect people to want more
| consumption (at least to compensate).
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| > no car, zero commute, no flight, etc
|
| If you get a heart attack, where do you think the medical
| supplies come from?
|
| By air from China!
|
| Even if you personally manage to abstain from taking planes,
| you consume products and services by people who fly and drive
| cars.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Obviously. But it's already taken into account in my carbon
| footprint (by multiple estimates including "imported"
| emissions).
| chuckee wrote:
| > Why ask/force people not to have a family where we could
| have happy family living responsibly?
|
| I'm sorry, but you _know_ that people can still have families
| (up to 2.1 children /woman on average) while staying below
| the replacement reproduction rate (so resulting in population
| reduction). So why pretend that they're being asked to give
| up families entirely?
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| You'll have to explain that to those who want 3+ children.
| I know a few that will fight for their rights to have as
| many children as they desire.
|
| I personnally believe population control is just a way not
| to challenge our way of life. Because if you get them to
| actually care about the environment (our future), then
| people will ajust their family's dream (why have another
| child if it makes life worst for the first one?).
| chuckee wrote:
| Your initial claim was that people would be asked to have
| _no_ family. At least acknowledge that the choice is
| "large family" vs. "medium/small family", and not
| "family" vs. "no family", instead of blithely shifting
| the argument.
| drclau wrote:
| > We could be billions more if we chose to live this way.
|
| Can you explain this? Why should we be billions more?
| kmlx wrote:
| isn't the extremely long term plan to colonize the
| universe? how can we achieve this goal without major
| increases in population?
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| I said could.
| esturk wrote:
| Don't distort their words. They said could and should.
| drclau wrote:
| The quote was literally a copy & paste from the parent
| post. No distortion there. I am genuinely curious why
| people think we should aim to grow even more in numbers.
|
| More so, I am genuinely curious what the same people
| propose we do when we reach whatever they consider to be
| the maximum sustainable population. Clearly, we can't
| grow infinitely in a limited space.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| I didn't say we should be billions more. I said we could
| if we cared about our environment. I simply believe it's
| more effective to explain the danger we face and get
| people to really care, than to curb population growth.
|
| The first reason is that it takes more energy to fight
| the desire to reproduce than to get people to live
| responsibly (at least not more than our environment can
| bear). Moreover, if you somehow get people to reproduce
| less than they desire (without causing to much
| frustration), you'll still have to educate them about the
| sustainability issues (aka our way of life). Why not
| directly address the way of life challenge, then?
|
| People don't want many children when they know what's
| coming (your first child's future is in jeopardy, let's
| have more!). It's no coincidence that those who have/want
| the most children are the least aware of the
| biodiversity/climate problem.
| goatlover wrote:
| If we stick around long enough, then colonizing and
| terraforming the solar system where possible would
| provide most of the growth. Luna, Mars, Venus, the Belt,
| and some moons around the gas giants would be candidates.
| Eventually, we might figure out ways to expand to other
| nearby star systems with good enough tech to support it.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| We can't get people to survive in a closed environment on
| Earth, or even get scientists to create a liveable
| ecosystem in a lab... With all the resources available at
| hands. I'm not actively against Mars colonization only
| because I trust it will fail and give us a good reason to
| care about the unique and fragile habitat we have here on
| Earth.
|
| I'm not hoping for a failure, I'm just intimately
| convinced that we won't manage to survive on other rocks
| without really trying here first.
| goatlover wrote:
| I'm talking long term, if human civilization lasts for
| thousands of more years. Then it becomes more reasonable.
| I agree that this century it's a much harder sell and
| largely out of reach. We should focus most of our efforts
| on Earth for now, without abandoning some space
| exploration. Space programs, telescopes and SETI are good
| things we should continue doing.
| abraae wrote:
| > Why ask/force people not to have a family where we could
| have happy family living responsibly?
|
| You can't guarantee the lifestyles of your children. For all
| you know, your family of 6 kids will rebel against your
| (extremely worthy and admirable) lifestyle and start flying
| around to see the world. That's what kids often do.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| >You can't guarantee the lifestyles of your children.
|
| I bet I can have more influence on my childrens being
| environmentalist, than on others' people desire to
| reproduce.
|
| By the way, I'm not advocating for people to have more
| children but against policy to limit population. Only
| because it so less effective than accepting to have a
| sustainable footprint.
| triceratops wrote:
| > It's not popular to say but we need to stabilize population
| growth
|
| Is it not? Where, and why?
