Not a single target
In the more long-term bad news…
The world has failed to meet a single target to stem the destruction of wildlife and life-sustaining ecosystems in the last decade, according to a devastating new report from the UN on the state of nature.
From tackling pollution to protecting coral reefs, the international community did not fully achieve any of the 20 Aichi biodiversity targets agreed in Japan in 2010 to slow the loss of the natural world. It is the second consecutive decade that governments have failed to meet targets.
Well let’s look forward to 2030. Or 2050. Or maybe 2100.
The Global Biodiversity Outlook 5, published before a key UN summit on the issue later this month, found that despite progress in some areas, natural habitats have continued to disappear, vast numbers of species remain threatened by extinction from human activities, and $500bn (£388bn) of environmentally damaging government subsidies have not been eliminated.
Meanwhile the left is throwing all its energy behind…forcing all women to take orders from their trans “sisters.”
The report is the third in a week to highlight the devastating state of the planet. The WWF and Zoological Society of London (ZSL)’s Living Planet Report 2020 said global wildlife populations were in freefall, plunging by two-thirds, because of human overconsumption, population growth and intensive agriculture. On Monday, the RSPB said the UK had failed to reach 17 of the Aichi targets and that the gap between rhetoric and reality had resulted in a “lost decade for nature”.
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A leading target to halve the loss of natural habitats, including forests, has not been met. While global deforestation rates have decreased by about a third in the past five years compared with pre-2010 levels, the degradation and fragmentation of biodiversity-rich ecosystems in the tropics remains high. Wilderness areas and wetlands have continued to disappear and freshwater ecosystems remain critically threatened.
And fires are raging.
I have been noticing this for some time, but too many people want to give some rosy picture. Oh, we’re doing so much! We’re recycling! (Yeah, right.)
It is my opinion (and that of many other environmental scientists, though by no means all) that we have passed the tipping point. Not just on global warming, but on many other fronts. We spend too much time talking and arguing about not wanting to panic people, and putting out fires (not the literal ones, though of course those too). One cold day in an otherwise hot season? No global warming! One day you go to the zoo and see giraffes? No problem! Species are fine. See? Giraffes! Awesome!
I think the attitude of many people I know is summed up in one thing I saw 20 years ago at a museum in Oklahoma. They had a global warming exhibit, and put up a bulletin board and provided note cards and pens so people could write their impressions/opinions. One person write, quite large, and posted it right in the middle of the board: Don’t worry. God’s got it. (Got what? Coronavirus?)
Everyone wants someone else to solve the problem. Those of us who are in the field that is expected to solve the problem recognize that we cannot do it. This problem is not one that is solved by science, but by action from everybody. This action was not taken. We have gone over the edge of the cliff. One suspects what they really wanted us to do was alter the statistics so it looked like everything was okay. Sort of like Trump not wanting testing. If we don’t look at the problem, it won’t be a problem.
We are screwed.
We can have a global ecosystem in which many species are represented, each by a comparatively small number of individuals, or one in which a few species are represented by a comparatively large number of individuals, but we can’t have a large number of species each represented by a large number of individuals: at least, not with the present configuration of continents.
Perhaps AGW will be nature’s way of returning the Earth to its pre-Pleistocene state. But in this game of life, Nature always bats last; and we are not one of the batsmen. We are the ball. Next strike could hit us right out of the park.
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Paul Krugman, NYT.
https://whereofonecanspeak.com/2020/09/15/science-schmience/