Global trade killed bananas? Without it you would not know bananas exists.
Would you rather ban all unprocessed food imports and eat only local fruits and vegetables? Limited by season, soil, water and probably overpriced
Biodiversity is an intrinsic aspect of ecosystem stability. The earth's functioning ecosystem is literally necessary for life on earth. All that "free" value in the form of plants and animals that produce our food, photosynthesizing organisms that produce air, decomposers that produce soil, etc is the result of coevolution of diverse organisms. When that system becomes unstanble or unbalanced then mass extinction follows.
The human economic ecosystem is built on top of a functioning biosphere. You can't just replace what the biosphere provides with industry or trade.
A word salad devoid of any concrete knowledge.
Yes, ecosystems are important.
No, extinction of species due to infections is not a planetary catastrophe. It's natural and perennial.
The parent's claim was "Biodiversity does not directly benefit everyone, while global trade does." If you or the parent want to make a more concrete and specific claim than this, I will happily reply in kind.
> No, extinction of species due to infections is not a planetary catastrophe. It's natural and perennial.
Indeed, but our human economy is built on top of relatively stable and predictable natural circumstances. If there is mass ecosystem collapse, the economy is coming down with it. If you don't believe this check out the graveyard of civlizations that overfarmed, overfished, clearcut forests, or otherwise weren't good stewards of their local ecology.
"How to best adapt to changes" is an interesting question which I'd happily discuss. "How to prevent changes" is a meaningless question.
It is reductive to describe invasive species with no predators destroying native crops and forests as "natural."
Why is it that people that should know better, because they have all the capacities to, are the worst climato-skeptics ?! Unbelievable.
2. It's not just the speed, humans makes movements possible that were previously unlikely or impossible. Argentine ants are currently wreaking havoc across the globe. Do you think they would have ever found their way from Argentina to Australia and Hawaii without the help of humans?
3.
> contributing to biodiversity lol
Source needed
2. If they are successful as invasive species, then yes most likely that would happen given enough time. Even the most remote islands in the ocean are populated with life forms that are too modern to be explained with plate tectonics. Nature has it's ways (besides evolving humans).
3. As you noticed humans spread all kinds of viruses, insects, blights and other unfortunate beings. Like them or not, they are as valid as a part of the biosphere as the chestnut tree.
Sorry, but I'm a bit baffled why you're being so insulting when you clearly don't know much about the subject at hand.
Yes, extinctions happen naturally.
Also yes, humans are causing extinction rates 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural extinction rates[1]
> 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
I'm well aware of the subject. If you open the link you'll see that the baseline is not "natural extinction rates" but "background extinction rates". That is rates during the periods of time when environment doesn't change. When environment does change however the rates are orders of magnitude higher. We live in the times of change.
Whether the Holocene extinction is on the level of the big six or on the level of other 30+ smaller known extinction events is up to the debate. Either way it's nothing new. You are here today thanks to all these extinction events, be grateful not to be a trilobite.
The comment I was replying above just throws together a bunch of words that sound good, like "diversity" and "sustainable", without any attempt at an actual analysis of the situation. That is not appreciated.
If you open the link you'll see that the current "change" is caused by humans. Spreading invasive species isn't the most significant cause, but it is a cause. So I don't see how that contests what I said.
Yes. And it's not the first time when one of the species change the environment so much to cause a mass extinction events. So what's your point?
> So I don't see how that contests what I said.
It depends on what you said because I don't see your messages up in the thread. Would be glad to reply to a specific opinion.
There is benefits, but there is also cons.
I’d say the bigger issue is the commodification of corn syrup and reductionism of product for addiction rather than trade itself.
Please point me to alabamas vast wine country or nuts or avacados. Just because Alabama theoretically has potential doesn’t mean it has everything California does.
No one was saying that other than you.
Alabama Ag is alive and well. Not everything is avocadoes or California nuts.
Looking at your comment history, I can tell you're the type of insufferable technical person whose general attitude towards interacting with others is "well, I'm almost always right, so I'm just gonna permanently rock with the assumption that anyone who isn't me is an idiot whose opinion I can ignore."`
Those of us with fully-functioning emotional subsystems know right away it's not worth putting much effort into engaging with you, since you'll just automatically dismiss any conclusion that's different from your own.