|
| > provide them with prophylactics
|
| Kinda problematic for orgs that rely on US foreign aid.[1]
|
| "The policy originally enacted from 1984 to 1993 spoke to
| abortion only, not family planning in general. However, in
| 2001, the policy was re-implemented and expanded to cover all
| voluntary family planning activities, and critics began to
| refer to it as the "global gag rule." These critics argue that
| the policy not only reduces the overall funding provided to
| particular NGOs, it closes off their access to USAID-supplied
| condoms and other forms of contraception. This, they argue,
| negatively impacts the ability of these NGOs to distribute
| birth control, leading to a downturn in contraceptive use and
| from there to an increase in the rates of unintended
| pregnancies and abortion. A study of nations in sub-Saharan
| Africa suggests that unintended pregnancies increased and
| abortions approximately doubled while the policy was in effect.
| Critics also argue that the ban promotes restrictions on free
| speech as well as restrictions on accurate medical information.
| The European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development
| presented a petition to the United States Congress signed by
| 233 members condemning the policy. The forum has stated that
| the policy "undermines internationally agreed consensus and
| goals"."
|
| The global gag rule is enforced by Republican administrations
| and rescinded by Democratic ones. Infer from that what you
| will.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico_City_policy
| bordercases wrote:
| The Green Revolution was predicated on the idea that we
| should increase calorie yields now to prevent famine shocks
| in key third world populations. The most efficient way to
| perform well on this single metric is with monoculture and
| cash crops, due to economy of scale.
|
| This is humane, but it doesn't slowed down population growth,
| which requires either a bottleneck or a set of loose
| constraints aside if we want to maintain a constant food
| yield, ceteris paribus the way we grow food now.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| All well and good, but thecountries of Africa are 't the
| problem. They're not the ones consuming resources
| disproportionately to their populations.
|
| Is population an issue? Yes, probably. But it's (Western)
| (over) consumption that got us here, and continues to
| escalate the crisis.
|
| The less distractions for that, the better.
| triceratops wrote:
| I'm not disputing anything you're saying. My response, a
| rebuttal to "we need to focus on population reduction", was
| about 2 things:
|
| 1. Countries with high population growth numbers do, in
| fact, focus on bringing those numbers down. China and India
| have had widespread family planning programs for decades
| and those have borne fruit.
|
| 2. The country with the highest per-capita consumption in
| the world conditions a lot of its foreign aid on recipients
| not promoting family planning. Meanwhile, Internet
| commenters from that country grumble about poor countries'
| population numbers.
| alexgmcm wrote:
| > People keep saying we can feed 10 billion people. We can. But
| at what cost to the diversity of biological systems?
|
| Also those 10 billion people in the future will be consuming
| far more per capita as developing nations continue to
| industrialise.
|
| This is a good thing as everyone deserves a decent life. But if
| we are all going to have a decent life without destroying the
| planet then we need to be mindful of how many of us we can
| sustainably support.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Resource expenditure per unit of consumption is on a multi-
| decade long downtrend.
| goatlover wrote:
| The population is going to stabilize somewhere between 9 and 11
| billion by around the end of the century, and then start slowly
| declining. But getting back to 1960s level of population isn't
| realistic. Maybe several centuries from now. But at that point,
| we could reasonably expect advanced nanotech, advanced
| efficient automation, arcologies and fusion to offer
| sustainably high standards of living for 10+ billion people.
|
| It's really more of a matter of how we make it through the next
| 100 years.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> Stabilize populations to 1960s or whatever,
|
| What exactly does this mean? People were pretty upset with
| China's one child policy (all the unintended side-effects
| ignored); this sounds even more nefarious? .
| mc32 wrote:
| It's not something we achieve in 20 years. It would be a
| century long goal via reduced fertility rates that do not
| include barbaric tools like forced abortions, etc.
| Scarblac wrote:
| Yeah, if it takes a century then it will be way too late
| for biodiversity. The man-made great extinction is right
| now.
| mc32 wrote:
| It's not like we want to be authoritarians and control
| reproduction directly.
|
| We can only incentivize via education, opportunity and
| availability of contraceptives.
|
| India for example offers sterilization for men who want
| to avoid unintended impregnation of partners. They could
| even incentivize such a thing.
| tacocataco wrote:
| How can you prevent any incentives becoming economic
| eugenics?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| How do we reduce fertility rates?
|
| The enemy you are fighting is natural selection, in this
| case.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Give people (especially women) access to both education
| and reproductive freedom. It works wonders.
| nitrogen wrote:
| There seem to be memetic inoculations (i.e. core beliefs
| that reproduction at a high rate is desirable) in some
| groups that prevent those wonders from being worked. You
| eventually reach a point where all children are born to
| the uneducated or memetically inoculated, so again
| natural selection is a problem.
| zip1234 wrote:
| Look at this: https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields
|
| The yields/unit area go up and to the right, which means two
| things. One is that we need less land for agriculture, which
| frees it up for other purposes, including allowing
| biodiversity/forestland.
| titzer wrote:
| In my native state of Indiana, cornfields are being converted
| into subdivisions and parking lots for Lowe's and Walmart.
| Progress!
