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> the sixth mass extinction event, the only one caused not by some cataclysm but by a single species—us.
Not so sure. IIRC there are reasons to believe that the big one, the Permian-Triassic extinction, was due to methanosarcina, an archaean genus. OK, that's not a species but a genus, but still.
It's a bit naive to think that all extinctions events happen because of some geologic or celestial event. Sometimes, evolution goes terribly wrong and sh.t hits the fan. Either it is by releasing nefarious gazes in the atmosphere, or creating a Primate intelligent enough to rule and consume most of biosphere.
The largest environmental impact the Earth has ever seen was caused by its original life form (probably some type of cyanobacteria.) They depleted most of the atmosphere's CO2 and replaced it with toxic gas. (O2) It caused the oceans to rust. It is hard to know the exact scope of the effects, but they were significant.
Regardless of what is natural or has occurred before, reduction of biodiversity is dangerous to our own safety as a species - monocultures are more easily wiped out. If there were a terrible cow virus, we might be thankful to have emus around for example.
Edit: and far more pertinent, particularly in the American Midwest, is our reliance on large quantities of single strains of corn...
Said primate could potentially avert its own extinction, is I think the point of this article.
There are also reasons to think the Permian-Triassic was caused by volcanic activity burning a lot of coal.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110123131014.ht...
These kind of arguments were used not only for the animals issue, but also among humans, to justify killing by the most monstrous regimes in history. Taking out any moral stand, and classifying these issues as a given "scientific" or "force of nature" phenomenon, is wrong. Very wrong. Living elephants are more important than ivory jewels. Although it's a possible (devastating) path, it's our duty to avoid consuming of the biosphere.
The question is not can we.
The question is what standard of living do we want for species in the long term.
We can always live more comfortably today by consuming non-renewable resources that make our world sustainably enjoyable, but at the loss of the benefit that resource would later give. Slash-and-burn farming does this. As do putting up a mall over untouched land, burning fossil fuels, and overpopulation, for example, all of which do the opposite of setting aside part of the planet.
Business people know the concept better than anyone. They know a company is in trouble if it sells an asset whose operation produces profit to pay for current operations.
We can set off as much of the planet as we like and live in as much abundance per person as the planet can sustain indefinitely, though not as much abundance per person as we can today by consuming non-renewable resources. Using up those resources today only impoverishes future generations.
We can do either. What do we choose?
I think the problem is that it's not possible (or rather, extremely difficult) to choose in any global sense, due to co-ordination problems. A very interesting (though long and occasionally whimsical) essay called "Meditations on Moloch" dwells on this problem:
"A basic principle unites all of the multipolar traps above. In some competition optimizing for X, the opportunity arises to throw some other value under the bus for improved X. Those who take it prosper. Those who don’t take it die out. Eventually, everyone’s relative status is about the same as before, but everyone’s absolute status is worse than before. The process continues until all other values that can be traded off have been – in other words, until human ingenuity cannot possibly figure out a way to make things any worse."
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
So, basically we can't choose your former path above because we're stuck in one of these "multipolar traps." I recommend checking out the entire essay. It's long but rewarding.
> The question is what standard of living do we want for species in the long term.
Your framing assumes a fixed supply of non-renewable resources and rough stability in our technology for both extracting and consuming them. Yes we should minimize irreparable harm to the planet, and yes we should obey the precautionary principle, but it would be silly to plan our current consumption of resources as if we will have the same technology in a thousand years.
So. It might not need to be a global effort. A handful of large countries could foster their forests and get near half. Here's an article about Brazil successfully reducing the destruction of their rainforests: http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/2160340...
I can't imagine us doing something like this for animals when we can't even do it for Ukrainians. From a political perspective, aggressive nations will always be seeking out annexations/territorial control and limiting the amount of land for human use would only encourage this. I mean, we're already discussing oil territorial disputes in multiple locales as well as upcoming "water wars" as unavoidable.
I don't think humanity is up to the task. This proposal sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel where everyone is a Marty or Mary Sue or some benevolant engineer dictator is running the show. In real life, guys like Putin don't give two shits about life and will march troops on a whim to obtain resources.
It's a far off goal to be sure. But they're already making progress. Changing it to "Half of North America" seems quite doable as more and more people are living in cities. We just need wealthy benefactors to continue buying up useless land and committing it to the cause.
When speaking about aggressive governments, the elephant in the room is the US, waging war everywhere with a military bigger than all other countries combined...
How can we citizens of the world figure out a way to if not stop then exterminate this brutal force that has grown out of proportion? Can we do it without human sacrifice, and in a way that does not harm the american people who the US military is "protecting"?
Ninja edit: No I'm not saying a good solution is for the worlds government to wage world war against the US. Just trying to say that there is little difference between Ukraine and Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan, except that the war in Ukraine is a piss in the ocean in comparison to the sins of the American government and military.
