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

[SharkFinatic]

Thank you for sharing this. I appreciate it. I disagree with Survival International as I believe protected areas should be a non-negotiable priority! There is a reason eminent domain laws exist and they have their place. The fact is thar over-population is also a major issue and we need to find ways to properly deal with that.

I wouldn’t be so quick to jump on the “overpopulation is the problem” train, since that line of thinking puts too much emphasis on the Global South rather than the Global North. I also feel the need to mention that Survival International’s stance on the conservation movement, mainly as practiced by organizations like WWF and WCS, is that it is rooted too much in a colonialist mindset, treating indigenous peoples as the problem rather than the solution.

 

[UngulateNerd92]

Great dialogue and great posts here! @Ned about addressing people buying more and more stuff, I think a solution that could go a long way if implemented globally would be for the world's economies to adopt a system called circular economics which I will post some relevant videos and lectures about. I would also add to that banning/outlawing planned obsolescence, which I see the European Union did, and good on them for taking that step.

Kate Raworth from the University of Oxford is one of my favorite and most respected economists. Here are some videos from her;

And this one is the video where I first learned about her, and man she was such an inspiration to me!

Another circular economist I have a lot of respect for is Maayke Aimee-Damen who is a Dutch circular economist. Here are some video lectures from her;

About people in more impoverished circumstances on average having more children and how overpopulation effects our environment, that is why I strongly believe in and support universal basic income. Here is what Ioannis "Yanis" Varoufakis has to say about this. He and I both think it would be a great way to replace the current and contriversial welfare state. He also explains how we could pay for it without taxes. With all of the money that gets spent on the welfare state,
wow, imagine how much money we could allocate towards conservation and mitigation of climate change and biodiversity loss, if we abolished and replaced the welfare state with UBI. I would take it slightly further than Andrew Yang and Yanis Varoufakis are proposing.

This is going to be especially contriversial with some, but one thing I strongly believe in, support and advocate for as a solution to many of the issues brought up by @Dassie rat is a maximum wage/wage ceiling. Here is what former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura had to say about this.

and here is what David Le Page, an environmental journalist had to say about that

Here is a relevant article about circular economics.

The circular economy: Sustainable solutions to solve planetary overshoot?

• The current linear production and consumption economic model — labeled by critics as “take-make-waste” — is taking a heavy global environmental toll. The intensive use of primary resources and overconsumption are closely linked to climate change, biodiversity loss, large-scale pollution and land-use change.

• Experts and advocates argue that a circular economy model — revolving around reduced material use, reuse and recycling at its simplest — offers a potential route to achieving zero waste, reversing environmental harm and increasing sustainability of products and supply chains.

• In the absence of a firm definition, many interpretations of the circular economy exist. To be sustainable, circular economy solutions should be underpinned by renewable energy sources, reduction of material extraction, reduced consumption, and the regeneration of nature, according to researchers.

• Caution is needed, warn some, as not every circular solution is sustainable. Other experts state that to achieve its goals, the circular economy must include societal level change and go far beyond simply recycling or improving supply chains. How this economic model works will also look differently for nations across the globe.

• Past and current economic models have largely been linear; resources are extracted, used and then discarded. This system — often described as “take-make-waste” — is a double-edged sword: It helped build modern society but is implicated in rampant overconsumption and ecological damage, driving climate change, biodiversity loss and the pollution of land, air and oceans.
  
  Turning the tide on this “triple crisis” is one of the core objectives of the circular economy, a concept that advocates argue is a route to creating sustainable production cycles that reduce resource use, waste and ecological harm.
  
  “We see that if we address the way in which we decide how we produce and consume, that is going to help us affect those three underlying problems,” Elisa Tonda, head of the consumption and production unit at the United Nations Environment Program explains.
  
  At its simplest, experts say the circular economy revolves around reducing, reusing and recycling materials (known as the three R’s) — turning the cradle-to-grave linear economic model of production and consumption into a never-ending closed circle of renewal. In doing so, the circular economy model aims to eliminate waste and pollution, recirculate products and materials and regenerate nature, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

The circular economy: Sustainable solutions to solve planetary overshoot?