General News World wildlife populations halved in 40 years

BBC News - World wildlife populations halved in 40 years - report

This news really saddens me more then anything else currently going on in the world. All the politicians around the world just seem to care about growth instead of just keeping what they already have. Human greed will be the end of this world.

 

This is really sad. Especially as an animal lover. I wish people would be more supportive of preserving wildlife.

 

You see all of these useless, 30+ year old buildings, never used anymore. But who cares about those? Psh, not us!

 

growth at the expense of underpaid (possibly foreign) workers and animals and plants that could be possibly destroying lives.

it's sad what people in power are doing, and what the people aren't in power are trying to fight for

 

When I see someone who doesn't think that humans are destroying the planet, I just picture some politician or industrialist brainwashing them with something like this:

"Who cares that animals are dropping dead left and right and that what fresh water we have left isn't safe enough to drink? Everything'll be fine! Lets make another billion more mouths to feed while we're at it!"

Honestly though, if we have any chance at ending our overshoot and bringing back the ecological reserve, humanity's going to need massive checks on population growth and limiting where and how much we build into natural habitats.

Here's one picture that's resonated with me for a long time. This shows the border between Haiti (left) and the Dominican Republic (right).

 

This catastrophic decrease in wildlife populations is an inevitable result of the explosion of the human population. But what can we do about it? This is a serious question.

 

As a person who has been to 49 of the 58 U.S. national parks and to a few in Mexico, Canada, and in Europe, this really saddens me.

I'd say that we make it so that people have to park their automobiles outside the national park gates, then take buses throughout. This would reduce traffic on the road, along with smog, harmful pollutants, and etc.

There should be mandatory recycling and fines for those who fail to recycle. Have stricter laws on noise pollution, akin to what they have in New York City. This doesn't disrupt wildlife at all.

 

I agree, these are all great ideas. However, one of the biggest problems, at least in opinion, for local wildlife is pesticides. Countless plants and animals die from them, including the "natural" pesticides. That adds up. So what we should be doing is using genetically modified crops more often, those that resist harmful infections or insects, not to mention the fact that they can stay ripe longer, produce more food, and be smaller requiring less water.

 

This is so sad :icon_sad: