Nature loss 'to damage economies'

Source: BBC News

The Earth's ongoing nature losses may soon begin to hit national economies, a major UN report is to say.

The third Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO-3) warns that some ecosystems may soon reach "tipping points" where they rapidly become less useful to humanity.

Such tipping points could include rapid dieback of forest, algal takeover of watercourses and mass coral reef death.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_and_environment/10103179.stm

they seem to be foverlooking the tremendous role that deforestation and excessive urbanization are playing in rising surface temperatures.

It allows us all to focus on something so as not to lose our minds.

the world gets OCD on CO2 while the rest of the house falls down around us.

People don't want complex, they want easy. Something they can latch onto; like a life raft in a landless ocean, while their ship sinks.

There is so much wrong going on now, so much sorrow, so much pain, that people willfully put on the blinders to keep their perceived sanity.

In the end, it's like the starving man who doesn't want to eat his food, so he can always have plenty while it rots before his eyes.

We are a world of children.

Manipulated, used up and discarded by the wealthy, with the full cooperation of a (lol)government for and by the people. The "Great Experiment" that was America, has totally failed. It was brought down by greed. That has caused the ruin of most empires. Personally, I have always thought the "2012" doomsday prophecies, were bullshit. In 50 years, I have seen many "end days" come and go. With the state of our planet and the vast majority of its inhabitants, I have begun to wonder. It may be a devastation. If it is, you know the wealthy probably are aware of and planning for (just like the movie) it. Maybe a few regular people will survive and repopulate. If that scenario unfolds, I pray they are not capitalists. The end result of capitalism, which was brought on by reagan and perpetuated by every president since then, is the end of civilization. The society we had achieved under FDR is not currently recognizable as the same country. We have devolved so far, since reagan, that nearly every single entity is now concerned with profit. Capitalism (however unfair) was invented as an economic system. It is now a governing system. Fortunately, most other "civilized nations" stood up to the inequalities caused by capitalism. Some countries in Latin America finally freed themselves from the evil empires grip and began helping the impoverished, Other countries in Europe and Japan, were rebuilt according to the "Marshal Plan" which introduced a second "bill of rights" that FDR tried to implement in America. If he had been successful, America and the world would be in much greater shape.

people whom interpret their "prediction" as the one all be all are...odd.

We are dying a death by a thousand cuts, which to me, is a hell of a lot worse.

We are slaves of willful manipulation. If we as a world civilization choose to ignore the realities of our existence, the we are the ones who are totally to blame.

We know better. History has shown as such, but if you step back and look at all the various revolutions and civil wars, they were all manipulated by the wealthy and influential.

In the end, as with most wars, the rich always come out on top. They see the trends and the gullibility of the masses and play us for it to the hilt.

Look at Iraq and Afghanistan? Who is winning there? The corporations. It's the perfect war for the rich, it has no end.



Those wars are sold on two things: fear and nationalism. Patriotism never once figured into them. We are just the willful slaves doing their work under the guise of our justification.

So we, the worker bees, go off and fight in the wars for the rich, yet again.

Terrorist attacks will happen because the poor schlubs blowing themselves up are the most desperate types of slaves. They believe they have nothing to lose. That their lives are so meaningless, that they would rather sacrifice themselves than live another day longer. You can't defeat that kind of ideology. Until you change the meaning of their existence. We are just helping perpetuate the martyring of these people. How? By trying to maintain our "none negotiable way of life".

They martyrs die for nothing, we die for things. Both sides of the same coin.

The wars go on. The rich can continue to make money. The worker bees stay in fear. The military economy continues to keep our nation afloat with a monetary system supported by nothing.

The days of FDR are dead. Everything has been whittled away under the right wings propaganda machine. People on welfare are bad, unions are bad, anything to help the poor is bad. They attack SS, medicare and medicaid. The list goes on and on.

The gap between the rich and poor grows exponentially each year. More people are on the poverty rolls then ever before. CEO's make over 500 times more than the average employee. 40 years ago, they only made 40 times as much.

Society has been given over completely to the wealthy.

They control the message, they control what we think, say and do as a nation and as a world.

As long as the people believe that their problems can be solved by screaming at one another, nothing will ever change. It just takes the heat off the rich and powerful. That's their aim, that's their goal. Always keep society off balance. Never ever let the coalesce into any sort of force.

So to say we are slaves interesting. It's like saying a dog is a canine.

We are children who love to masquerade as adults.

There is a good book out there called Green Metropolis that says very high-density urban areas like NYC are very Green, it's low-density sprawl and the associated Car Culture that is the problem. Very interesting book with a lot of brilliant ideas. The author claims that NYC is one of the few large cities in the US that is dense enough to be past the tipping point that both makes walking more economical than driving and drives powerful civic cohesion.

into "urban" uses like housing developments, shopping centers, general urban sprawl. In this sense, core areas of cities such as New York are no longer undergoing urbanization, since they are essentially already urbanized. This is what I meant. I think you may have been thinking of the UN's definition, which focuses on the migration of people from rural areas to urban ones.

We've already depleted something like 80-90% of edible fish from the sea....nothing like wiping out an entire region or two (goodby Gulf of Mexico...is the Atlantic next?)

How many islands have quietly been evacuated before their people drown? You won't read that on the front pages of US news...but we are paying reparations already, and not nearly enough according to the tiny, thus irrelevant :sarcasm:, impacted nations.

What is it those pesky Somalian pirates are all about anyway? Oh, that's right....total loss of their livelihood (fishing) and ruination of their coastal area thanks to depleted uranium dumping by those "clean" French reactors, no? Something like that, wasn't it?

And how's that record drought in Australia doing these days?

We are a race of children masquerading as adults.

May nature have mercy on our souls.

Our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of Gaia as a whole? What a shocker! :sarcasm:

They raised the red flag about the stupidity of the industrial era destroying the environment but, as usual, they had no say because they (usually) don't have tons of money so, they were ignored.

Witness where that ignoring got us.

The worst is yet to come, though.

When will this species ever LEARN?

sounds about right given our wholesale stupidity.

Probably the worst thing we could do. Not that it's shocking that we would do that.

by nature and as a result most of society has subconsciously taken on the idea of no limits in regards to our impact on the environment.

Humanity must reach an equilibrium with nature and I believe considering the monetary loss or value associated with such may be what turns on the light bulb at least for some people isolated in their artificial bubbles.

Although a society which has now tried, a few times, to inject trillions of whatever into the economy, maybe shouldn't be counted on to take the idea of no limits out of our collective conscious/subconscious.

:eyes:

eventually global security threats as well.

Thanks for the thread, dipsydoodle.