The joker in me wants to say that they already have more the half, but most of them can't swim.
The serious me thinks that trying to prevent a mass extinction is noble, and should be widely supported.
I was going to take it a step farther and say we divide on a volume basis, and the wildlife gets the inner half.
This would have been a terrible joke considering the state of our oceans.
Preventing a mass extinction is impossible; at this point we are in damage control.
To your first point, aren't most species ocean-dwelling?
It needs to be a HARD set aside.. perhaps only trials and fire roads too.
NOT what the US does with "national forest"... IE it's pseudo wilderness. They let ranchers use it to raise their cattle and lets companies harvest trees and mine it.
I recently tried to go hiking in Colorado with my dad in an area that he remembered being a great hike ~20 years ago. Well, we get there, and we realize the majority of the area has become an RV camp littered with dirt bike trails, despite it being managed by the National Forest Service. We still had an okay time hiking once we got to the main trail, but the whole area around it was a dust bowl, certainly not helped by all of the erosion.
As we were leaving, he remarked that this is what happens when your country's forest service is part of the Department of Agriculture (tasked with policy on farming, agriculture, food, and using resources economically) instead of the Department of the Interior (housing the National Park Service and the Fish & Wildlife Service, among others, and tasked with conserving federal land and resources).
It's a real shame that the Forest Service, while doing an okay job maintaining much of the land, is part of a wider branch that is incentivized to promote economic growth and treat resources as things to be used instead of preserved. It just doesn't seem to fit in with that branch of the government.
Harvesting of trees can be both very profitable and of low impact. There's very high biodiversity on the edges transitioning between forest and clearings. Of course, it's easy to do it poorly, but it's a very useful source of income for many preserved areas.
As someone who spends a fair amount of time in National Forests (Mostly dispersed camping in Colorado and camping/canoeing in Missouri) I think the national park system is incredibly well managed as is.
Sounds like what you want is designated wilderness areas?
They mention them in the article, but not everyone is familiar with them. Wilderness areas are not the same as national parks, though a national park may have wilderness area.
People are generally allowed to hike or ski, but you need a permit to camp and sometimes even a permit just to be there.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Wilderness_Preservatio...
Plus excessive hunting in some areas (where wildlife is unable to regain the numbers lost).
Illegal hunting is also an issue too but that won is harder to handle than legal hunting where too many permits are granted (and granted for too small of an area, wiping out a population in that area).
Over-hunting is also a massive problem for fishing (both inland and open water), we're wiping out whole species of fish.
US National Forests also include 400+ out of the 700+ designated wilderness areas in the US. These areas have no ranchers or loggers or miners, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._Wilderness_Areas.
We should consider a single plastic toy, bought from Amazon, used for a few months and thrown away: The material and minerals are taken from the ground, factories to produce it, ship to the harbour, overseas, to stores, to the consumer, and then - disposal? For what? Animals are living creatures, that inspired (and still inspire - so many movies, stories, sport teams, logos, metaphors) humanity for ages. Many, many daily things we can really live without. Think shoedazzle. Do we really need new shoes monthly, or "get obsessed"[1] about shoes? Can we at least buy something with better quality that lasts for years? This shopping and comforts have a cruel irreversible price tag on animals and wildlife. Add to this wars and conflicts all around the world, and the results are devastating.
[1] Home page of http://www.shoedazzle.com/
>For what?
Money.
I think that you just described the tragedy of the commons.[1] Individuals acting in their own self-interest contrary to everyone's long-term best interests by depleting common resources.
Humans only live on a small fraction of the planet even when you limit the area to dry land.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/NPP/news/earth-at-night.ht...
It is strange that modern agriculture employs crop rotation in order to increase yields but we do not do the same thing for harvesting food from the ocean. CBC's The Nature of Things recently had a series about the state of the oceans. During one of the episodes they showed the success of marine reserves in New Zealand. I am having trouble finding a good link but the turn around was amazing.
Currently less than 1% of the ocean is protected. Greenpeace has been campaigning to set aside a large amount of the ocean as a "marine reserve." http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/oceans/...
In the future, yes I believe so.
Today I believe there is no way.
The world approaches population stabilization. Japan 's population is going to go down. So is China, Germany, Spain...
As we reduce illness in Africa and increase automation people need less children.
Population will get a peak and then not grow anymore.
If we solve fusion energy we will be able to plant vegetables or plankton underground, in floors, in a much more efficient way, as we will be able to have a stable temperature all day long, with pests controlled without using chemical products, just controlling physically the access, and very near the places they are consumed.
I think the only ultimately sustainable solution is not to "set aside" any percentage of the planet for wildlife, but to develop ways of living that are not based on a differentiation between spaces of civilization and spaces of wilderness. Our species is naturally a node in a complex set of ecological systems, and instead of trying to detach ourselves from that system we should find a way to achieve our goals while living within it.
