This is the seventh of 18 installments in the Metastatic Modernity video series (see launch announcement), putting the meta-crisis in perspective as a cancerous disease afflicting humanity and the greater community of life on Earth. This episode will try (and probably fail) to convey the degree to which Earth’s biodiversity and ecological health are in peril.
As is the custom for the series, I provide a stand-alone companion piece in written form (not a transcript) so that the key ideas may be absorbed by a different channel. The write-up that follows is arranged according to “chapters” in the video, navigable via links in the YouTube description field.
Introduction
This is the usual short naming of the series, of myself, and the topic of this episode (the ecological nosedive) as part of the process for putting modernity into context.
Reminder: One of Many
As covered in previous episodes, humans are one of approximately 10 million living species on the planet. We are all in this together. Humans are not the pinnacle of evolution, but one of millions of temporary twig-ends. While we have become the dominant influence in nearly every ecological setting, we are not a keystone species acting as an anchor for biodiversity—rather the opposite, of late.
Mammal Mass-Acre
Humans and our domesticated animals have expanded to about 95% of all mammal mass on the planet. The wild mammals are really squeezed into the corners, in the graphic below. Wild land mammals are now down to 2% of the total, and falling fast!
The following is not a serving suggestion, or even the way ecology works, but provided for reference: if all of the approximately 5,000 mammal species on the planet had an equal share of mammal biomass, the human population would number 4 million. This gives a crude sense for the present degree of human imbalance (2,000 times the equipartition number). Ten thousand years ago, humans were indeed close to an equal share of mammal biomass, by species.
Today, wild land mammals total 20 megatons (wet mass). Some quick math reveals that spreading this mass over 8 billion people results in 2.5 kilograms (5.5 lbs) of wild mammal mass per person on the planet. That’s tiny: smaller than most house cats. Think about that: your “allocation” of wild land mammal mass on the planet would fit in a purse! Talk about vulnerable!
Here is a zoom-in of how the wild mammal masses are distributed, in case you’re interested.
Cliff Edge, Revealed
As indicated by the math above (and first presented in an earlier post), we now have 2.5 kg of wild land mammal mass per human. The plot below shows how this figure has evolved over time, on a logarithmic scale. Hint: it only recently went as low as 2.5 kg and is falling very fast!
If I had used a linear scale (going from zero to 2,000 on the left axis), the entire right-hand edge—the last 2,000 years—would be practically invisible, hugging the zero axis at less than 0.5% of full-scale! When a curve looks like a cliff edge on a logarithmic plot, that’s serious trouble!
Prior to agriculture, wild land mammal mass was over 1,000 times that of humans. By 1880, the mass of one species (humans) matched that of the entire menagerie of wild land mammals—on its way to the abyss. This is the cliff edge. This is the ecological nosedive. I think it’s worth a bit more than a shrug. I think every living human ought to internalize this fact, and make sure everyone they know is clued in as well.
Linear Zoom
The linear-scale zoom-in above emphasizes that on a per-person basis, wild land mammals are almost gone. To be sure, a huge part of this story is the swelling of human population, but unmistakably accompanied by a dramatic reduction in land mammal mass, which has fallen to 30% of its already-suffering 1900 level. I don’t know. If we got rid of 70% in a little over a century, do you think we are capable of finishing the job?
In Other News
I focus on mammals partly because that’s what we are, and the animals to whom we most strongly identify. But the losses are across the board. Insects are declining at 1–2% per year, as are birds and fish. Now, that may not sound very large, but the result adds up and translates to a loss of about three-quarters every century. We’ve done one century like that already. Another would put us below 10% of the 1900 populations (which were already down by then). At some point, sub-critical populations struggle, falter, and wink out—through no fault of their own.
Insects are foundational to ecology: food base, pollination, soil service, nutrient dispersal. Their loss can lead to cascading losses among other animals, which is part of what explains bird declines.
About 50 years ago, the Living Planet Index started tracking tens of thousands of vertebrate (mammal, bird, reptile, fish, amphibian) populations, finding an average population decline of 69% since 1970. That’s a huge problem.
Population declines are a necessary phenomenon on any path toward extinction. And indeed, extinction rates are up 100 to 1,000 times the background rate—and climbing.
Ecological resilience can only be pushed so far before cascading failures pile on as the web of life is shredded and its countless crucial interdependencies rendered inoperative.
A Sixth Mass Extinction
The scale and rapidity of these changes create credible concern that we are witnessing (causing) the beginning of a sixth mass extinction.
