[Red Liner]

Was that thread title a challenge or? Because we Humans will accept it and it is happening.

The white African rhino which survived 55 million years is now officially extinct, with the last male having just passed away. What remains is two female white rhinos and artificial breeding being termed a failure.

55 million years, and we wipe them out in a few hundred. What a pathetic race we are. No wonder aliens want nothing to do with us.

[Enviroclan]

Thank you for starting a thread which after reading the views of bhpians made me sit up and think again. Some aspects depicted by various members never came to my mind. There is always something to learn from the views of others. Mother Earth is the supreme creator where everything is 100% recyclable. It is some things created by humans which was not there in nature especially the non biodegradable ones that are causing problems mostly. We cannot live like saints,but at least we can forego some of our comforts and wishes. We work tirelessly for the future of family.The best gift from us to the future generations will be the world we enjoyed as kids.Sustainble development is the need of the hour.We have to learn from our faults.The younger generation need to educated on the finer aspects of living in harmony with nature so that it becomes a lifestyle. All environmental issues need to be addressed globally and performed locally.It is a collective effort that needs cooperation between countries ,developed/underdeveloped,rich/poor and involvement of the Aam admi.Let us correct ourselves rather than leaving it to the Mother Nature to do correction. Maa ko bi kabhi kabhi bahut gussa aati hai.Views are very personal with my limited knowledge. Thank you for the healthy discussion this thread has provided with.

[kinetic]

The number of folks in this thread looking at our collective situation with rose-tinted glasses or even over-confidence/arrogance in our abilities to solve the problem of rampant consumerism, over-population, pollution etc. is quite disheartening. We've demonstrated generation after generation that we've been collectively incapable of change, and we keep moving the needle in the opposite direction. Sure there's more voices speaking up, but any meaningful action is unfortunately controlled only by a select few, and there still isn't enough to influence critical decision-making. Most people just don't care because they can't see past their own lifetimes on this planet, and I feel like I see some of that in this thread too. The idea that we'd somehow miraculously rescue ourselves from the brink is ridiculous. We have the luxury of pretty much knowing the future and the consequences of inaction. Why wait until things get unmanageable? We have the choice to make difficult decisions now, or make impossible ones later.

No other species has demonstrated such a prolific ability to destroy (ourselves included) as opposed to creating. Modern industrialized society has been around for 250-300 years. Given our current trajectory, we'd need to make seismic changes to our ideas of economic activity and consumerism, environmental co-habitation, racial or cultural cohabitation even.

[Durango Dude]

I think we can! It's perfectly possible that's what God created us for, I think. Okay, it's a sar'caustic' remark. Let's not hoodwink ourselves into thinking we are anything but destroyers: We have/are polluted/polluting the 5 elements of nature to maximum in the name of development. We'll be buried in junk on earth and dead satellites above.

[kinetic]

I'm unable to edit my last post, so I figured I'd just add more information. If anyone wants to understand more about our planet's life-systems and the various tipping points we're threatening to cross, please watch the Netflix documentary "Breaking Boundaries" narrated by David Attenborough. It provides you an appreciation for how delicately and intricately different systems are connected to each other, and how upsetting one system leads to an uncontrolled domino effect.

[giri1.8]

When things get out of control, I am sure nature will step in and do the cleaning work.

Coming back to the actual topic, no we won't destroy ALL life forms, nature always finds a way. Covid proved us how fragile we can be, we will be extinct long before the conditions are bad enough for other tougher beings.

[Engine_Roars]

Yes, we are capable of doing so but I am sure the creator is smart enough. We will be long gone before we actually get to destroy everything.

We are a selfish & idiotic species. We can not last long, we should not last long if this planet has to survive.

[dragracer567]

As a Marine Biologist, I believe I will be able to give my 2 cents on this.

Are humans capable of destroying life on earth?

Ans: Well, based on our current state of development, the answer is no! What we are capable of is creating a mass-extinction event but life on earth is quite resilient and will probably bounce back in a few thousand or million years in an extreme scenario (this is not based on any modelling, just my intuition, I need to check if there are solid papers on this). So, humans can't destroy life on earth but humans can destroy most life on earth. Also, a significant impact from anthropogenic activities like climate change or a biodiversity collapse will be on humans themselves and even endanger human existence.

Just to give you an idea of how significant our impact is, domesticated livestock make up 60% of biomass of all mammals while wild mammals make up just 4 % (rest is made up by humans). And there are three times as much poultry as wild birds. The same is not the case for fishes since fish farming took off more recently but as a consequence, fish stocks have depleted exponentially from overfishing (though the documentary 'Seaspiracy' misrepresents a lot of the problems and solutions).

