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Page added on July 4, 2022
‘Warning of Easter Island’ is one that humanity must not ignore amid our population explosion
Nervous youths waited for the cue to throw themselves headlong into the ocean. In those next few moments, they would risk drowning, shark attacks, or falling to their deaths.
Before them were small, near-inaccessible islets teeming with seabirds returning to nest. Somewhere out there, more than a mile across treacherous seas, was the prize – the first sooty tern egg of the year.
On Easter Island, the most isolated island in the world, winning this 18th century egg race would bring great kudos to the victorious youth. His sponsoring chief would be treated like a deity; on his death, a huge stone statue would be carved in his memory.
This extraordinary culture flourished for centuries before going bust. They ate plenty of fish, which they caught using canoes made from hollowed-out tree trunks. As the population grew, however, so they felled the forests that once covered the island to make way for fields. They grew crops to boost their diet, but when the last of the trees disappeared, so too did their means of fishing. They were left marooned and impoverished.
A new and dangerous type of farming
Nonetheless their population continued to grow, until it outstripped the land’s capacity to provide enough food. By 1774, when Captain Cook arrived, the islanders were poverty-stricken, at each other’s throats, and down to a fraction of their peak number.
This historical decline has become known as the “Warning of Easter Island”. The challenges now faced by us as a global society are strikingly similar. Life on Earth has thrived for billions of years, yet in the blink of an evolutionary eye, one species has come to dominate the planet: us. If we carry on as we are, scientists warn of a mass extinction event not seen since an asteroid-strike wiped out the dinosaurs.
And the primary reason? Just like on Easter Island: our approach to food.
After 10,000 years of growing food in harmony with nature, recent decades have seen the rise of a new and dangerous form of agriculture: industrial agriculture; fixated on producing more at any cost.
Crops are now routinely sprayed with a battery of chemical pesticides. Artificial fertilisers have replaced land rotation and grazing animals as the chosen way to replenish soil. And so has dawned an industrial approach to growing food in the countryside.
The true costs of industrial agriculture are now becoming evident – a reason behind the escalating impact is the growing population of livestock.
Of the 80 billion farmed animals raised for food every year, two-thirds are incarcerated in darkened sheds or feedlots; caged, crammed, and confined on factory farms. Meanwhile millions of acres of chemical-soaked cropland are dedicated to growing their feed.
For a long time, the environment seemed capable of absorbing the heavy knocks associated with this type of agriculture.
Devouring our habitat
However, we are now reaching a tipping point: the Earth’s ability to absorb pollution, greenhouse-gas emissions, or demands on natural resources like land, water, and soil, is now being exceeded.
Humanity has always been part of the ecosystem, living in a natural environment it cannot completely control. We can forecast the weather, but we have yet to find a way to stop it raining, or to make the sun shine on a particular day. We can predict earthquakes but, so far, we cannot prevent them from happening, any more than we can stop the wind blowing, or to turn the tide.
It is hard to imagine this changing, but we continue to subjugate the natural world to what we see as our needs, however and wherever we can. In so doing, we devour our own habitat.
Flora and fauna are falling extinct 1,000 times faster than the rate viewed by scientists as the expected ‘background’ rate.
Billions more humans
In July each year, the United Nations marks World Population Day. Our global population is about to reach eight billion. By the middle of the century, it is expected to rise to nine or ten billion.
Derek Joubert, a conservationist and explorer with National Geographic, noted that 50 years ago, there were nearly half a million lions left in the world, and that every time the human population rises by one billion, the population of lions falls by half.
“Today we’re at 20,000 to 30,000 lions and the same is true for leopards, for cheetahs, for snow leopards,” he wrote.
To me, the link is obvious: an extra billion people come with ten billion extra farmed animals, together with all that means for more pressure on land, water and soil. As land is carved up and pared down, so species start to teeter on the edge.
Consumers
This isn’t about people versus animals. Far from it. I am not arguing for Draconian population control; the real sting in the tail is the population explosion in farmed animals.
That is so often what does the real damage, for nature and for humanity.
