The best book I've read on these matters is The Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea by Callum Roberts. It's about 400 pages long and meticulously details our effects on the marine environment (though in an entertaining and accessible manner).
We're looking at cataclysmic changes in the oceans. It's not too late to revert course, but overfishing and pollution (acidification, in particular) have already changed our marine ecosystems, and they will continue to do so. Great diversity has been lost, while jellies and other more primitive lifeforms used to less hospitable conditions are now thriving.
The bizarre tragedy comes, in part, from the dilution hypothesis: it's commonly accepted that the oceans are really big, so big that they can withstand our meddling. While the oceans are big, they're neither that large nor are they totally homogeneous: there are many marine ecosystems, all of which are fragile. But most of these marine ecosystems are still large enough to change slowly -- too slowly to be immediately noticed by laypersons.
The slowness of change in the marine ecosystems makes environmentalism a politically difficult platform: good policies do not yield immediately measurable positive results, and while the threat is grave, it is creeping sufficiently slowly for action to be continuously procrastinated.
> Bottom trawlers scraping large nets across the sea floor have already affected 20 million square miles of ocean, turning parts of the continental shelf to rubble.
That's a number I wouldn't have guessed, that's about 1/7th of the ocean floor.
We'll get the other 6/7ths in the next few years - the free-for-all on deep-sea mining starts this year. To get an idea of what that looks like, see http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/18/namibia-diamonds-i... - destruction on an insane scale, and by killing all sea-floor biomass, marine food chains and the terrestrial food chains which depend on them are disrupted.
I would really like to know. NOAA has a really impressive map here[0] (with a really impressive name) but I don't think it's set up for "surface area of ocean above X elevation."
However, I would expect dragging to occur in shallower waters rich in life because economically we're looking to extract maximum value. I'm worried that might roughly correlate to maximum damage. (Sure we could do more damage if we tried, we could bomb a coral reef, but we're essentially mining for certain lifeforms from an ecosystem.)
Sometimes I wonder if humanity will finally wake up when some ecosystems start to collapse. How will we turn around the freight train of capitalism raping externalities? Fossil fuels, fracking, overfishing, etc.
Makes one wonder what will happen in 20-30 years and if they should have children...
It's the ultimate example of the bystander effect. Everyone is waiting for someone else to take charge and do something about it. There are plenty of things that can be done by individuals right now though.
Learning about that stuff is a pet project of mine, and the main reason I bought a farm and started converting it. I'm hoping that it will prove possible to make economically viable replacements for a lot of the more damaging parts of our civilization. The parts I'm working on are food production and energy use. Whether these things will work is an open question so far, but I do think there's reason for hope.
As far as humanity waking up, I think it's more productive to think in terms of how much of humanity is awake since that gives us a measurable quantity that we can actually influence. Hopefully, we'll be able to present people with a solution that actually works and doesn't require big action from on-high. If it doesn't screw up their quality of life, and it's good for the future of humanity, I think there are a lot of people who would make some changes.
Can give us some examples. I personally feel fairly powerless, and feel that regulation at government / global level is the only way that we are likely to solve these sort of problems.
Likewise with climate change. I can avoid flying, but if the flight still goes and the airline reduces the ticket price, someone else will likely take my place. Meanwhile our government proposes building another airport. I am sacrificing my own convenience, but making no difference to the bigger picture.
One of the things I'm doing is attempting to use cattle in a way that sequesters carbon in the soil in the form of humus. Others have had success using a combination of trampling and long-rotation grazing practices to boost soil carbon by many tons per acre, without requiring the use of machinery. Biochar is also a promising area for investigation, because you can combine that with heat and power production to get carbon-negative energy (using something like a top-lit updraft gasifier, or TLUD). If you then add a fast-growing coppice species as the feedstock, you have a sustainable energy production system that makes effectively permanent improvements to soil while soaking carbon out of the atmosphere at a pretty rapid pace.
On a smaller scale, you can change eating habits so that your food comes from sustainable sources (or even grow a lot of it yourself if you have space for something like an aquaponics setup). Learning to repair things rather than replace them is another small thing that has a large impact over time, keeping stuff out of landfills and reducing the impact of planned obsolescence.