To fix this, we need to fundamentally change the way our economy works. The Green New Deal proposed by the US Democrats gives us an outline but no where near as ambitious.

How to fix this? I just don't know! We like use fancy terms like RRRs but the scope of the solutions required are infinitely bigger. I know some prospective solutions in my sphere i.e marine biology (I will do a thread on this at some point in the future) but the scope is so vast that everyone in every field of expertise needs to come up with solutions. This requires a concerted effort from a policy perspective from G7 and G20 countries while the global shift towards far-right who fantasize about fossil fuels from the bygone era however unprofitable they have become isn't helping either.

[digitalnirvana]

The question is not about IF but more about WHEN.

And the answer is RIGHT NOW. It is ongoing. We are in the middle of a mass extinction of species. EVERY DAY we lose species that are never coming back.

Scientists call it the Anthropocene. Read up.

There are so many ostrich like posts in this thread that it's not even funny anymore. And on a forum that's actually targeting well read educated people - that's scary! People who think we aren't able to destroy the Earth beyond repair. Or that man made climate change is a hoax. And talk like the Earth is a birth right of humans.

Well guess what? We are here for the blink of an eye. There was life before us and we've disregarded their place in this world completely. We behave like we own the place. But we don't. We're here for a fleeting moment and we're robbing other species of their only home. We might save ourselves by colonizing a different planet. But most life on Earth won't make it that long.

We don't need to kill ALL LIFE. All we need to do is kill a critical mass and then it death spirals from there onwards. Funnily, insects form the largest bio mass of all life on Earth. And we are doing exceedingly well in killing off entire populations each day.

[dragonfire]

Speaking about overpopulation, compared to other species we beget less numbers - yes, we employ contraception. BUT, the difference is that most creatures that are born fall prey to predators or get killed by the environment before they can beget more offspring. That's nature's way of keeping their population under check. So if we have to keep the human population under check the "natural" way we have to stop saving the humans who would otherwise get killed by predators, diseases and other elements of nature. Keeping human population under check using contraceptives is the "unnatural" way.

[alpha1]

Originally Posted by AirbusCapt

I'll put in a perspective here which may be a bit shocking and unpopular. The root cause of all our miseries is overpopulation and unequal access to technology.
We are currently at 760 crores and growing at an average clip of about 2/3% (slightly above replacement rate). The problem is not that we are 7.x billion strong, the problem is that the poorest countries have the largest population. These poorest countries also have the least acess to technology and modern science. Hence fossil fuel burning (especially bio waste, wood, charcoal) is the most in such countries. These countries also lack access to proper food, fresh water and more often than not are in middle of a civil war or some other conflict. These countries also cause the maximum damage to their ecology by rampant forest degradation, wildlife culling and creation of slash and burn farmland.
If the world decides to reduce the population growth in such countries, we may be able to stop further ruin. The population reduction could be by means of better access to education, job opportunities, women empowerment, removing religious bigots, toppling tinpot dictators and pumping in resources to modernise such countries.

Somehow you are holding a belief that once all the population on this earth gets educated to say 10th standard, and have access to better water, governance, medicine etc. we will somehow stop the destruction of forests / other living creatures?

How?

How will your proposed path tackle modern day insanity like cryptocurrency which consumes (with current low levels of market penetration) humongous energies comparable to countries.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42265728 was the scene way back in 2017. We all know where we stand today.
And it is only going to get worse. https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/

And are you going to trust this educated species of humans, where most economic incentives and public money (supposedly for improving the economic conditions of the population - and consequently improving education, healthcare, lifestyle in the long run) end up being used for stock market and real estate speculations by a limited few privileged?

The popular thought process of trying to make the "haves" consume lesser resources is frankly quite absurd. The whole idea to becoming rich is to have a better lifestyle, if that urge is taken away, we will experience zero growth (as seen in the covid time of stay at home).

The issue is that our species has a knack of creating new problems and then starting a race to solve them to gain socio-economic dominance (race to become the limited few priviledged). This race causes all sorts of "environmental issues" that we see all around us.

Will it lead of destruction of all life on this planet? Tough to predict with our limited understanding, however it is certainly going to make life difficult for the currently existing species at an exponentially accelerating pace.

In fact, it seems, the only way a species can survive into next century would be if it becomes economically useful to us.
Unless we can price the cost of life on our planet and trade it with others, we are not going to take care of it.

[Ironhide]

Long Read Alert !