As consumers, we have the power to reduce an awful lot of farm animal suffering and to save wildlife three times a day through our food choices: by choosing to eat more plants, and to eat less and better meat and dairy from animals kept in higher welfare conditions such as pasture-fed, free range, or organic.
In this way, we can take the pressure off hard-pressed landscapes, leaving forests to give us oxygen, helping rivers to run clean, and restoring soils for future harvests. All of this, whilst freeing animals from factory farms and saving amazing wildlife like jaguars, elephants, and penguins.
In this way, we can ensure that the future is less like that warning of Easter Island and much more a celebration of life.
Philip Lymbery is global chief executive of Compassion in World Farming, a former United Nations Food Systems Champion and author of Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat and Dead Zone: Where the Wild Things Were. He is on Twitter @philip_ciwf
18 Comments on "‘Warning of Easter Island’ is one that humanity must not ignore amid our population explosion"
Theedrich on Tue, 5th Jul 2022 1:13 am
The demise of human civilization from exhaustion, depletion and destruction has been forecast by many thinkers, for instance:
British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle (1915-2006), in his Of Men and Galaxies (University of Washington Press: Seattle, 1964), said (pp. 63-70):
and (ibid.) Joseph A. Tainter, in his acclaimed The Collapse of Complex Societies, Cambridge University Press, 1988, 1992, p. 214., wrote:
Even before these men, Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover in a 1957 speech had said:
In the past six decades, the U.S. population has more than doubled — due to what the politicians and their toadies like to call “sustainable growth.” Due to the same cause, world population is now over seven billion. Meanwhile, Club-of-Rome authors Donella H. Meadows et al. have published Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update, explaining just where the globalizing Deep-Staters are leading us. But no amount of facts or reason will deter the globalizers from their determination, no matter what the cost, to lower world IQ, devastate the biosphere and exhaust the earth’s natural resources. Instead, following Georg Sörös’ “Open Society” tactics and Klaus Schwab’s “Great Reset” (großer Umbruch), they are pushing for ever more of the same. Money and power are their sole aim. Even if they have to murder Gaia to gain them.
Easter Island, we’re joining you.
makati1 on Tue, 5th Jul 2022 5:32 pm
That the climate is changing is not new. It has been changing for billions of years. Humans are but a blip on the life of Mother Earth.
Not too many humans. Too much waste. For instance, Americans throw away enough food each year to feed all of the people in the Philippines. !00 million plus.
All this climate bullshit is about the elite plan to eliminate us “useless eaters”. It has zero to do with any climate change.
If humans are so smart, they will adapt to any changes coming, just as we have for million of years.
Many reputable sources have said that the earth can support 10 billion plus humans, if we eliminate waste. That means that the Western landfill economies must crash and reset. We shall see. Pass the San Mig lite and pretzels. Life is getting interesting! ^_^
FamousDrScanlon on Tue, 5th Jul 2022 9:19 pm
“…where the globalizing Deep-Staters are leading us.”
That’s right Theedrich, those fuckers made us fine white people buy all that consumer junk that our garages and closets are over-flowing with just like they made us fine white people fuck and reproduce less. If not for them instead of being childless mass consumer, I would have bred 8-10 little white-boy Famous Dr Scanlons and wouldn’t the world and white folks the world over have appreciated that?
Those globalist capitalist pig dogs are in a conundrum. On the one hand they want to encourage mass breeding to create more customers. On the other hand the average white family of 3 or more kids can now only or barely afford staple items and even that runs the credit up. Not enough credit left over to cover a trip for 5 to Disneyland.
It turns out that many white folk have chosen a life of cradle to grave mass consuming, eating out 9 times a week and going on frequent Royalty style vacations over shitting out kids or shitting out more than 1 kid.
It turns out that choosing the mass consuming option is the most effective birth control in the history of white people and explains away the myth of white replacement.
We need some good ole fashioned moralizing & shaming for this one – someone give Kuntslur a call.
FamousDrScanlon on Tue, 5th Jul 2022 11:20 pm
mak still like to taste your toe jam every day eh?
It’s just da flu.
