THIS should be the top story for every news outlet on the planet

[G_j]

And it might be fair to say, the most important story of our lives..

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/06/human-society-under-urgent-threat-loss-earth-natural-life-un-report


Human society under urgent threat from loss of Earth's natural life

Scientists reveal one million species at risk of extinction in damning UN report

[malaise]

1. Get thee to the greatest page

Sadly human beings are responsible for this entire mess

[riverine]

2. 8 billion humans burning, cutting, building, consuming, killing, overfishing

It is a mass extinction for sure. Maybe just not the kind the planet needs.

[AZ8theist]

6. I disagree.

The planet will survive. But we will ensure our own extinction by our greed. Humans will be gone, but the planet will be better off in the long run...

[Curtis]

24. It all reminds me of a study

I saw a study from back in the 70's where they took rats and put them in an enclosed space. The rats bred uncontrolled and became overpopulated. They became depressed and overly aggressive toward each other. Then they just died off. The study's end result was that humans would end up doing the same thing to the planet.

We've seen more and more depression. More wars and more aggression and tribalism. All that is left is for us to begin dying off.

[dalton99a]

43. +1. John Calhoun's Mouse Utopia Experiment

[Delphinus]

45. Ooh,

I had never heard of that study. Thank you for enlightening us.

[donkeypoofed]

3. We are really screwing up

[SkyDaddy7]

48. BIGLY! ...Also,

...Scientist have long warned if we burn through just the oil in the Canadian Tar Sands that would be enough to ensure catastrophic warming leaving some places on Earth uninhabitable for much of the year! Then add in the fact we here in the USA will almost certainly burn through all our shale gas we get by fracking as well & the future looks very dark! However, Russia, Denmark, Norway, Canada & the USA are all going to fight over, drill for & burn through who knows how much of the TRILLIONS of dollars worth of fossil fuels below the ice in the Arctic as it melts & access to it becomes cost effective! ...I feel so sorry for every child being born into this world today & what they will be facing when they're my age (50yrs old)!! By 2070 Earth will be a radically different planet in terms of the climate.

[jalan48]

4. And the main topic every political rally. nt

[2naSalit]

5. K&R!!!

[Kurt V.]

7. K&R

[Honeycombe8]

8. Get thee to the Greatest Threads page. This is a critical issue NOW. nt

[hay rick]

9. Most of our mass media needs to be pushed to extinction. nt

[Duppers]

10. Sent that out to my email list early this morning.

With few exceptions, they'll just be annoyed.

[dlk]

11. And So Many Don't Want a Woman in Charge Because They Might Mess Things Up...

[PatrickforO]

12. Well, you're not cheering me up, that's for sure.

Nonetheless, I have bookmarked this page because it IS the most important story.

[PufPuf23]

13. The mass extinction event in progress is associated with global climate change

and, as far as the biosphere (life) on Earth, is every bit or even more determining than global climate change as far as humanity or life on Earth in general; there will be many swing in climate, anthropomorphic (human caused) and other reasons, but the genetic diversity of life on the planet works on a much greater time scale.

[llmart]

14. If Planet Earth is lucky...

we'll be one of the species that goes extinct.

We'd deserve it if that happened.

[Kaleva]

27. Earth deosn't care about any living thing. It's the Honey Badger.

The Earth doesn't give a fuck.

[misanthrope]

30. The reality is there is no "moral arc" to the universe

Any arc it has bends not toward "justice" but "indifference."

[Kaleva]

35. In the grand scheme of things, nothing matters in the long run.

[KPN]

15. I think Dems need to run on this in 2020. If you want young people to vote, this will do it.

It's their future and they know it.

[calimary]

16. Yep. What we are doing to our precious planet - so frightening.

[G_j]

18. Agreed!

[misanthrope]

31. That's not the way humans operate

They prefer to have their heads in the sand.

[klook]

17. Climate is also a social justice issue.

Poor and brown people are the most affected, at least in the near term. Of course, that’s one of the reasons so many of the privileged couldn’t care less.

Recommending thread.

[saidsimplesimon]

19. Human society under urgent threat from loss of Earth's natural life

G j you posted the whole story with this one sentence, thank you.

[PatSeg]

20. Reminds of all those futuristic

dystopian movies where the few remaining humans have to live under a dome, because the planet was desolated. Or perhaps a space station. Science fiction writers have been warning us for years.

[misanthrope]

33. Yeah, but they're eggheads

Pointy-headed intellectuals and other weirdo nerds. Who wants to listen to them?

If they were physically attractive, athletically talented, otherwise famous or outright greedy then people would clamor for their pronouncements.

[PatSeg]

41. AND besides,

that is just in movies and books anyway. Couldn't possibly happen in real life! Or that is some time in the distant future and doesn't affect us here and now.

People tend to see and hear what they want to.

[Bob Loblaw]

21. The royal baby will make it all better

nt

[True Dough]

38. I laughed at the absurdity of that quip

But here we are in the celebrity-obsessed media and societal age. We both know President Kanye West will be the one to find a cure for environmental ills in 2024!

[debsy]

22. Shame on us all.

We all need to stop supporting the consumer economy. We are so wasteful not only at the expense of many other humans but also at the expense of so many other species!

1) stop buying plastic!
2) stop eating meat!
3) stop driving (or at least stop any unnecessary travel)!

Whenever you find yourself wanting to buy something, ask yourself: "Do I need this in order to survive?" If the answer is "no", DON'T BUY IT!

We are all so self-absorbed and spoiled and we are spoiling the only habitat we have. We claim to care about the planet, other animals, and our own environment yet we keep driving, eating excessively, wasting, spending... we need more than a green new deal, we need to change the way we think and behave rapidly!