I am currently reading a book by Jonathan Safran Foer called We Are the Weather. It very lucidly brings out what effect human activities and patterns of consumption have had over our climate and what can we do to change it. The book is written well and simply. Some of the facts that have been brought out in the book and should be concerning us are as follows.

THE FIRST CRISIS

• There have been five mass extinctions. All but the one that killed the dinosaurs were caused by climate change. The most lethal mass extinction occurred 250 million years ago when volcanic eruptions released enough carbon dioxide to warm the oceans by about 10° Celsius ending 96% of marine life and 70% of life on land. The event is known as The Great Dying.
• Many scientists call the geological age from the industrial revolution to the present the Anthropocene, the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on the earth. We are now experiencing the sixth mass extinction, often referred to as the Anthropocene Extinction.
• Taking into account natural mechanisms that influence climate, human activity is responsible for hundred percent of the global warming that has occurred since the beginning of the industrial revolution around 1750.The current climate change is the first caused by an animal and not by a natural event.
• The sixth mass extinction is the first climate crisis

THE FIRST FARMING

• If human history were a day;* we were hunter-gatherers until about 10 minutes before midnight.
• Humans represent 0.01% of life on earth.
• Since the advent of agriculture, approximately 12,000 years ago humans have destroyed 83% of all wild mammals and half of all plants.

OUR PLANET IS AN ANIMAL FARM.

• Globally, humans use 59% of all the land capable of growing crops to grow food for livestock.
• One third of all the freshwater that humans use goes to livestock, while only about 1/30th is used for homes.
• 70% of the antibiotics produced globally are used for livestock, weakening the effectiveness of antibiotics to treat human diseases.
• 60% of all mammals on earth are animals raised for food.
• There are approximately 30 farmed animals for every human on the planet.

OUR POPULATION GROWTH IS RADICAL

• Before the industrial revolution the average life expectancy in Europe was about 35 years. It is now about 80.
• It took about 200,000 years for the human population to reach 1 billion but only 200 more years to reach 7 billion.
• Every day 360,000 people - roughly equal to the population of Florence, Italy are born.

OUR ANIMAL FARMING IS RADICAL

• In 1820, 72% of the American workforce was directly involved in agriculture. Today 1.5% is.
• Like the video game console the factory farm was an invention of the 1960s. Before then, food animals were raised outdoors in sustainable concentrations.
• Between 1950 and 1970 the number of American farms declined by half, the number of people employed in farming declined by half and the size of the average farm doubled. (This practice is being replicated in other countries of the world)
• During that time the size of the average chicken also doubled.
• In 2018 more than 99% of the animals eaten America were raised on factory farms.

OUR EATING IS RADICAL

• There are 23 billion chickens living on earth at any given time. Their combined mass is greater than that of all other birds on our planet. Humans eat 65 billion chickens per year.
• On average, Americans consume twice the recommended intake of protein.
• People who eat diets high in animal protein are four times as likely to die of Cancer as those who eat diet slow in animal protein are.
• Smokers are three times as likely to die of Cancer as non smokers are.

OUR CLIMATE CHANGE IS RADICAL

• We are currently in the Quaternary Glaciation Period with continental and polar ice sheets. Such a period is more commonly known as an Ice Age.
• According to models of cyclical climate change, earth should be experiencing A period of slight cooling right now.
• Nine of the ten warmest years on record have occurred since the first YouTube video - "Me at the Zoo" was posted in 2005.
• During the Great Dying a series of Siberian volcanoes produced enough Lava to cover the United States up to 3 Eiffel towers deep.
• Humans are now adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere 10 times faster than the volcanoes did during the Great Dying

WHY GREENHOUSE GASES MATTER

• Sunlight passes through the atmosphere and heats the Earth. A portion of that heat bounces back into space. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere trap some of the outgoing heat coma as a blanket traps body heat.
• Life on earth depends on the greenhouse effect. Without it, Earth's average temperature would be near 0° Fahrenheit (-17°C), instead of 59°F (15°C).
• Carbon dioxide accounts for 80% of the greenhouse gases emitted by human activity.
• The majority is emitted by industry, transport and electrical use.
• For the eight hundred thousand years before the industrial revolution, concentration of greenhouse gases in atmosphere remain stable. Since the industrial revolution, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by about 40%.
• Methane and Nitrous Oxide are the second and third most prevalent in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
• Animal agriculture is responsible for 37% of anthropogenic Methane emissions and 65% of Anthropogenic Nitrous Oxide emissions.
• Between the advent of factory farming in the 1960 and 1999, concentrations of Nitrous Oxide in the atmosphere grew about two times faster and concentrations of Methane grew 6 times faster than they had over any previous 14 year period during the last two thousand years.

