Report: Global biodiversity down 30 percent in 40 years

[IDemo]

The world's biodiversity is down 30 percent since the 1970s, according to a new report, with tropical species taking the biggest hit. And if humanity continues as it has been, the picture could get bleaker.

Humanity is outstripping the Earth's resources by 50 percent — essentially using the resources of one and a half Earths every year, according to the 2012 Living Planet Report, produced by conservation agency the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Colby Loucks, the director of conservation sciences at WWF, compared humanity to bad house guests.

"We're emptying the fridge, we're not really taking care of the lawn, we're not weeding the flower beds and we're certainly not taking out the garbage," Loucks said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47421743/ns/technology_and_science-science/

[GliderGuider]

1. This is what entering the bottleneck looks and feels like.

So it goes.

[NickB79]

2. Resource-wise, 4 of the 10 greediest nations are in Europe

Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Ireland.

That's at odds with everything I've heard hyped about how green these countries are with regard to renewable energy, public transit, locally-grown food, etc.

[Nihil]

3. And 3 are in the Middle East, 2/2 of the North American continent, ...

The correlation is with wealth & standard of living, not geography or energy source.

The problem with Denmark is probably due to the large amounts of natural gas
it burns rather than their public transport system. There again, given it was from
a biodiversity report, maybe the large (mainly monoculture) agricultural segment
did the damage to their ratings?

I'm also a little surprised about the fact that the UK didn't appear even on their
(through-linked) top 25 consumers as I would really have thought that we'd be far
worse than Norway, Sweden or France in terms of the more obvious criteria ...