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| >Stabilize populations to 1960s or whatever, but we need to do
| the same as we're doing for pollution set a benchmark and aim
| for it. Get those people educated, provide them with
| prophylactics and get them out of a pop explosion curve and get
| to ZPG like Italy and Japan (US as well if we didn't import pop
| growth).
|
| So about 3 billion people is stable? You're saying we need a
| reduction of about 5 billion? How do we do that? Which
| countries need massive depopulation?
| mc32 wrote:
| I dunno, how did we establish which countries have to reduce
| greenhouse emissions the most?
|
| When it comes to population regulation it's via reproduction
| policies that educate women and offer them job opportunities
| and incentivize them to have sustainable family sizes.
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| >I dunno, how did we establish which countries have to
| reduce greenhouse emissions the most?
|
| You will be frightened how we did that. Canada for example
| is net-positive and effectively doesn't have to do
| anything. Not surprising given we have a gigantic boreal
| forest that stretches across the country. We have almost
| 10,000 trees per person. So then why do we show up in top
| 10 worst countries? Our trees don't count, they are
| considered against us.
|
| >When it comes to population regulation it's via
| reproduction policies that educate women and offer them job
| opportunities and incentivize them to have sustainable
| family sizes.
|
| Well, the 'climate clock' has only 8 years left before
| DEADline. Education and reproductive policies like only
| allowing 1 child won't work. We have to obviously do far
| more to reduce the world population by more than half. What
| do you think we should do?
| goatlover wrote:
| > Well, the 'climate clock' has only 8 years left before
| DEADline.
|
| What DEADline? You mean to keep warming below 1.5degC? Do
| you suppose if we go ver by .1deg, we all die? That's not
| how it works. It's better to limit warming, but there's
| no magic cutoff in which we all die. It's on a continuum,
| with more warming meaning the increase in the likelihood
| of extreme events and disruption. Also at some point,
| increase in the possibility of positive feedback, but
| that's likely above or near the maximum projected warming
| range 2.7deg-4degC, and it's still a matter of degree.
|
| The IPCC report does not say we all die in the current
| projected warming range, or that civilization collapses.
| andrewjl wrote:
| > People keep saying we can feed 10 billion people.
|
| Whether global population ever reaches 10 billion people is in
| doubt. Fertility rates are falling _faster_ than the most
| aggressive UN estimates in all but a few places. [1][2]
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/22/world/global-
| population-s...
|
| [2] Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline by
| Darrell Bricker, John Ibbitson
| goohle wrote:
| First, we need to save genetics of as many wild animals, birds,
| insects, trees, etc. as we can, including their variations, to be
| able to revert damage to the ecosystem in the future.
|
| Second, we need to make artificial breeders, to help nature to
| regenerate.
|
| Third, we need to make a continuous web of wild nature, to allow
| migrations, because isolated ecosystem will die with time no
| matter what, e.g. because of climate change alone.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| >Second, we need to make artificial breeders, to help nature to
| regenerate.
|
| Nature always thrive better when we just them Her do her thing.
| Leave Nature alone!
| carapace wrote:
| In re: making a continuous web of wild nature see E.O. Wilson's
| Half-Earth Project: https://www.half-earthproject.org
|
| > Half-Earth is a call to protect half the land and sea in
| order to manage sufficient habitat to reverse the species
| extinction crisis and ensure the long-term health of our
| planet.
|
| They have a big "virtual summit coming up on the 22nd: Half-
| Earth Day 2021 https://www.half-earthproject.org/hed2021/
| [deleted]
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| We need to convert society to a stability and sustainability
| model over a growth and efficiency model.
|
| The cracks are showing. We spent the accumulated natural
| resources and charged the rest on credit to the future of the
| Earth.
| valgor wrote:
| Easiest thing we can do as concerned individuals is to stop
| eating meat and dairy. Much of the deforestation happening across
| the world is due to farming animals and growing the incredible
| amount of food farm animals require.
| retrac98 wrote:
| It's the easiest thing we can do but it's only a small part of
| the overall problem.
|
| We all need to do much more in addition to just not eating
| animals. Endless production, consumption and growth the way
| we're currently doing it is just completely unsustainable.
| pphysch wrote:
| Current headline: "The Most Important Global Meeting You've Never
| Heard of Is Now"
|
| Gee, why is that? It only takes "paper of record" NYT 11
| paragraphs to first mention what the meeting is and its mighty
| inconvenient host country--and the fact that the US is the only
| major country not party to the UN Convention on Biological
| Diversity.
|
| Politics over life.
| Proven wrote:
| Haha....
|
| That's nothing but another globalist & socialist power grab that
| will result in more regulations, higher taxes and fewer freedoms.
| mountainboy wrote:
| These countries should start by reading the book "The Invisible
| Rainbow: A history of electricity and life".
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Why?
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