Half-Earth
Half-Earth proposes an achievable plan to save our imperiled biosphere: devote half the surface of the Earth to nature. In order to stave off the mass extinction of species, including our own, we must move swiftly to preserve the biodiversity of our planet, says Edward O. Wilson in his most impassioned book to date. Half-Earth argues that the situation facing us is too large to be solved piecemeal and proposes a solution commensurate with the magnitude of the problem: dedicate fully half the surface of the Earth to nature. If we are to undertake such an ambitious endeavor, we first must understand just what the biosphere is, why it's essential to our survival, and the manifold threats now facing it. In doing so, Wilson describes how our species, in only a mere blink of geological time, became the architects and rulers of this epoch and outlines the consequences of this that will affect all of life, both ours and the natural world, far into the future. Half-Earth provides an enormously moving and naturalistic portrait of just what is being lost when we clip "twigs and eventually whole braches of life's family tree." In elegiac prose, Wilson documents the many ongoing extinctions that are imminent, paying tribute to creatures great and small, not the least of them the two Sumatran rhinos whom he encounters in captivity.
Stats for nerds
6recommend
25mentions
11people
2016–2023years
36% recommend60% neutral4% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Late to the party, and I dunno if you'll see this, but could it have been E.O. Wilson's Half-Earth? He makes the argument in that book for keeping at least 50% of the land (connected) wild for animal use.
- Going forward, the best solution is to implement Wilson’s "Half-Earth" biosphere reserve proposal, more popularly known in its current, reduced form as "30 by 30", an agreement by 100 nations (currently) at the COP15 meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity to conserve at least 30 percent of our land and water. If more people got behind this initiative, the number of new business and economic initiatives supporting this idea would be astronomical, and would form a new paradigm for thinking about the way we see our planet. Travel, hotel, and tourist opportunities would present unlimited growth opportunities, and the new scientific research coming out of it would benefit humanity in unique ways. My overarching point is we need to stop thinking about the problem of climate change remediation as the only issue, it’s deeply connected to how we see the planet and use our resources wisely.
- We do build things. I'm in SF where we have recently replaced the Bay Bridge, dug a big ol' tunnel, put up skyscrapers and luxury condos, etc.
What we don't do is build housing. (A lot of people blame NIMBYism for that but the situation is complex.)
> The lack of power generation, power transmission, and pretty much any infrastructure you can think of is another.
A friend of mine drives a Tesla, he says charging stations are cropping up all over. 5G is rolling out. There is a lot of aging infrastructure that needs to be repaired, rebuilt, or retired, but we're not quite Mad Max yet.
> I agree that there is some conflict of interest between humans and untouched nature, and I am firmly on the side of us, humanity!
I don't agree with that framing.
First of all, tactically, you're siding with the underdog! :)
Nature could literally wipe us out in the blink of an eye. A single hurricane can devastate a whole city in a few hours, Godzilla-style.
However, that's not the real reason why I don't think there's a real conflict of interest.
The reason is that untouched nature is the only baseline (in the entire known universe) for sanity. We need nature.
As we enter a computer-mediated "metaverse" or cyberspace, and especially as we allow our infants and children to grow up in it, untouched nature will become exponentially more important as (literal!) grounding for humanity.
That's why something like E. O. Wilson's Half Earth proposal is so important ( https://www.half-earthproject.org/ )
We only have one biosphere in the entire universe, of course we should try to preserve it intact and in working order! After all we have the rest of the solar system to do human stuff, eh?
- [..]if we converted just 12% of the land currently devoted to cropland to forest—aka re-wilded it—we could offset 100% of the carbon damage we do to the Earth, each and every year, without changing a single thing about how we fuel our cars, heat and cool our buildings, and run our commerce and lives.[..]
Rewilding our planet is our only hope.
I am a big supporter of E.O.Wilson’s Half Earth proposal which sets aside half of all land mass to habitat. If we cannot live in the remaining half , it means we are living beyond the carrying capacity of the planet.
Why? Because we are a super apex predator relying on other species for our survival. And we have been destroying their habitat and outbreeding them and therefore replacing all the other species that is supposed to ensure that we don’t go extinct.
In other words, we are like the dumbass woodsman who is sawing the trunk of a mighty tree while sitting on the topmost branch of the same tree.
We are killing the golden goose that lays golden eggs because of our greed. When the goose is gone, no more eggs.
Having said that, the author just jumped the shark by making a case for the vertical farm.
- Just because there is land and we can plop a house in it doesnt mean that it can support more people.
It takes a lot for liveable cities. Mostly natural resources that aren’t renewable.
We are not food sustainable nor do we have a small food footprint. We need more trees and grassland to sequester carbon.
Lots of land doesn’t mean it’s all habitable. There is a reason the tropics are the most populated. Most of earth is not friendly to humans and are better suited to support environment and habitat and climate. It is futile imagination that makes us think that we have an abundance of resources.
In fact..everything runs on fossil fuels. Even food is fossil fuel turned into calories.
Population at half of today’s level is still above carrying a capacity of earth. I am a big proponent of E.O.Wilson’s Half Earth where half the planet must be returned to nature ti be rewilded and habitat must be restored.
This isn’t to say that procreation must be penalized. We need human beings to keeP our species from going extinct. What we need is an environment that nurtures all species. We rely on other species and habitat as we are a super apex predator and need them for our survival.
It’s overpopulation that is endangering our survival. The solution is simple. Women don’t want to be mothers because they are called birthing persons these days. Give women back their power.
This planet was formed by wise women… maiden, mother and crone held the power as life givers. Give it back to us. Women will nourish the species and the planet back to health. First we need to examine the reasons for over population that is unsustainable.
Start with getting rid of men and religious heads dictating what women can and should do with their bodies. Every woman has maternal instincts. No woman wants her body to be exploited by men. One of these instincts win. Right now, the latter is winning. Our species will perish. Unless women seize back the power over their own bodies.
- Family farms operate about half of America’s farmland and they are responsible for about 21% of production. Link:
https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2020/01/23/look-americas-fam...
Family farms grow commodity and fiber and not necessarily food calories.
‘Industrial farmer’ will toe the line of the inputs industry(feed, fertilizer and weedicides) and collect subsidies. Profitability doesn’t relate to good soil practices. Profit is extracted from all that ancillary to the food production industry. Example: There is no money in growing food. The profit comes if you own your truck lines and part of the supply chain. Or Agtech or inputs make more money than the proceeds of actual food. Subsidies make up most farm income and pushing more farmers into debt and bankruptcy. It’s not very rosy.
Industrial farms have polluted our waters and poisoned our soils that habitat and eco systems are entirely decimated. And crop diversity is also severely compromised and we lose so much variety and cultivars. That’s why we get tasteless red delicious apples and Roma tomatoes because it’s easy to mechanize to feed billions cheap food.
In my opinion, I think there should be two kinds of food. Cheap Soylent kind of nutritious goop to stave off malnutrition and starvation in industrial factory farms with strict protocols to deal with the environmental impact and then real food whose price reflects the true cost of growing food for billions cheaply. But all ag and food production should be termed industrial as it is the erasure of nature and habitat and eco systems.
I am very much in favour of the late great E.O.Wilson’s Half Earth proposal and I think it should be considered in earnest to save our planet.
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