Protecting half the planet could help solve climate change and save species

UngulateNerd92

UngulateNerd92

Well-Known Member
10+ year member
Premium Member
I would personally go further than that and preserve two thirds of the planet if not more. That was recommended by E.O. Wilson for those of you that know who he is.

"A new map shows where new land protections could complement existing conserved areas.

Earth faces two interrelated crises: accelerating loss of biodiversity and climate change. Both are worsened by human development of natural lands that would otherwise allow species to flourish and would store atmosphere-warming carbon, stabilizing the climate."

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/protecting-half-planet-climate-change-save-species
 
UngulateNerd92 said:
I would personally go further than that and preserve two thirds of the planet if not more. That was recommended by E.O. Wilson for those of you that know who he is.

"A new map shows where new land protections could complement existing conserved areas.

Earth faces two interrelated crises: accelerating loss of biodiversity and climate change. Both are worsened by human development of natural lands that would otherwise allow species to flourish and would store atmosphere-warming carbon, stabilizing the climate."

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/protecting-half-planet-climate-change-save-species
Click to expand...

As much as I love animals and conservation it’s not realistic to undertake such radical action such as the article above suggests as well as other suggestions.

Human development is inevitable in most areas, we should protect as much as is realistic. Have you forgotten the human rights problems with half of the worlds land protected, millions of people would become homeless and flock into already overcrowded cities. Secondly the economy would die to the point of no return due to no access to resources and most importantly, it disallows the foundation of integral projects to combat climate change such as nuclear power (I’m happy to debate why nuclear power is much better than other forms of power) supplemented with solar panels.

Climate change is a natural process and cannot be stopped or reversed, only slowed down and sped up. It is great you want to protect the earth but there has to be some degree of realism to keep society functioning.


This map is also ridiculous, who would protect thousands of kilometres of ecologically unimportant Australian desert and NOT protect Arnhem Land with several endemic species. New Zealand and Madagascar weren’t given a thought and most of that northern land near the arctic circle confuses me as well.
 
I would make that a 3rd crises world over population, no country needs over 1 billion people and counting!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ned
Yoshistar888 said:
As much as I love animals and conservation it’s not realistic to undertake such radical action such as the article above suggests as well as other suggestions.

Human development is inevitable in most areas, we should protect as much as is realistic. Have you forgotten the human rights problems with half of the worlds land protected, millions of people would become homeless and flock into already overcrowded cities. Secondly the economy would die to the point of no return due to no access to resources and most importantly, it disallows the foundation of integral projects to combat climate change such as nuclear power (I’m happy to debate why nuclear power is much better than other forms of power) supplemented with solar panels.

Climate change is a natural process and cannot be stopped or reversed, only slowed down and sped up. It is great you want to protect the earth but there has to be some degree of realism to keep society functioning.

This map is also ridiculous, who would protect thousands of kilometres of ecologically unimportant Australian desert and NOT protect Arnhem Land with several endemic species. New Zealand and Madagascar weren’t given a thought and most of that northern land near the arctic circle confuses me as well.
Click to expand...
I feel that you didn't understand anything in the article or on the map, and I'm betting that you haven't read the actual paper either. Perhaps you might also want to do some research into human-caused climate change...
 
Chlidonias said:
I feel that you didn't understand anything in the article or on the map, and I'm betting that you haven't read the actual paper either. Perhaps you might also want to do some research into human-caused climate change...
Click to expand...

Maybe you should not assume that I’m ‘uninformed’, I wrote a whole essay on this a couple weeks ago and found many graphs which statistically prove my point ;).

Sorry if I was a little too blunt I’ve just been tired of radicalisation and over sensationalism regarding climate change as I had to go through ten pages of articles for the essay mentioned above.
 
Zorro said:
In that case my opinion of having smaller families would help in a big way!
Click to expand...

It’s not as simple as that though, what law or rule would you propose to introduce this without infringing on human rights? Also statistically at least in western countries, less people are born these days than years ago, for example my one of my grandfathers is one of 12, my father is one of 3 and I’m one of 2. Large amounts of children are more common in poorly developed countries.
 
Yoshistar888 said:
It’s not as simple as that though, what law or rule would you propose to introduce this without infringing on human rights? Also statistically at least in western countries, less people are born these days than years ago, for example my one of my grandfathers is one of 12, my father is one of 3 and I’m one of 2. Large amounts of children are more common in poorly developed countries.
Click to expand...
I understand your view but we dont have a right to over crowd the planet while wrecking everything in our path, it will reach a stage where our rights for the want of a better word will have to take a back seat to saving our planet from what happening now in almost all parts of the planet, wars could happen in the future over water, food and land.
 
This makes a change: Meet the new poster animals of conservation. It encourages a new list of poster animals to encourage people to take an interest in more species of endangered animals.

Perhaps this could help people protect more wild areas of land to save large endangered species and zoos could be used to save smaller species that could be reintroduced into the wild.

There needs to be more thought into what species should be kept in situ and what would benefit by being kept ex situ. At present, there are several popular species kept in situ and ex situ and many that are forgotten about.
 
Yoshistar888 said:
Maybe you should not assume that I’m ‘uninformed’, I wrote a whole essay on this a couple weeks ago and found many graphs which statistically prove my point ;).

Sorry if I was a little too blunt I’ve just been tired of radicalisation and over sensationalism regarding climate change as I had to go through ten pages of articles for the essay mentioned above.
Click to expand...
Just so you realise, a school essay written from "articles" is not equivalent to the work of actual scientists. However I am not going to get into a debate over it.
 