The benefits of this style of stunted mental engagement with the world are obvious and easy to understand: changing your mind about something requires both lots of brain-based energy expenditure and (more importantly) the emotional maturity to admit you might've been wrong about something. I don't blame people like you for deciding to live this way-- it's much easier! Also, in this way you cleverly avoid the emotional pain of accepting that your own analysis was found wanting. Shit, if I weren't so naturally curious about understanding the world the way it actually is instead of just reinforcing my own paper-thin ego, I'd take the same attitude!
Also you’ve been stalking me across multiple comments on different posts. I think you need to really honestly consider your behavior. It’s unsettling, and inappropriate.
You didn't say the person in Alabama "does not enjoy as much local produce", which you maybe meant. If you assumed the audience would understand what you actually meant despite your wording, well then, all the comments taking issue with your statement should be evidence for you that they did not.
In response to these comments, instead of attempting to state your point more clearly, you insult your audience's intelligence and double down, acting like what you said was perfectly clear (it wasn't) and we're all just "offended" (we're not).
I'm only trying to point out-- because you seem genuinely incredulous at some of the responses you've received-- how much the above communication style makes you sound like a belligerent asshole to anyone with regular human feelings.
If you can't see that, I'm afraid you'll continue to have these "I don't get why everyone's got such an attitude, I literally only said x !" moments.
Things Alabama does not have. Be a little sane please.
Please point me to literally anything other than your own bullshit assertions whose only support is that they make your feel good about being the "always-right-guy" once again.
Without more qualifiers, that misses the point. Most local crops are still big ag varieties. The "local" crops you buy are likely the same ones sold in grocery stores anywhere in the US because so many things are grown in California.
But there are some things that can only be grown locally, because they aren't suited to shipping or because they have short shelf lives. And there are lots of varieties that are not on big ag's buy list, so large operations are very unlikely to grow them.
Even corn (which you mention) and soybeans need to be certain varieties to be turned into everything from high fructose corn syrup to the "shrimp shapes" made of soy I remember from grade school. They are part of the problem the GP is talking about, not the problem instead . . .
Big ag forces out diversity in crops and, frankly, forces a blander palate on the populace, who doesn't know better anymore.
> Biodiversity does not directly benefit everyone
Jfc. Plants aren't just for food. Lots of medicines are derived from plants. As indigenous people dwindle from the planet, their knowledge of useful plants disappears and their potential becomes lost on us.
The plants that are being neglected aren't unknown, they are just not as useful
> Jfc. Plants aren't just for food.
Nobody said they were. Stop inventing strawman arguments
> indigenous people dwindle from the planet, their knowledge of useful plants disappears and their potential becomes lost on us.
Source required. What important plant knowledge is being lost?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putumayo_genocide
When rubber industrialists wiped out the people living in the area, those that remained lost generational knowledge. Ethnobotanists like Shultes explored the Amazon afterwards.
There's even a movie made on the subject of exploring the Amazon for medicines with Sean Connery, Medicine Man. Also, the more recent Embrace of the Serpent.
https://www.thoughtco.com/drugs-and-medicine-made-from-plant...
And if they did it then there's absolutely no reason to think that modern pharma can't produce the same knowledge. And the whole assumption that there is a body of invaluable knowledge somewhere, held by indigenous people but somehow unavailable to modern science is very strange.
Just a bonkers nonsense statement, I am stunned by this perspective. Do you think you could live in an antiseptic paper envelope? Biodiversity doesn't "benefit" anyone so much as it comprises, entirely, the world from which we're inextricable.
Absolutely bonkers modernist anthropocentrism.
Is it though? There's been several extinction events that wiped out the biodiversity of the planet and they were all natural too. We might be inextricable from the world but we can and do manipulate it to our benefit.
I don't understand what is the problem with anthropocentrism. Given the chance, I'd prefer more biodiversity for sure, but if it's objectively bad for human beings I think human interests should come first. It's just that the current cycle of overproduction and global warming isn't benefiting humans either. That's not the fault of human-centered thinking, it's the fault of profit-centered short-term thinking.
But global trade is helping them to become richer by selling avocados to americans. Growing an avocado is devastating to local biome, but I bet people would rather destroy it than live in poverty.
I have never seen an edible chestnut tree and really don't care about how many species of them are all over the world.
I'm not talking about antiseptic envelope, it is not related to biodiversity. It is sad that biodiversity is decreasing, but we can live with smaller amount of species on the planet.