Earth has been slapped hard, out of nowhere, at alarming speed. Although the evidence of its reeling is all around us, it is far too soon to appreciate the severity of what we have set in motion. A hard slap on the face looks red in the moment, but later appears bruised and might turn into a black eye. We are currently only seeing the instant, real-time response and not the protracted bruising to follow, which will take a long time to play out as many wild populations glide toward extinction and domino-effect failures pile up.
Now, in case your temptation is to get smug about this (stupid animals: who needs them?), please take to heart the lesson from prior episodes in this series: it is a narrow fallacy to think of ourselves as being somehow separate from an ecological context. Ecological collapse is extremely dangerous to large, complex, hungry, high-maintenance animals like humans. We are not likely to fare well in a sixth mass extinction of our own making.
Even if one’s only concern is for one’s own survival, or that of one’s family, or even humans as a whole (although I sure hope anyone can see value in the more-than-human biodiverse world), I hope it is clear that it is also in one’s selfish interest not to destroy the basis of complex life on this planet. I stress again that we are not separate from, above, or transcendent beyond our extended living family. That seems to be the default and utterly foolish notion pervading our culture, based on a brief fireworks show of excessive and unsustainable inheritance-spending that is in the process of setting up catastrophic failure—and for more than just humans.
Causes
What’s causing all this to happen? The short answer is: modernity. Broken down, it’s a long list, but pretty predictable, actually.
- Deforestation
- Habitat loss and fragmentation
- Mining, manufacturing, associated pollution and waste
- Over-fishing; over-hunting
- Pesticide; herbicide; ecocide
- Human-introduced invasive species (including domestic animals and plants)
- Infrastructure encounters (e.g., roadkill, windows, turbines of all sorts)
- Ocean acidification from CO2, impairing shell formation
- Climate change from anthropogenic CO2
The last item on the list tends to attract most of the recent attention (because it threatens the market economy, too). Climate change is a serious issue, and indeed interacts with some of the others to exacerbate the problem. For instance, habitat fragmentation prevents many species—including plants via seed dispersal—from being able to migrate to new areas as conditions change.
Climate change is not the root cause of our ecological nosedive, which has been on a steady march since long before climate change reared its head. But it is on the list, and can be understood as yet another symptom of the underlying disease (modernity). It is important to realize that if we somehow eliminated climate change today—and wouldn’t that be nice—we would still be in deep trouble, ecologically speaking. Almost all the items on the list above remain in full force without the climate change wrinkle. Which major activities of modernity are meant to cease under solar panels, for instance? Isn’t the whole point of them to keep modernity fully powered and going about its usual business?
Gallery
I end this episode with a sequence of still captures (with permission) from a film by Jeff Gibbs called Planet of the Humans, which I recommend. The whole documentary can be seen on YouTube, but the closing scene is where these clips come from. Actually, the conclusions Gibbs reaches just before this are also very well put and worth a watch.
The final scene shows the process and effects of deforestation, specifically on orangutans. It’s truly hard to watch. I am still scarred, over a year after I first saw it. A mud-caked orangutan youth (precious sweet bean!) is struggling to get out of a ditch. If you watch closely, you can see what looks to me like a fit of frustration after failing to get a handhold on the crumbling bank. She’s in a bad way. She’s at wit’s end. Her whole world—the life-sustaining rain forest—has been utterly destroyed. She did nothing wrong, but didn’t stand a chance. As she lies dying, a combination of shock and resignation appear to shape her expression.
Yes, this is just one scene, and may be defensively labeled as one scary anecdote. But deforestation is global and massive in scale. How else do you think we got down to 2.5 kg of wild land mammal mass per human? Modernity’s ravenous maw gobbles “worthless” (in a market sense) ecological communities without a second thought.
We need to provide that second thought. Step one is to no longer cheer for modernity. Stop prioritizing whatever comfort humans crave at any expense. The costs of modernity are enormous and unavoidable, ultimately hurting us all. I’ll have a future episode on how we can’t just jettison the bad parts.
Closing and Do the Math
It’s hard to move on from such heart-wrenching images. But, we need to understand the severity of modernity’s damage to the community of life—which we constantly forget includes us.
The next episode will package various perspectives to help illustrate the ridiculous timeline of modernity, and how frighteningly rapid this discontinuity is.
As always, I end with an appeal to check out the companion write-up (e.g., on Do the Math), which you are already doing!
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It all just makes me weep. I am by nature a happy person, and yet every day I struggle at least part of the day with the understanding of what we have done and are doing to the Earth.