If you want to have a larger impact than those things (which I understand may feel like insignificant posing), look to your local economic networks. Things like getting zoning laws changed to allow for integrated living and small business areas, with walkable streets, can have a huge impact on peoples habits in terms of driving and buying things from far away. That's getting into government territory, but it's local government so you have a much better chance of success.
If you're interested in tinkering, there are a bunch of things that can be done in the home energy arena that make a big difference. Start with improving efficiency (insulation, draft elimination, passive solar retrofits). After that, you can consider things like solar water heating, or high-efficiency wood heat for the dwelling itself. There are wood heater designs that you can build with minimal skill that are very close to as good as you can possibly get in terms of efficiency (look into rocket mass heaters or masonry heaters). If you make a job out of it, you can have a large impact over a few years doing these things for other people who want to do something meaningful but don't have the time/knowledge/resources to make it happen.
If you like biology/ecology, I think there is tremendous potential in the creation of passive productive ecosystems. The basic idea here is that we take space that is currently under-utilized (mowed medians, frontages, hillsides, unused lawns etc.) and plant them up with productive perennial species like fruit and nut trees, herbs, and various vine crops. Combined with minimal support from municipalities for allowing safe access, these kinds of areas can have a big impact on a lot of positive things - building connections in a community, providing a significant source of otherwise hard-to-get fresh fruit and nuts that's free for the taking, and at the same time providing habitat for wild animals to recolonize places we've been keeping functionally sterile at great expense. This is the other thing I'm doing on my property - creating a permanent productive forest environment (the cattle are part of the preparatory steps, and will gradually be phased out in favor of a tree-based ecosystem). It's easier to do than it sounds, if you just work on it a bit at a time. If you don't have land available, you can often find someone who does.
A business model I'm exploring in this space is the "urban farmer" or "urban forest farmer," who basically leases unused lawn spaces in cities and turns them into productive systems. The farmer would then harvest and sell the produce locally to make the profit - possible through a CSA arrangement. If you have the people skills, you can potentially get a large percentage of suburban or low-density urban properties involved for a given area, and you end up having "farm land" to use for local food systems and ecological remediation. It eliminates the need for mowing and other busy work for the owners, and they get a cut of the produce as a side benefit. It would also hopefully get neighbors talking to each other as they see the neighborhood transform, which combined with better zoning laws would probably lead to some local businesses springing up to support either your farming activities or things that follow from there (local restaurants, food preservation shop, etc).
There are a lot of options for improvement when you start looking at how things are being done today. Some of these things probably won't pan out, but others will, and the fact that we're starting now rather than waiting for somebody else means we're leading by example. Others will follow as they are able when they see what's possible.
I think the biggest thing is to change your mindset to think in terms of snowballing passive systems. Every time you make a wood heater for someone that uses half (or less) of the firewood to cleanly heat a space, you potentially save that quantity of energy every year after for the life of the home. Each productive tree you plant provides 500-2000 lbs of food every year for generations if it's maintained, and the maintenance is minimal. Half an acre of coppiced firewood species like Black Locust can provide the majority of the annual heating needs for a modest, well-insulated home forever. That's how you can maximize the impact of your labor - build things that keep on giving after you stop working on them.
There are loads of people out there right now who can't find a decent job. If we can make a viable business models for doing this kind of work, we'd have a huge force multiplier there as well by inspiring them to take on similar jobs, or even doing work that complements our own work.
It's not just an issue in "capitalism". Communist countries like the USSR and China have had as bad or worse effects on the environment. It's an issue of humanity.
I don't think it's very helpful to just blame humanity in the general sense without explicitly stating what exactly is fucked up about them (this time). Just like in interpersonal relationships, to fix a problem it's best to focus on single issues rather than ruminate over character flaws.
I'd say that it's an issue of humans wielding industrial strength tools without proper technology for monitoring and constraining resource consumption.
Effectively the planet is populated by autonomous agents focusing on locally optimizing their short-term finances, using capital* to convert landmass and biomass to marketable commodities. The side-effects are as we see.