Will you fill the difference if there will be 20 instead of 60 species of ash tree?
It can result in “health” via symbiotic relationships, just as much as it can result suffering, war and hardship via the introduction of pests and diseases.
The point is it’s daft throw around biodiversity as some kind of absolute idea of virtue. It is not equitable with “goodness”.
Some species help to transmit diseases over long distances. Some diseases cause extinction of some species. Nothing is new on the face of earth.
If you think that humans have some sort of a mission to preserve biodiversity then it's just arrogance, nothing more.
If you think that it's optimal problem-solving for humans to just ignore any and all evidence that they would be healthier if they interacted differently with their environment at scale, that's just arrogance.
It's absolutely nothing more, although I predict you'll keep assigning primacy to your gut feelings because engaging in thorough analysis would involve admitting you were wrong, which would make you feel bad.
If the goal is the prosperity of humanity then I'm all for it. However, if that's the case two things must be noted beforehand:
1) This is an anthropocentric approach. The parent comment seemed to imply that anthropocentrism is bad for some reason, so it might be an issue on your end too.
2) Prosperity of humanity as a goal is at odds with biodiversity. I don't regret the extermination of smallpox for one thing. I also appreciate for example that we largely replaced natural ecosystems with agricultural monocultures that yield more tons of food per square kilometer. This is great, we won't be able to sustain 8 billions of humans otherwise.
If you agree with these points then this means that we agree on principle. The rest are implementation details that can be figured out. E.g. your question of whether "would be healthier if they interacted differently with their environment at scale" -- probably yes, there are many things that can be improved.
I roundly refute this frankly riduculous assertion. It shows a grave lack of understanding of the actual mechanisms that maintain the natural world in a state fit for human habitation.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=biodiversity+and+human+...
You may argue that at some point we have to stop and I agree. However this doesn't contradict the fact that up until now reducing biodiversity (e.g. by replacing forests with monoculture field crops) worked out extremely well.
my mitochondria, and gut flora, politely disagree
Not making any kind of statement really, just that the only type of invasive species I know of from NOT Asia is climbing ivy
“Eastern Filbert Blight” is a fungal disease native to North America, and our native hazelnuts are able to tolerate it. European hazelnuts are typically used in agriculture (for multiple good reasons) however these are basically wiped out by EFB without constant copper sprays, as they never evolved with the arms race against this pathogen. While I hear about it a lot here in Oregon, where we have a lot of European hazelnut variety orchards, I never hear much about what it’s doing in say England, or Turkey.
Incidentally, while an EFB resistant series of hazelnut cultivars was developed in response by Oregon State University, containing the Gasaway gene, there is now version of EFB that can fully overcome that resistance and is rapidly spreading here in Oregon, though it’s likely on the east coast as well.
OSU is working on new resistant varieties, but nothing will be released until there are multiple modes of resistance (at least 3), otherwise a new EFB strain will just get selected for again.
I think a more interesting question is what kinds of organisms are treated as highly problematic invasive species in Asia from the Americas. That is, shouldn't we expect Asian species to be susceptible to novel American pathogens?
For example, it's famously known that diseases like small pox wiped out many Native American populations because they had no previous exposure to the disease. Perhaps less known is that it's widely hypothesized that a virulent strain of syphilis wrecked havoc in Europe after being brought back by sailors fro the Americas.
I request you to review and reword your comment, hyperhopper.
This is hackernews, respond to the core of my comment. From the guidelines:
> Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.
(Also, ironically by commenting on the post you disable editing, so you made your own request impossible)
I agreed with your post and could expand upon it, but your attitude does not allow for it.
My comment was a soft ball for you to improve rather than doubling down, and for us then to move forward. I do see that my comment ironically broke guidelines too. We can both be better.
And yes, places that have been truly isolated from the Americas until relatively recently are also are places where novel invasive species and pathogens come from (e.g. HIV, Ebola).
> In France alone, total wine production fell from 84.5 million hectolitres in 1875 to only 23.4 million hectolitres in 1889. Some estimates hold that between two-thirds and nine-tenths of all European vineyards were destroyed.
Before phylloxera, a grape that gives a wine with high acidity was used.
It went extinct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_earthworms_of_North_A...