Yoshistar888 said:
It’s not as simple as that though, what law or rule would you propose to introduce this without infringing on human rights? Also statistically at least in western countries, less people are born these days than years ago, for example my one of my grandfathers is one of 12, my father is one of 3 and I’m one of 2. Large amounts of children are more common in poorly developed countries.
Click to expand...

It seems that raising the income of a nation's people generally leads to smaller families. I agree with a better distribution of wealth. There is much wrong in a system where the boss of Amazon has £200 billion and Lionel Messi 'earns' £100 million a year. Both could work for nothing and would still be well off for the rest of their lives.
 
Chlidonias said:
Just so you realise, a school essay written from "articles" is not equivalent to the work of actual scientists. However I am not going to get into a debate over it.
Click to expand...

You mean the same scientists that are paid millions by media corporations to produce the results they desire? I’m not saying my essay is credible but your giving ‘scientists’ a little too much credit.

Dassie rat said:
It seems that raising the income of a nation's people generally leads to smaller families. I agree with a better distribution of wealth. There is much wrong in a system where the boss of Amazon has £200 billion and Lionel Messi 'earns' £100 million a year. Both could work for nothing and would still be well off for the rest of their lives.
Click to expand...

Capitalism is definitely flawed, the problem of capitalism has nothing to do with individuals who earn a lot of money for being smart minded or successful in life but it is a little to unkind to those that aren’t faring well, but despite its many flaws capitalism is by far the best economic system both for the environment the economy and the people. Compare Thailand and Vietnam in terms of habitat preservation and conservation, Thailand while not amazing still attempts to safeguards strongholds for many species whereas Vietnam..... as shown in these excerpts from @Chlidonias is barren.

“I had read often about how difficult bird-watching is in Vietnam, and so it proved to be. Outside the protected areas there is almost no life at all, and even within them it is jolly hard work. To illustrate, I didn't see a single cattle egret or little egret the entire time I was in Vietnam. In any other part of southeast Asia these are pretty much omnipresent. In Vietnam any white things in fields or rice-paddies were either domestic ducks or flags on sticks (I assume to scare away non-existent birds from eating the crops). I barely saw any mynahs anywhere, which frankly was just bizarre. Even Tree Sparrows seemed thin on the ground.”

“The entire three hour bus ride from Saigon to Tan Phu was almost devoid of wild birds. I think I saw four individual birds. Even roadside pools which in Thailand or Malaysia would have had egrets and pond herons were completely empty of anything but white ducks. “
 
Zorro said:
I understand your view but we dont have a right to over crowd the planet while wrecking everything in our path, it will reach a stage where our rights for the want of a better word will have to take a back seat to saving our planet from what happening now in almost all parts of the planet, wars could happen in the future over water, food and land.
Click to expand...

I never said it won’t reach that stage, I know it’s inevitable but the factor is how long will it take to reach that stage? Protecting half or more of land would make war erupt immediately, the map has over half of the USA to be protected, how are 300 million people supposed to live in that amount of area.
 
Yoshistar888 said:
Capitalism is definitely flawed, the problem of capitalism has nothing to do with individuals who earn a lot of money for being smart minded or successful in life but it is a little to unkind to those that aren’t faring well, but despite its many flaws capitalism is by far the best economic system both for the environment the economy and the people.
Click to expand...
I'm sorry, Yoshistar888.
The problem of capitalism is a lot to do with individuals who earn a lot of money for being smart minded or successful in life. I accept that some are philanthropists and use their money in good ways that would never be done by governments. Unfortunately, many are greedy. There are people who are losing their jobs, while their managers are billionaires, who use tax loopholes and expect taxpayers to pay for their workers and former workers.
There is a link to conservation. Very rich people can make more money by destroying natural habitats for oil and other commodities. I remember a case of people from the Middle East being allowed to kill 'protected' deer and bears' in South America by flaunting their wealth. In a time of coronavirus, I doubt that many nations will want to spend money on conservation, even if they wanted to do so; governments in Brazil and the USA don't seem that interested. Similarly, much of the arable land in Ethiopia was used to provide cash crops while local people died. A work colleague visited Ethiopia several years after Live Aid and nothing much had changed.
There is a link between politics and conservation. There is no right for billionaires to get more money and a redistribution of wealth could lead to smaller families and more habitat conservation. Increasing wages for poor people would get more people off benefits would make more taxes available for conservation. Unfortunately, many leaders aren't interested.
 
Dassie rat said:
I'm sorry, Yoshistar888.
. Increasing wages for poor people would get more people off benefits would make more taxes available for conservation. Unfortunately, many leaders aren't interested.
Click to expand...

Good point here about increasing wages although I think it’s more appropriately assigned in a country by country basis than overall, I’d say Australia and NZ lead an example in not having to raise wages as they are already pretty high and unlike in Europe and in the USA, tipping is basically nonexistent.
 
Yoshistar888 said:
You mean the same scientists that are paid millions by media corporations to produce the results they desire? I’m not saying my essay is credible but your giving ‘scientists’ a little too much credit
Click to expand...

Which scientists would these be? Most scientists I know of are just people, doing their jobs, employed by research institutions and universities. Any good scientist worth their salt is impartial. That's how science works.

Try reading any decent science published by the learned societies, and it overwhelmingly points to current climate change being anthropogenic. Personally, I'm going to believe the science published by the Royal Society.
 
Our pursuit of a growing economy relies on us buying more and more stuff. It also relies on a growing population so that there are more people buying more stuff. There is only one outcome and the only hope we have, is that the species that replace us are more successful than we have been.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top