Now that we have stated the problem, we can actually start figuring out how to limit this. But as economic system design and political action goes I'm all thumbs.
There is a slight reason for optimism. If governments recognize that there is a general action that can be taken then usually a way can be found for global action - and with proper response this actually works. See what happened to the usages CFC:s in refrigerators after it was proven they lay waste to the ozone layer.
Unfortunately the damage to biomass is already extensive. When one kind of food source becomes scarce we can just move to another, without reflecting why did that particular fishery dry up.
With ozone layer the problem was a bit more urgent - "OMFG we are all gonna fry up!".
I'm guessing you're aware, but for other readers this is often called The Tragedy of the Commons. Since nobody's made much headway since it was introduced 50 years ago new ideas are needed.
Thats the honest truth. Its hard when success at conservation and sustainability is directly at odds with nearly every other metric of success we as a species hold dear. Not to say we shouldn't try to make changes, and there's always hope. But its a bit like trying to stop a speeding train while being inside the train and leaning really hard against the wall.
Winning Darwin's game happens to be about dissipating more heat than your competition.
That is almost precisely the statement of the Darwin-Lotka Energy Law (also "the maximum power principle") coined by ecologist Howard T. Odum, based on the work of Charles Darwin and A.J. Lotka:
In its brief form: the maximization of power for useful purposes is the criterion for natural selection.*
Darwin's theory of evolution then becomes a general energy law.
I can't see that awakening happening on a big enough scale in a hurry. Insulated in homes, I think many would sit through the disappearance of swathes of wildlife without changing behaviour unless maybe the chicken, pork or beef they ate weren't available. And given they're factory farmed, that won't change until there are accurate and cheaper substitutes. We'll be frogs in boiling water.
I have wondered if losing iconic animals familiar to children (lions, tigers, elephants) might jolt people but I doubt that. How often do you read about endangered white rhinos? I can just imagine the consensus thought being "Well, what can I do? Plus, we have the regular rhinos" then when they go, "Well, we have hippos, they're big and grey too."
When you buy sustainable or ethical produce, you feel so ineffective against a tide of cheap or efficient.
Well I think we're slowly getting better at this. There's many cases (at least in the US and Europe) of fisherman organising themselves to avoid an entire ecosystem collapse.
Also, things like aquaculture and the like can help us to sustain things, just like we've helped rebuild populations of some animals.
It's extremely important we continue bringing up the destruction we bring to the environment, but there's some good forces at work to at least slow the collapse (and hopefully rebuild)
Aquaculture can help, but there's been big problems from aquaculture (anecdotally, here in New Zealand) from the intense concentration of species in one area (where that concentration was never present before) and the effect of all their defecation on the ecosystem of the area they occupy. This has been quite a big thing around the salmon farms in the Marlbourough Sounds, for instance.
> Well I think we're slowly getting better at this. There's many cases (at least in the US and Europe) of fisherman organising themselves to avoid an entire ecosystem collapse.
We have done that for rivers (which had gone dry) in the US already, but selling property rights (or exploitation rights instead of property) for water zones could help prevent the overexploitation of sea resources. Once you own the zone or the exploitation rights, it's all in your interest to actively limit fishing in order to keep the value of your property over the long term. Trusting fishermen to limit themselves is a nice idea, but incredibly naive. In the mediterranean, there are strict limits for tuna exploitation and they are violated every single year by these fishermen, and not enforced properly.
> Trusting fishermen to limit themselves is a nice idea, but incredibly naive.
Well it's happened before. Fishermen associations getting together and being like "we will not have anything left to fish if we don't stop fishing so much" and they agreed. Basically ends up working.
But sometimes it backfires - in EU bans were introduced to stop fisherman from fishing out too much of a certain types of fish - but it's not like you can tell the fish to stay out of your nets, so what ended happening was that they would catch the banned species just like they used to but they couldn't bring it back inland,so it had to be thrown overboard before entering port - already dead. So it was the ultimate waste of resources - those fish have been killed for literally nothing, as they couldn't have even been consumed.