Our society is very irresponsible. Every holiday is a nightmare for the planet. The tons of junk, wrapping, and throwaway stuff we consume will be ridiculed from future generations. Not to mention the time and energy (literary, too) wasted for shopping. I stopped buying birthday decorations and try to educate my kids to stop having these merchant-inspired "festivities". All junk from Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the endless kids' birthdays piles up to a ton per year. Be responsible as we're leaving a huge liability to the future generations and our children and grandchildren, which we care the most about! I'm really disappointed at the Waste Management Recycling Centers who refuse to take anything, but CRV just recently. I invest time and pile up tons of non-CRV recyclables and they do not take it anymore.
There are fundamental cultural issues that will need to be addressed for civilization to reach sustainable, large populations. Yet, even if we do undergo a mass extinction, it may be slow enough that we can actively intervene in the ecology to prevent the collapse of civilization. With the rise of synthetic biology, advanced genetic engineering, realistic ecological simulations, and perhaps AI-engineered organisms, it may be exiting. We could be on the cusp of an unprecedented explosion in new genes, phenotypes, biochemistry, and general biodiversity.
"Without any human intervention, here is a forest with tall, straight trees that are rather widely spaced, plenty of sunlight and lots of open, grassy meadows. Longleaf branches out only after it’s high overhead, where glistening needles up to two-and-a-half-feet long are arrayed in pomponlike sprays. Below the branches is empty space a hawk can glide through."
Sounds beautiful!
He needs to talk with the Florida DOT about building wildlife bridges so the animals can safely cross roads and rail lines.
See also: http://www.americanprairie.org/ -- an effort to link public and private lands to create a 3 million acre preserve of the Great Plains ecosystem. That's pretty big, but not even close to the scale this article considers.
We could set aside 90%, if we turned agriculture over to nuclear powered subterranean farms.
It isn't so much what can we do, as what can groups of people be bothered to do collectively and whether anyone else is going to complain.
A good starting point would be scrapping agricultural subsidies. Since South Africa scrapped it, a lot of farm land was turned into wildlife farms.
according to NOAA http://www.noaa.gov/ocean.html 71% of the earth is Ocean leaving only 29% land. So the goal is for 14.5% of the earth to be set aside for Wildlife? That is a terrible title for an article. 14.5% != 50%
I guess it depends upon how many humans one must move or exterminate.
just nuke some land, worked great for wildlife in Cernobyl
>Can the World Really Set Aside Half of the Planet for Wildlife?
no.
Majority of the planet is ocean, so maybe they could.
Not sure why I bother trying to talk to you people anymore, but I will go ahead and throw out an idea that I assume you will simply reject because it goes against your belief system.
We should not worship nature to such a high degree. Yes, we should try to conserve wild areas as a buffer against mistakes and for basic enjoyment. And we are not doing a good enough job of that.
But the assumption is that basically the wild areas have some sacred process or system going on that we cannot possibly ever aspire to understanding or surpassing.
First of all, there is absolutely no separation between the "wild" world and the "human" world. The idea of a natural world that is separate from a human world is an oversimplification that has become misleading.
Everything in the world, including people and the things that we make, from human feces, to plastic trash bags to rocket ships and computers, is the result of the same natural physical laws and processes involved in the universe.
The planet sees itself with billions of eyes. The planet thinks with billions of tiny minds.
The cities, roadways, and agricultural fields that cover increasingly large areas of earth are part of the natural evolution of the planet.
Its hard to really convey especially since we are so far down the line of nature worship, but part of what I am trying to get across is that humans have already surpassed nature in some ways, and if we haven't already done so then we can create environments that do.
I think it will be easier to appreciate this type of thing once we become a multi-planet species. Or at least get a colony on the moon or something.
Because part of the nature worship is the reality that we only have one biosphere to support us. We need to fix that.
But another thing -- this does tie into Malthusian population control, eugenics, classism, etc. There is an inherent disgust for the dirty masses that is hidden behind the earth worship. We have to remember the value of human life.
It is possible.
One of the discussions that spurred here in my cubicle was: How? How can we set aside half of the planet for anything other than ourselves? It's impossible! With almost every nation, state or person out there worrying about their piece of land it surely must be impossible.
But not quite.
Use Nuclear Leakage & Irradiation. Like the one that led to the Red Forest in Chernobyl [1].
'Radiological Reserves' are probably the only way to set aside a large area for animals/plants with a guarantee that humans will not come by. Not in the next 10,000 years!
Eat that! :)
This will only become possible when a couple for important milestones are reached --and they a biggies. First we have to get rid of a lot of the roads. And that can't happen until personal flight becomes common place. Second human population has to stop growing, in fact it needs to shrink even now. We are already reaching upper limits on agricultural and water availability. Unfortunately, while the former is difficult enough, the later is near impossible due to the dominance of infantile religions.