Climate alweeees changes.
Your downplaying act is a sad and tired thing.
Mak, imagine you arrive home after work to 6 cop cars with lights flashing and 2 ambulances parked in your driveway and yellow tape surrounding your house. They don’t want to let you in, but you blow past the cop guarding your front door into your living room where the bodies of your family are lying there, decapitated and they each have dozens of knives and forks stuck in them & there is blood everywhere. In the minute before you lose your mind & start screaming and crying you ask the guy in the 3 piece suit, who is obviously a murder detective, what the hell happened?????
The detective looks at you, ShruGs & and says “people die all the time” ShruG ShruG “people have always died.”
Mak, there is not one scientist (who have devoted their adult life to studying earth’s climate) who, in any way, shape or form, agrees with your retard non assessment, which is based on what exactly? American Boomer guilt? The teaching of the Mormon church which you “belonged to for how long?” When they say he belonged to such & such a church for X amount of time what they mean is his brain belonged to the church. Weak men always cede their thinking over to authorities.
More than 99.9% of studies agree: Humans caused climate change
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/10/more-999-studies-agree-humans-caused-climate-change
Scientists Reach 100% Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0270467619886266
Mak is their any field of study that you are NOT the worlds top expert on?
Expert in all earth sciences. Expert in infectious diseases. Did you learn 27 PhD’s worth of knowledge when you were in the church of later day saints? I bet it’s that magic Mormon underwear what makes you know it all.
Religious Americans – the worst of the worst.
I can’t wait for the US empire to go down. Day 1 in the Philippines will be payback day with the first installment being paid back to any Americans stupid enough to stick around. No guns – machetes. Young Philippine patriots will hack fat fuck Yankees like you into 50 pieces and mail you back to Salt Lake City.
Send Mak back send Mak back
https://youtu.be/On43YAy17zQ
FamousDrScanlon on Tue, 5th Jul 2022 11:40 pm
3 feet of rain sets up 4th round of flood misery for Sydney
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/3-feet-of-rain-sets-up-4th-round-of-flood-misery-for-sydney/articleshow/92648240.cms
Sydney’s biggest dam spills the equivalent of the HARBOUR in one day as rains continue to flood Australia’s east coast
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10979107/Warragamba-Dam-overflows-major-flood-risk-issued-Sydneys-west.html
NSW wheat and canola farmers face 50 per cent yield loss after record rainfall
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2022-07-04/nsw-wheat-and-canola-farmers-50-per-cent-yield-loss/101180388
This is catastrophic runaway climate change of the global warming variety caused by increaeses in green house gasses. Nowhere in the paleo climate geochemical record (ice cores) are greenhouse gasses recorded to be released at a rate as fast as the current rate.
Humans have pumped up levels of green house gasses in 270 years of industrialization that took volcanism thousands to tens of thousands of years to puke out. Nothing compares to the rate the humans put it out so anyone who thinks it’s “natural” is a fucking clueless idiot.
Hell in 270 years we are a little over the halfway point of greenhouse gas levels during the Permian Mass extinction.
A Greenhouse Mega-Catastrophe Killed Nearly All Life on Earth – Here’s What Happened
https://scitechdaily.com/a-greenhouse-catastrophe-killed-nearly-all-life-on-earth-heres-what-happened/
Permian Mass Extinction caused by Global Warming
https://pcc.uw.edu/blog/2018/12/10/permian-mass-extinction-caused-by-global-warming/
clever rapacious chimps digging up buried carbon & burning it to increase their power–>standard of living—>reproductive success rate—>Dopamine hits are burning it way faster than volcanism ever has.
We know this because the record of the rate volcanisim has burned it is written in the earth in numerous ways. Chimps very clever that way too.
Biden’s hairplug on Wed, 6th Jul 2022 12:47 am
“Mak is their any field of study that you are NOT the worlds top expert on?“
Come on, give the guy some credit… at least he knows how to spell “physics” correctly (after he looked it up)
“ Religious Americans – the worst of the worst.