I think we will work around problems for as long as we can - honeybees were a prime example. We have eliminated most pollinating species, so we should have felt the effects of that already. Out food production should be fucked. But it's not - instead pollinating was turned into a business and now farmers rely on "renting" bees from people who raise them controlled environments - in pollinating season whole hives are brought in on trucks and then taken somewhere else afterwards.
Effect? A regular customer has absolutely no idea that this is happening. Zero. And I imagine we will keep doing that with everything else, working around the issues for as long as we can. It won't be 30 years before we realize how fucked we are.
They are collapsing right now or already collapsed. I am right now trying to reconcile the need for direct action and the chaos it would cause for a lot of innocent people, including death and suffering, which seems inevitable as they will experience that if nothing is done.
Before you take any "direct action", you may want to consider that whereas any attempt to predict the motion in any form of a world-sized chaotic system is exceedingly tricky and any prediction based on, well, anything is rather suspect and subject to change without notice, the concrete and immediate impacts of "direct action" are quite undeniable.
You're far better off using normal advocacy to try to change people's minds than anything else. If that seems like it's slow and taking time, well, first of all, world-sized chaotic system, remember? They do not generally turn on a dime (and even though they "can", it is still a rare event, and uncontrollable when it happens). But second of all, look back over the past 50 years and consider what motion there has been. There's been a lot. It is well known we are prone to overestimate the short-term impact of things, and underestimate the long-term impact. People have changed, people will change, and as the entire system evolves it's a perfectly viable outcome that, yes, things get worse for a while but people actually respond to that and make things better. This theory is bolstered by the fact that you can look back over the past 50 years and see concrete examples of this happening.
As much as some people would love to tell you otherwise, no, massive chaos and death as a result of ecosystem "collapse" (itself a rather deceptive term, there is no such atomic event) are not inevitable, and making decisions based on that assumption carry the grave risk of being totally wrong.
As I replied to the other respondent, I myself am not planning anything, so please keep your calls to the FBI to a minimum.
I'm talking about direct action in the face of intractable individuals who deny climate change or any sort of anthropomorphic effect.
Now, am I also alluding to the fact that there are elements among humanity that will look at this news and take actions against the industrial infrastructure enabling anthropomorphic global warming. Just like I predicted that people would start shooting cops for being cops a few months ago, this is what I do: suss out the threads of the future in the present.
Humans are so scared of ideas that they automatically conflate "idea" with "action."
> take actions against the industrial infrastructure enabling anthropomorphic global warming. Just like I predicted that people would start shooting cops for being cops a few months ago, this is what I do: suss out the threads of the future in the present.
That statement alone is enough to discount you completely.
I am right now trying to reconcile the need for direct action and the chaos it would cause for a lot of innocent people, including death and suffering,
"Sometimes I wonder if humanity will finally wake up when some ecosystems start to collapse."
That's when widespread civil unrest and wars will ramp up. And based on recent history, governments don't make the mouse sound decisions when wars are taking place.
An article in Nature, that mostly highlights the view of scientists from the University of Western Australia, argues that the threat of a major 'ocean calamity' is oversold. I'd rather be safe than sorry and given the evidence, we can almost definitely conclude that we are changing (and most likely harming) the ocean environment with our activities.
Wondering if evolution could have stopped at monkeys is like wondering if there's a button that can reset the ecosystem with one press. Evolution will keep selecting for organisms which is able to collect the most negative entropy and dissipate it all - if not humans then it would have been something else that would cause a huge pollution event.
Earth once did not have much oxygen - Oxygen was in fact toxic to most life forms in Earth's early days. One life form produced oxygen as a byproduct. It spread all over the planet, produced a lot of oxygen, and caused what we call an extinction event.
When I was a kid, the media had convinced me there wouldn't be any wildlife left on the planet and pollution was going to render large sections uninhabitable by humans.
That was really my first experience with reasoning by extrapolation and it really affected my thinking. Later, when none of the things that were forecast came to pass, I began to examine the whole process of reason by extrapolation and its application to dynamic systems.
