Environment & Energy

n2doc

(47,953 posts) Fri Aug 10, 2012, 10:25 AM Aug 2012

To Sum Up: We Are Screwed. Questions?

By Hillary Rosner
Posted: August 9, 2012

I love ecology. I can geek out all day on patterns in nature: ecosystem services, food webs, eco-evolutionary dynamics, nutrient cycles, range shifts. But I’ve spent all week at the Ecological Society of America’s annual conference in Portland, and I have to confess it’s been rough.

As a journalist who covers the environment, I’m used to depressing news. Natural systems are shifting and unraveling; the evidence is all around us. But the mind-blowing number of talks at ESA — five days of sessions from 8 am til 5 pm, with 35 talks often running at the same time (and that’s not including posters) — means that the aggregate amount of depressing news can be enough to overwhelm the staunchest optimist.

It’s not that all the talks are doom and gloom. Many, of course, are about basic research. And there are plenty that focus on solutions: giving nature economic value, collaborating with indigenous peoples, improving science communication, democratizing science by encouraging public participation in research, promoting better conservation decisions to limit unintended consequences. I attended two talks about the Sustainability in Prisons project, an inspiring program in which prisoners raise endangered frogs, plants, and butterflies. (Ed Yong covered it for Nature; check it out.)

But many of them are depressing. And I’m sure I skipped some interesting presentations because I just couldn’t bear to hear one more way in which humans have messed things up for Earth’s other gazillion species. Open to any random page in the program and the titles sink your heart into your gut. “Artificial night lighting disrupts songbird breeding behavior.” “Limited physiological response to warming in lowland tropical frogs.” “Sediment pollution reduces detrital resource availability to consumers in agricultural stream food webs.” Enough, please, stop, mercy, I can’t take it anymore.

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http://blogs.plos.org/toothandclaw/2012/08/09/to-sum-up-we-are-screwed-questions/

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To Sum Up: We Are Screwed. Questions? (Original Post) n2doc Aug 2012 OP

Well, yeah. And the biggest reason we're screwed? MH1 Aug 2012 #1

Kind of says a bit here, can't win for losing, ... CRH Aug 2012 #2

MH1

(17,600 posts)

1. Well, yeah. And the biggest reason we're screwed?

Reply to n2doc (Original post)

Fri Aug 10, 2012, 10:58 AM

Aug 2012

I did a search in the article for "population" and only found over-population mentioned in the COMMENTS. Oh to be accurate, ONE comment.

CRH

(1,553 posts)

2. Kind of says a bit here, can't win for losing, ...

Reply to n2doc (Original post)

Fri Aug 10, 2012, 10:07 PM

Aug 2012

~Snip~

Three-quarters of the planet has been modified by humans. Seventy percent of all agricultural land is pasture, but this only produces five percent of the world population’s protein and two percent of its calories. A hatchery program designed to increase salmon numbers is inadvertently contributing to the fish’s decline (because the hatchery-raised fish have far lower reproductive rates).

~end excerpt~ original article

But who am I to talk, I was raised on meat and potatoes, and given a choice beyond my reasoning, I still prefer a steak to tofu. Just too many people, trying for the same thing I like, too many others want the same, for future babies.

Truth be known, I was the fourth child of my family, and was borne in 1951. If one is honest, I am the problem, ... because it is then, humanity should have slowed reproduction to a sustainable rate, of one child per family. All the over reproduction of the species since, only serves to seal our fate more profoundly.

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