> The appeal of acclimatisation societies in colonies, particularly Australia and New Zealand,[12] was the belief that the local fauna was in some way deficient or impoverished. There was also an element of nostalgia in the desire of European colonists to see familiar species.[13] An Australian settler, J. Martin, complained in 1830 that the "trees retained their leaves and shed their bark instead, the swans were black, the eagles white, the bees were stingless, some mammals had pockets, others laid eggs, it was warmest on the hills..." It was there that the desire to make the land feel more like England was strongest.
For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Schieffelin
> Eugene Schieffelin ... became chairman of the American Acclimatization Society and joined their efforts to introduce non-native species to North America for economic and cultural reasons. His 1890 release of European starlings in Central Park resulted in the first successful starling nesting in North America to be observed by naturalists.
Here's more about his organization, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Acclimatization_Socie...
> In 1864 the commissioners of Central Park had introduced Java sparrows, house sparrows, chaffinches and blackbirds into the park. The European sparrows were reported to have "multiplied amazingly". They quickly became one of the most common birds in New York, though the others did not seem to do as well. After the society's founding, such efforts were redoubled. The group's annual meeting held at the Great New York Aquarium in 1877[4] reported that the release of 50 pairs of English skylarks into Central Park had only been a partial success, since most had flown across the East River to take up residence at Newtown and Canarsie in Brooklyn. At the meeting, the recent release of European starlings, Japanese finches and pheasants into the park were noted. The meeting adjourned with the group resolved to introduce more chaffinches, skylarks, European robins and tits—"birds which were useful to the farmer and contributed to the beauty of the groves and fields"—in the city.[5]
> Lantana camara (common lantana) is a species of flowering plant within the verbena family (Verbenaceae), native to the American tropics ... it was brought to Europe by Dutch explorers and cultivated widely, soon spreading further into Asia and Oceania where it has established itself as a notorious weed, ... L. camara is listed in the IUCN's “List of the world's 100 worst invasive species”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lantana_camara
The list at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_of_the_World's_Worst_Invas... includes
> Cecropia peltata - Invasive in Malaysia, Africa, and Pacific Islands. Native to tropical Central and South America
> Chromolaena odorata - Invasive in tropical Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. Native to Neotropics.
> Euglandina rosea - Invasive in Indian and Pacific Ocean islands. Native to the southeastern United States.
> Leucaena leucocephala - Native to Central America, invasive throughout other tropical regions.
> Lithobates catesbeianus (American bullfrog) - Invasive in Central and South America, the Caribbean, Western Europe, and East Asia. Native to eastern North America.
> Micropterus salmoides (widemouth bass) - Invasive worldwide. Native to the eastern United States
> Mikania micrantha - Invasive in the Pacific. Native to Neotropics. ["Pacific" here includes "Nepal, covering more than 20% of the Chitwan National Park", says https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikania_micrantha]
I stopped at this point. There may be a few I missed or didn't get to.
At least your airgunners get some fun. I didn't realize your reds were nearing extinction.
I'm really surprised we haven't figured out better ways of manipulating these invasive populations. Everything seems ineffective, and sometimes disastrous.
It was domesticated in the Near East, so technically from Asia, I guess?
You mentioned Burmese pythons, which are invasive in the Everglades and Florida in general. Do you know about the Australian plant species Melaleuca quinquenervia? From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melaleuca_quinquenervia :
> Its unchecked expansion in South Florida is one of the most serious threats to the integrity of the native ecosystem.[25] This tree takes over sawgrass marshes in the Everglades turning the area into a swamp.[26] Melaleuca causes severe ecological impacts, including displacing native species, modification of hydrology, alteration of soil resources, reducing native habitat value and changing the fire regime.[27]
Quite a few invasive species, like the Australian pines, were deliberately introduced to South Florida to try and tame the Everglades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_invasive_species_in_th...
Common Tumbleweed, Zebra Mussel, English Ivy, all the different lawn grasses, cats, wild pigs etc. are all European invasives that are now part of the NA ecosystem.
Clearly a non-zero amount, but not all. And therein lies the subtlety that cannot be handled by internet forums. And probably not by people at all, other than some politically unpalatable way of putting dollar amounts on externalities.
Global trade is destroying biodiversity across the entire planet. Most of us don't even realize all the ways in which our lives are made poorer by decreased biodiversity, which is why these kinds of articles are so good. But we're all acutely aware of not having the latest gadget. I wish more environmentalists talked about this.