I can’t wait for the US empire to go down. Day 1 in the Philippines will be payback day with the first installment being paid back to any Americans stupid enough to stick around. No guns – machetes. Young Philippine patriots will hack fat fuck Yankees like you into 50 pieces and mail you back to Salt Lake City.
Send Mak back send Mak back”
No they won’t, they are just as religeous as our former Mormon friend once was.
As I have said many times before, mak will end in a Chinese labor camp, after they finally made their move against Taiwan and the US sends troops to the north of the Ps, where mak frivolously lives, patting himself on the back all the time for the smart move he made, making him and his meager pension local king there.
Mak in a couple of years:
https://www.ww2online.org/image/liberated-american-pows-bilibid-prison-muntinlupa-1945
Dredd on Wed, 6th Jul 2022 4:36 am
There is also the hotulation explosion (State Crimes Against Democracy – 7).
Dredd on Wed, 6th Jul 2022 4:40 am
Accord: The Tenets of Ecocosmology
FamousDrScanlon on Wed, 6th Jul 2022 12:51 pm
Is this temporary or the new normal?
Supermarkets put security tags on cheese blocks as stores tackle shoplifting amid soaring food costs
Supermarkets appear to be toughening its security measures on foodstuffs as shoppers feel the financial pinch of soaring inflation
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/aldi-secruity-tag-cheese-inflation-b2116115.html
makati1 on Wed, 6th Jul 2022 4:59 pm
Famouse still has some brainwashing to overcome. Climates change. There is ZERO proof that man is causing this one. Education and rational thinking is lacking in the under 60 year olds.
makati1 on Wed, 6th Jul 2022 5:09 pm
Biden’s is also in the Western brainwashed class with Famouse. Both want me to be wrong. But, if you can go back years to my comments, you will realize that I have been ‘spot on’ with my prognostications.
Davy used to argue that I was deluded, but… they proved to be correct. The West is going down the shitter faster every day. They need a serious war fast or they will be relegated to the dust bin of history. So be it. Well deserved.
Maybe some wish to be in my place, rather than in the dirty asshole of the world?
BTW: Have you noticed that Westerners, especially the Merikans are in a gulag? What do you call the gestapo state that has you kissing the butt of people like Fauci, Gates and Schwab, not to mention the senile old man in the White House? LOL
Biden’s hairplug on Thu, 7th Jul 2022 6:32 am
Boris Johnson is now oven-ready himself.
Just stepped out of #10 to announce his resignation (booting out).
Get BJexit done.
suxs on Thu, 7th Jul 2022 3:50 pm
THE FUTURE OF LIFE ON EARTH: GAIA’S REVENGE
If you want to predict the future of life on Earth, study the history of Easter Island for the island’s human-induced ecological holocaust is a microcosm of the Earth. Easter Island is today a desolate and parched landscape bereft of biodiversity. For most of the island’s history and before the arrival of man, Easter Island was Nirvana — rich volcanic soils, moderate temperatures, abundant rainfall, and forests teeming with exotic flora and fauna combined to create an island paradise. Among Easter Island’s species found nowhere else was the world’s largest palm tree. This now extinct behemoth grew to a height of 100 feet and had a girth of six feet.
Then the Destroyer of Worlds arrived in the form of seafaring Polynesians. For a time, the land produced such bounty that sufficient leisure time existed for the human inhabitants to create the toppled over ghostly stone statues that still dot the island, but the good times would not last due to the inhabitants’ failure to live sustainably — human population numbers grew far out of proportion to what was sustainable, poor farming practices eroded fertile soil, and animal and plant species found nowhere else were harvested to the point of extinction. When the very last tree on the island was cut down, the Islanders sealed their fate. What kind of madness would allow this to happen (sound familiar)? No trees meant no canoes with which to harvest the ocean’s bounty and final remaining source of protein.
