Assessment of life on Earth reveals humanity’s disproportionate impact

theguardian.com

41 points·mcone··4 comments

That title distills a reasonably non-contradictory article down into something nonsensical. Oddly, the URL seems to be coherent and reflective of the article.

"human-race-just-001-of-all-life-but-has-destroyed-over-80-of-wild-mammals-study"

This suggests the title "Human race just 0.01% of all life but has destroyed over 80% of wild mammals" might be a better one.

It would still be deceptive, connecting proportions of two different groups, and implying a moral value which would not be implied by a more honest comparison.

The article doesn't make it clear whether it's 83% of biomass that went extinct, 83% of individual animals, or 73% of species.

>Of all the mammals on Earth, 96% are livestock and humans, only 4% are wild mammals >70% of birds are chickens and other poultry

The articles fails to mention the obvious fact that these ratios are shifted because we breed more livestock animals, not because we kill wild ones.

>All life on Earth is made up of 82% plants and found in 86% on land 1% in the oceans

Which is also a completely wrong statement. Anyone with a highschool diploma knows that the ocean contains a huge amount of biomass, probably larger than all terrestrial life combined.

The article seems to be taking the position that we should only have an effect on the environment proportional to our biomass ratio with other mammals. I don't understand this idea. Are they saying more humans should die, or that more animals should die? What kind of ratio are they optimizing for?

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