CLIMATE CHANGE IS A TICKING TIME BOMB

• DIFFERENT climate scientists have given different deadlines by which we must halt Green House Gas Emissions (GHGs) Such statements usually take the form "We have X years to Solve Climate Change"
• Climate Change is not a disease that can be managed, like diabetes; it is an event like a cancerous tumor that needs to be removed before the cells fatally multiply.
• The planet can handle only so much warming before positive feedback loops create runaway climate change.
• One of the most powerful feedback loops is called the Albedo Effect.
• White ice sheets reflect sunlight back into the atmosphere. Dark oceans absorb sunlight. As the planet warms there is less ice to reflect sunlight and more dark oceans and land to absorb it. Oceans become hotter, melting ice faster.
• The former United Nations climate chief Christina Figueres had said that we have until 2020 to avoid temperature thresholds leading to run away, irreversible climate change.

BECAUSE CLIMATE CHANGE IS A TICKING TIME BOMB, NOT ALL GREENHOUSE GASES MATTER EQUALLY

• Methane has 34 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) -* the ability to trap heat* -as CO2 does over a century. Over two decades, Methane is 86 times as powerful. If CO2 were the thickness of an average blanket imagine Methane as a blanket thicker than 6 ft 9 inches.
• Nitrous oxide has 310 times the Global Warming Potential of Carbon Dioxide. - imagine a blanket so thick you could commit suicide by jumping off it.
• When global emissions are calculated,* greenhouse gases are converted to carbon dioxide equivalents* (CO2 e). Calculations are usually based on a hundred year time scale. This means that one metric ton of Methane should be counted as 34 metric tons of carbon dioxide in an overall greenhouse gas assessment.
• We can think of our atmosphere as a budget and are emissions as expenses : because Methane and Nitrous Oxide are significantly larger greenhouse expenses than Carbon Dioxide in the short-term they are the most urgent to be cut. Because they are primarily created by our food choices, they are also easiest to cut.

WHY DEFORESTATION MATTERS

• Trees are carbon sinks which means they absorb Carbon Dioxide. Imagine a bathtub filling up with water. If the drain slows the tub will fill up more quickly. This is similar to the earth's photosynthetic capacity : already humans are pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at a rate that exceeds Earth's ability to regulate them but vegetation currently stores a substantial amount of Carbon Dioxide - about one quarter of anthropogenic emissions, or about half century's worth of emissions at the current rate.
• The more forests we destroy, the closer we come to plugging the drain.
• Allowing tropical land currently used for livestock to revert to forest could mitigate more than half of all anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
• Trees are 50% carbon. Like coal they release their stores of Carbon Dioxide when burnt.
• Forests contain more carbon than do all exploitable fossil fuel reserves. The cutting and burning of forest is responsible for at least 15% of global greenhouse gases per year.
• According to Scientific American, by most accounts deforestation in tropical rainforests adds more Carbon Dioxide to the atmosphere than the sum total of cars and trucks on the world's roads.
• About 80% of deforestation occurs to clear land for crops for livestock and grazing.
• Brazil is converting previously protected swathes of rainforest into agricultural land. This is estimated to release 13.2 Gigatons of Carbon - more than twice the annual emission of entire US.
• Animal agriculture is responsible for 91% of Amazonian Rainforest deforestation

ANIMAL AGRICULTURE CAUSES CLIMATE CHANGE

• As they digest food, cattle, goats and sheep produce a significant amount of Methane, which is mostly belched but also exhaled, farted and passed in the waste of the animal.
• Livestock are the leading source of Methane.
• Nitrous Oxide is emitted by livestock urine manure and fertilizers used for growing feed crops (Fun fact : India uses up to 61.4 Million Tonnes of Fertilizer each year).
• Livestock are the leading source of Nitrous Oxide emissions.
• Animal agriculture is the leading cause of deforestation.
• According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, if cows were a country, they would rank third in greenhouse gas emissions, after China and the United States.

ANIMAL AGRICULTURE IS THE LEADING CAUSE OF CLIMATE CHANGE.