The result: When Captain James Cook discovered the island, he was shocked to find a small, parasite-infested human population engaged in cannibalistic internecine tribal warfare. After eliminating all-natural protein sources, the inhabitants turned on each other for the only remaining food source– human flesh. Welcome to our future for history repeats itself due to our greed, lack of wisdom, and inability to plan long-term.
suxs on Thu, 7th Jul 2022 3:55 pm
I see the Mad-Kat is back and nuttier than ever. To quote the Mad-Kat, “there is ZERO proof that man is causing climate change.” Looks like the hot sun has bleached his brain.
suxs on Thu, 7th Jul 2022 4:03 pm
Mad-Kat says, “Many reputable sources have said that the earth can support 10 billion plus humans, if we eliminate waste. That means that the Western landfill economies must crash and reset.”
In fact, according to the Manila Times,
“MANILA — The Philippines has contributed to 36 percent of the plastic waste that ended up in the world’s oceans, with the Pasig River identified as the top plastic pollution source, a study has revealed.
According to a peer-reviewed study published in the Science Advances journal, 466 rivers in the country alone are emitting 356,371 metric tons of “mismanaged plastic wastes” annually.”
makati1 on Thu, 7th Jul 2022 5:02 pm
SUCKS, whatever you are, you don’t seem to see the forest for the trees. The US is going down the shitty slope and it is getting more slippery every day.
You must be an Amerikan. All they do is try to point the dirty finger somewhere else. No Amerikan owns a mirror or, if they do, they cannot look into it out of fear.
I suggest that you adjust to the 3rd world the US is fast becoming. But then, you are obviously too arrogant to think YOU might have to downsize your lifestyle to that of Bangladesh or more. It’s coming. Prepare.
It’s comforting to NOT live in the land of the dumbed-down tax serf. Pass the popcorn. ^_^
FamousDrScanlon on Fri, 8th Jul 2022 1:21 am
Reputable sources that mak has never once linked to in 10 years. Mak is above providing any outside support for any of his tired old assertions. It’s a religious thing where mass repetition makes whatever you wish to believe come true.
Apparently chugging Mormon sperm and taking Mormon cock up the ass at Mormon training schools for young men will bleach the brain.
White religious American Boomers make up the largest portion of climate deniers in the entire world…..because they know they are guilty of fucking their grand-kids lives up and can’t even look them in the eye.
Legions, growing legions of the young hate older generations. More every year. Listen to them. They hate the denial as much or more as the deed.
For some of them if they live another decade they will see their own flesh and blood suffer big time and DIE young from the ever more deadly consequences of 100% human caused climate change.
Nothing new about American baby killers. The new part is white Americans killing their own kids and grand kids.
So the humans were never going to stop, but they still did and do have a choice to acknowledge run away climate change and do something to avoid the worst and soonest suffering. Use some taxpayer resources to protect people, their property and critical infrastructure and also avoid early deaths from climate jacked disasters. But to do that requires acknowledging runaway climate change and all these full grown man babies with their fragile egos could never do that. They would rather see their own line end than admit they were WRONG.
Stupid cunts – it’s on you and you can never escape that fact. You doth protest too much. If you really thought it was nothing you would not be here, there and everywhere denying.
Mormon Mak the grandchild killer. Hell you guys don’t need to create a hot house mass extinction for that eh? It’s part of church policy.
Mak don’t forget the day the US crashes you stop getting your free monthly US welfare cheque. Then the people of the P”s will have zero use for you and chop chop chop you up to feed their dogs.
mak does not even qualify as a climate denier. He’s just a 4 year old contrarian who collects a government pension cheque. If you say black, he’ll say white. If you say up, Mak says down. It’s a negative attention seeking behaviour strategy that some boys never out grow. For mak it developed, in part, from getting rejected by the debating team year after year after year. They thought mak was so stupid that they would not even let him tryout, despite that being against school rules.
Mak thought he had a chance senior year when the school announced they were forming a ‘special Olympics’ style debating team, but mak could not even meet their minimum standards (a pulse and one eye open) either. They let him be their ‘water boy’ but only because that was the only way he would stop crying and also his generosity giving team blowjobs. No one ever shared like Mak.
suxs on Fri, 8th Jul 2022 6:22 pm
The Doc’s sardonic humor is as hilariously truthful as always. Don’t stop now!