That isn't to say that there haven't been pollution events, or that things that shouldn't have gone extinct haven't, instead the dynamics of the system shifted and pushed things in different ways.
I also read about the many extinction events in the planets history and how things came back from each one, different than before.
It is always possible that humans will be the cause of the next major extinction event, and if we are, that event will likely take us with it. And that would demonstrate that ultimately the system stays in balance. And that ultimately the planet doesn't really care about us at all.
That said then, do we as a species kill off our own fishermen? It has been estimated by some [1] that less than 2 billion people can live on the planet in "harmony" (what ever that means) so do we go kill off the other 4 - 5 billion losers? And then take up residence in caves?
Or do we focus on harnessing the energy and technologies we need to support as many people as we would like and to move them to other planet too? Ultimately someone has to tell the general population that whether it is humans, an asteroid, a volcano, or something else this place is a death trap and we better get working on a plan to go elsewhere.
Those documentaries are largely correct. Over 80% of the biomass of the oceans has been lost in the past century, and a substantively similar amount of non-human, non-domesticated vertebrate terrestrial biomass.
In the past 100 years, 80% of the biomass of fish in the world’s oceans has been lost, Christensen says in a AAAS video that coincided with a symposium at the Annual Meeting. “Just in the last 40 years, we have lost 60% of the biomass,” he explained. “So we’ve seen some very serious declines, and there’s no doubt about what the cause is: We’re talking about overfishing—overfishing at the global scale.”
I think this gets released after every cold spell on the east coast. I'm pretty sure I can correlate the actic vortex to various friendly reminders these climate people need to get paid.
We arguably are in the middle of a major extinction event. It's just happening so slowly (as measured on human timescales) we don't notice it happening.
We have entered the Anthropocene era, marked by humanity's impact on the planet. Fully 38% of the arable land is now farmland of one stripe or another. We've more than doubled the nitrogen production rate. Oceanic biomass has plummeted precipitously. Development is wiping out native species; biodiversity is falling (however a countervailing argument says that the spread of invasive species may counterbalance the loss of native species).
Whales were once so ludicrously abundant in the ocean that they were a severe hazard to navigation. Now they're a rare sight.
Parts of North America were so crowded with animals that no longer exist. They've been entirely exterminated. The Passenger Pigeon is one of many examples.
Although there's nothing we could do that would destroy the planet any worse than nature has in the past, each cataclysm requires tens of millions of years to recover from.
I'm not sure about you, but I don't want to live in a barren hellscape where the temperatures are so high the ocean has evaporated.
Maybe we should do what we can to avoid that fate, right?
The "2 billion" figure assumes no alterations to the environment. We could handle more if we improve our sustainable practices.
"... I also read about the many extinction events in the planets history and how things came back from each one, different than before. It is always possible that humans will be the cause of the next major extinction even..."
This is a description of the Holocene period. An informal term also used is the Anthropocene period. [1]
And that would demonstrate that ultimately the system stays
in balance. And that ultimately the planet doesn't really
care about us at all.
So the planet will ultimately be OK, but what about the billions of individual plants and animals we're causing the (very often unnecessary) death and suffering of in the meantime?
(That said, I upvoted you because I think it's still a good post.)
We're looking at cataclysmic changes in the oceans. It's not too late to revert course, but overfishing and pollution (acidification, in particular) have already changed our marine ecosystems, and they will continue to do so. Great diversity has been lost, while jellies and other more primitive lifeforms used to less hospitable conditions are now thriving.
The bizarre tragedy comes, in part, from the dilution hypothesis: it's commonly accepted that the oceans are really big, so big that they can withstand our meddling. While the oceans are big, they're neither that large nor are they totally homogeneous: there are many marine ecosystems, all of which are fragile. But most of these marine ecosystems are still large enough to change slowly -- too slowly to be immediately noticed by laypersons.
The slowness of change in the marine ecosystems makes environmentalism a politically difficult platform: good policies do not yield immediately measurable positive results, and while the threat is grave, it is creeping sufficiently slowly for action to be continuously procrastinated.