{"id":58397,"date":"2021-06-27T08:29:48","date_gmt":"2021-06-27T13:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58397"},"modified":"2021-06-27T08:29:48","modified_gmt":"2021-06-27T13:29:48","slug":"population-explosion-to-destroy-11-of-remaining-ecosystems-and-biodiversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58397","title":{"rendered":"Population explosion to destroy 11% of remaining ecosystems and biodiversity"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a title=\"Permalink to Population explosion to destroy 11% of remaining ecosystems and biodiversity\" href=\"https:\/\/energyskeptic.com\/2021\/population-explosion-to-destroy-11-of-remaining-ecosystems-and-biodiversity\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Population explosion to destroy 11% of remaining ecosystems and biodiversity<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><strong>Preface.<\/strong>\u00a0According to a recent paper in Nature Sustainability (Williams et al 2020), we are on the verge of destroying 11% of earth\u2019s remaining ecosystems by 2050 to grow more food. We already are using 75% of Earth\u2019s land. What a species! Reminds me of the ecology phrase \u201cAre Humans Smarter than Yeast?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But I have several criticisms of this research.<\/p>\n<p>Proposed remedies include increasing crop yields, but we are at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/energyskeptic.com\/tag\/peak-food\/\">peak food<\/a>, so that isn\u2019t going to happen. We are also at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/energyskeptic.com\/2017\/chemical-industrial-farming-is-unsustainable-why-poison-ourselves-when-pesticides-dont-kill-more-pests-than-in-the-past\/\">peak pesticides<\/a>, as we are running out of new toxic chemicals and pests adapt within five years on average. The second idea is to have homo sapiens stop eating meat and adopt a plant-based diet.\u00a0 As long as meat is available and affordable, that simply won\u2019t happen.\u00a0 The third way is to cut food waste or loss.\u00a0 That would require all of us to live in dire poverty given human nature, and then we\u2019d all chop away at the remaining wild lands to grow more food. And finally, the 4<sup>th<\/sup>\u00a0solution would be to export food to the nations that are going to destroy the most creatures and forests. \u00a0Which in turn would lead to expanding populations in these regions. Malthus was right about food being the only limitation on population. And it would be difficult to export food when there are 83 million more mouths to feed every year globally.<\/p>\n<p>This research article doesn\u2019t even mention family planning and birth control as a solution.<\/p>\n<p>Or point out the huge increase in greenhouse gases that would be emitted. From \u201cLife After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy\u201d:\u00a0 The idea that biofuels generate less CO<sub>2<\/sub> than gasoline stems from the fact that biofuels are derived from plants that absorb carbon dioxide&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Population explosion to destroy 11% of remaining ecosystems and biodiversity Preface.\u00a0According to a recent paper in Nature Sustainability (Williams et al 2020), we are on the verge of destroying 11% of earth\u2019s remaining ecosystems by 2050 to grow more food. We already are using 75% of Earth\u2019s land. What a species! Reminds me of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[11836,72,1057,11859,31377,31378,31376],"class_list":["post-58397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-alice-friedemann","tag-biodiversity","tag-ecosystems","tag-energy-skeptic","tag-human-expansion","tag-human-footprint","tag-human-population"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58397"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58398,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58397\/revisions\/58398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}