• When assessing animal agriculture as overall contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, estimates range dramatically depending on what is included in the calculation.
• The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations asserts that livestock are a leading cause of climate change. They are responsible for approximately 7516 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year for 14.5% of annual global emissions.
• The calculation includes the carbon dioxide emitted when forests are cleared for animal feed crops and pastures but it does not take into account the carbon dioxide that those forests can no longer absorb. Imagine a life insurance policy that cover the cost of the funeral but not future lost wages.
• Among other things not included in its calculation is the carbon dioxide exhaled by farmed animals even though in the words of one environmentalist , " ....livestock (like automobiles) are human invention and convenience, and not part of Pre-human times, and a molecule of Carbon Dioxide exhaled by livestock is no more natural than the one from an automobile tailpipe..."
• When researchers at the world watch institute accounted for emissions that the FAO overlooked, they estimated that livestock a responsible for 32564 million tonnes of Carbon Dioxide emissions per year, or 51 % of annual global emissions, more than all cars, planes, buildings, power plants and industry combined. (Fun Fact : India has the largest bovine/ cattle population in the world. In 2020 it was an estimated 305,400,000 ! We also have the second largest goat population in the world.)

NOT ALL ACTIONS ARE EQUAL

• The most optimistic experiments suggest that even as assuming international cooperation a global conversion to wind water and solar power would take more than 20 years and require a hundred trillion dollar investment.
• Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research says " ...the maths is very clear. While the world can't be healed within the next few years it can be fatally wounded by negligence before 2020..."
• The four highest impact things and individual can do to tackle climate change are - eat a plant based diet, avoid air travel, live car free and have fewer children.
• Of those for actions only plant based eating immediately addresses Methane and Nitrous Oxide the most urgently important greenhouse gases

HOW TO PREVENT THE GREATEST DYING (That We May Be Inflicting Upon Ourselves)

• To meet the Paris accord to degree goal and individuals annual carbon dioxide budget should not exceed 2.1 metric tons by 2050.
• While citizens of different countries have dramatically different carbon dioxide footprints the average Americans is 19.8 metric tons per year the average Frenchman's is 6.6 metric tons per year and the average Bangladeshi is 0.9 metric tons per year and the average Indian's is 0.56 Tonnes per year (To put things in perspective, India is the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases and accounts for 2.46 billion metric tonnes of carbon or 6.8% of the total global emissions).
• The average global citizen has a carbon dioxide footprint of approximately 4.5 metric tons per year.
• Not eating animal products for breakfast and lunch saves 1.3 metric tons per year.

Data Courtesy : "We Are The Weather" by Jonathan Safran Foer

[adisan]

If "all life" includes the micro-organisms as well, then humans themselves will also be destroyed because the presence of billions of them is required for the functioning of the human body.

Can humans destroy all life? No. At some stage, nature (or the Creator) will step in to restore the balance.

[shancz]

Originally Posted by Ironhide

As the smartest (and the most destructive) organism on the planet, are we hurtling unchecked towards self destruction fuelled by unimpeded consumption and population growth?

Short answer is No, we can do a lot of damage but cannot total the planet unlike our cars. The planet will heal, adapt and move on, we might get wiped out but that would only be fair.

About an action plan, the world is quite divided to put up a unified action plan and I understand that too. So it will be more on individual countries to set up and meet localised targets. How effective that will be is another question I don't want to go into.

So all's dark ? Not quite and talking of India.
IMHO at the core of most of our issues lies our resource: population ratio or just population to keep it simple. Population growth has seen a steady decline since mid 80's as shown here.

The push for green technology and standards is very palpable today than it was 5 years ago and its only going to increase.

The argument against EVs using coal fired power is pointless because the change over to green power at grid level is gradual but centralized while the consumer variables aren't. So if we have EVs running on coal power, the day that coal power changes over to green power the effect will be massive and instantaneous.
What we see today is laying the groundwork for that switch which will also be gradual but definite.

In the end I am not scared of the future but it will also be filled with lot of difficulties, at least for the transiting generations like me.
But in the long run humanity will come around, curse our generation for being complete imbeciles and live in a much lighter and better world than we do today.

Thankfully I won't be around then to look at their faces when they hear how IC engines worked or see them puking when they see a RX100 and a RD350 ride into oblivion spewing smoke and spitting oil.

[fhdowntheline]

Can I just say this- democratizing natural resources is the biggest cause of the problems. Nature has not made everyone equal. It has endowed different capabilities and resources to each species and subspecies. Humans have never dominated other species in the past. But since the advent of the Industrial revolution, it is the quest for equality and democratization of resources that has increased the demand for food, water, minerals, energy. And even today, as long as the world governments strive to "bring millions out of poverty"- to use a popular American catchphrase, the consumption and exploitation of the resources will continue and increase.
But I believe Nature has a way of rejuvenating itself. Its only the human species that is in danger.