Amerika

As described by the ecosopher Pavol Horvath, The Ecocide is the ongoing removal of nature by human expansion. The more humans we have, the less land for nature, and as all of those humans improve their lifestyles, the more of nature is consumed and polluted.

This crisis encompasses the usual suspects — habitat destruction, chemical pollution, and urban heat islands (“climate change”) — referred to in the official literature. It also includes the disruption of natural ecosystems by our tendency to cut them into little bits with fences, roads, rails, and power lines.

Finally we see more focus on habitat fragmentation as a measure of how much land and sea humanity is actually using:

Fragmentation occurs when larger forests are broken into smaller, isolated patches, thereby reducing habitat connectivity and size. Fragmentation is worsened when these patches shrink, split, become more complex in shape, or grow more distant from each other.

However, scientists are still trying to figure out the best way to quantify habitat fragmentation and the rate at which it occurs. A new study, published in Science, suggests fragmentation is increasing in over half of the world’s forests, particularly tropical forests, despite a 2023 study suggesting a decline in fragmentation over the last 20 years.

The 2023 study relied on only structure-based metrics—those involving the patch number, size, and edge length. Yet, other studies focusing on connectivity and aggregation metrics have indicated increasing fragmentation, especially in the tropics.

The connectivity-based metrics showed increased fragmentation in 51%–67% of global forests and 58%–80% of tropical forests from 2000 to 2020, and the aggregation metrics showed that 57%–83% of forests became more fragmented. Meanwhile, the team’s structure-based metrics only indicated a 30% to 35% fragmentation over the same period.

When a habitat becomes fragmented, the ecosystem is interrupted, as are the lives of individual animals and plants that need wind and territory to acquire food and reproduce. Over time this degrades the ecosystems, reducing the genetic variety and leading to population collapse.

If we are serious about environmental activism, we need to confront two patterns: (1) we need fewer of us and (2) our political systems are unable to end their dependency on growth because of their high tax burden in order to provide socialist-style benefits to their citizens. Most of this spending is driven by diversity.

To end The Ecocide, humanity needs simply to stop subsidizing those without known use while ending the taxes as much as possible, allowing our economies to relax from its fever pitch which is designed to outpace the steady loss of value — whether from inflation or lower confidence — in their currencies.

Then we can set aside half of Earth for nature.

Most of humanity would rather die out than give up its benefits, so a great showdown is set to occur. Do we want to have nature, or live in managed parks, dependent on technology, while our governments grow fatter and the vast population of minimally-useful people swells?

Tags: environmentalism, habitat fragmentation, half earth, the ecocide, urban heat island effect