[Moral Compass]

23. The article doesn't focus on why

The reason this is all happening is that there are way too many people that require way too many resources.’

Global warming, exhaustion of the fisheries, depletion of top soil, erosion, air pollution is all directly linked to too many people on the planet. That coupled with exaltation of economic growth over even minimal conservation means we are on the path to massive human die off if not outright extinction.

Yet we talk about species extinction and global warming as if these are distinct problems that can somehow be solved without addressing the core issue of overpopulation.

I hold out little hope that our political and economic institutions have the capacity to even begin to address this.

The only society that took on overpopulation with any success was China and they’ve now backed off in exchange for economic growth on steroids. China is also a totalitarian society that few would want to emulate.

The analogy is in no way exact but simple bacterial cultures show us what happens when you couple unlimited population growth in an environment of finite resources. Explosive population growth is followed by exhaustion of resources followed by extinction.

The world was a very big place but we have reached and exceeded its limits. It is and always was finite.

[G_j]

25. It includes population as part problem

“It says values and goals need to change across governments so local, national and international policymakers are aligned to tackle the underlying causes of planetary deterioration. This includes a shift in incentives, investments in green infrastructure, accounting for nature deterioration in international trade, addressing population growth and unequal levels of consumption, greater cooperation across sectors, new environmental laws and stronger enforcement.

Greater support for indigenous communities and other forest dwellers and smallholders is also essential. Many of the last holdouts for nature are in areas managed by such groups, but even here, the pressures are beginning to take a toll, as wildlife declines along with knowledge of how to manage it.“

[Kurt V.]

32. i don't think this is accurate. It's over consumption mostly.

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160311-how-many-people-can-our-planet-really-support

[Kaleva]

36. It's more of a distribution problem

Supermarkets toss out tons of food annually. Farmers get price supports because the supply of food they produce is greater then demand.

[Kurt V.]

40. thnx for the tip. a quick google search shows food waste is a huge problem

[Kaleva]

44. There wouldn't be starvation or undernourishment anywhere in the world..

if food waste was drastically reduced and distribution was improved

[malaise]

26. Was covered on M$NBComcast

in the past hour

[mtnsnake]

28. Thank you!

IMO, the environment is not emphasized enough in our general elections. It's absolutely heartbreaking to see what's becoming of our forests, oceans, and the wildlife that lives within them.

[misanthrope]

29. Nothing in the report is revelatory

Its information and postulations have been readily accessible to anyone for many decades now. There's a reason Elizabeth Kolbert's "The Sixth Extinction" won a 2015 Pultizer Prize.

The issue has been that people had to be curious enough to want to see it and objective enough to accept it but those are rare commodities among humans. What's not in short supply is our willful ignorance and delusion.

The biosphere is likely to survive in some form. Speciation will continue but we just won't be around to see it.

For a while now, astronomers have pondered the lack of evidence for abundant advanced life throughout the galaxy. One of the hypotheses was that a Great Filter exists which weeds out many burgeoning civilizations from enduring. Some said it took the form of warfare, others that it was technology. For humans, that filter was simply our nature.

[Martin Eden]

47. Earth remakes itself

Plate tectonics will continue churning the continents.

Human history is a fleeting moment in the time span of life on earth.

That we are working feverishly to shorten the time of our species on this rock is an example of evolutionary failure.

[bronxiteforever]

34. Kick and recommend. The collapse of

Civilizations is next unless we take action now. Imagine such a collapse with nuclear weapons.
I think those that believe life will survive if we collapse do not have sufficient understanding of the
Horror mankind will visit upon remaining life forms.

The GOP thinks this existential crisis is a joke. Our party must fight for the living because it’s not dark yet but it’s getting there.

[spanone]

37. K&R...👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

[johannsyah]

39. this is heartbreaking

and yet we keep hearing out of politicians' mouths that immigration is a real threat to society. how fked up.

[misanthrope]

42. "Immigration?" This is nothing

Wait until we start seeing the mass-scale human movement caused by climate change's effects. It will make current trends look like a weekend drive to the beach.

[Martin Eden]

46. The Rapture and End of Days is coming soon

We will not need this planet, so there is no need to worry.

[G_j]

49. Now

We all have been and will continue to be responsible. This should get your attention. "The overwhelming evidence of the IPBES Global Assessment, from a wide range of different fields of knowledge, presents an ominous picture,” said IPBES Chair, Sir Robert Watson. “The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide.” Ironically, at the same time this report was released, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dismissed climate change as a national security issue and sees the Arctic's melting ice caps as an opportunity for trade.

[The_jackalope]

50. Biodiversity was just fine a mere 12,000 years ago. What happened since then?

We did.



The purple bar on the left shows what may be assumed was a fully diverse biosphere. The one on the right shows the biomass distribution of the planet's mammalian biosphere today: 99% humans and our domesticated animals, and about 1% wild animals.

I=PAT. The impact we have on the planet is the product of our population times our average consumption levels.

If the long-term sustainability of the whole biosphere rather than just the human portion of it is the key concern, IMO there are about 1000 times too many people on the planet today, and each of us consumes on average 20x too much. I'm not sure how we fix that kind of imbalance. Except by pretending the imbalance doesn't exist, and nibbling impotently around the edges like we're doing.

[Eyeball_Kid]

51. American Goobers...

only care about the availability of hamburger meat. When hamburger meat is no longer available, THAT’S when they’ll wonder about “extinction”.

[The_jackalope]

52. The solution is simple.

Cut consumption of all kinds by 75%, and stop having children.

Wait, what?