Being surrounded by people who seem not to think about it much if at all makes this worse. It is, as Aldo Leopold said, to live alone in a world of wounds.
Well said. Me too. I think about that Leopold quote often. My version is “ to have an ecological education is to live in a world of wounds”, which makes me wonder if all of this awareness is worth the heartache.
By the way, if you need a bit of a breather, Michael Shellenberger‘s book “Apocalypse Never” is a good read. An environmentalist (unlike Matt Ridley and Yuval Harari), 100 pages of references, and it counters a lot of narratives we’ve drunk. I found it hard to argue with his points.
Perhaps not much of a breather. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/07/review-bad-science-and-bad-arguments-abound-in-apocalypse-never/
> I found it hard to argue with his points.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/07/review-bad-science-and-bad-arguments-abound-in-apocalypse-never/
I'm not sure how MS's book will give me a "breather". I find the "cornucopian" view of our ecological catastrophe to be far more depressing than facing reality.
Anyone, like MS, suggesting that "alarmism is hurting us" is seriously delusional, and is someone who cares not one whit about either the natural world or the many people being harmed by this way of life. The problem is not that a few of us are alarmed; the problem is that 99.9% of us are not nearly alarmed enough.
I'm not sure how you can read Tom's post (this one, or many others) and believe otherwise.
I read (most of) Peter Gleck's scathing review of AN. Think I'll give it a miss…
Schellenberger points to those who "long for the destruction of civilization", in a pejorative sense – but that doesn't work. I *do* think civilization has been a curse, not a blessing.
What are the 'narratives' that 'we' have supposedly 'drunk'? Take a look around. The planet's going to shit – all caused by runaway extraction, overconsumption, overpopulation and pollution.
Hunter-gatherers had it right.
I'm with Elisabeth and James, here. It is a common accusation that people acting "alarmist" got there via some initial attraction to collapse and catastrophe. No. Alarm comes from the shock of recognizing the predicament that we are living atop a house of cards, initially wanting to avert collapse—thus the impetus to alert others. Folks initially attracted to collapse have no motivation to warn others: bring it on, they say. But this common accusation is revealing to me, suggesting that the cornucopians "work the maze" backwards: start from what they wish were true. Thus the (projected) sense that alarmists start by wanting collapse. I can tell you that's not at all how it worked for me, even if I have come to a degree of acceptance that we have little choice in the matter.
I guess in polite company it’s best avoiding the topic unless asked directly for an opinion; hardly a contender for winning friends and influencing people. Last week, an English court imprisoned five principled people for terms up to seven years for planning a protest on a busy motorway. They did so under the banner of Just Stop Oil. It has become dreadfully polarised and depressing.
What I do find makes an impact is to invite those who find the arguments impenetrable and unconvincing, to watch Craig Leeson’s ‘The Plastic Ocean’ and usually it has the desired effect.
https://youtu.be/yog7qmGZIlQ?feature=shared
Sadly, the UK government (and others) are becomming increasingly authoritarian, placing restrictions on protest and dissent. No one should be imprisoned for protest.
Just Stop Oil (JSO) are a strange group, still. In my view, they are either naive or dishonest, as modernity can only be run on FF.
JSO say on their website: "[Governments must] stop extracting and burning oil, gas and coal by 2030 as well as supporting and financing other countries to make a fast, fair, and just transition."
That is not going to happen, and neither is any transition possible, just or not. The energy densities of 'renewables' are incapable of powering modernity, and no amount of greenwash will change that.
Worse, JSO are (like many environmentalists) obssessed with climate change, to the exclusion of everything else.
Right now, in the name of 'green' energy, so-called biomass is used in many European (including UK) power stations.
A forest, with its intricate webs of interdependence and natural complexity, is a thing of beauty. 'Harvesting' (i.e. killing) forests to burn in power stations is total insanity.
That such wanton behaviour is promoted as 'green', says a lot about how sick this world has become.
Agreed. At the end of the day, no alternative energy solutions are possible with a population of 8.2 billion people. Perhaps there is a sustainable carrying capacity, but the longer we travel down this road, the smaller that number becomes.
Perhaps you should add Social Media to your list. I just read this horrific article about how people in Lebanon are hunting birds for "likes".
“They massacre birds for likes."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/22/lebanon-hunting-migratory-birds-tiktok-social-media-aoe
Absolutely excellent video series that I will encourage my students to watch. I teach an earth resources & futures course. Your interesting numeric facts and summaries are very useful.
This episode is so far the most important one. Even after so many decades, it still makes me sad everyday to see reality.
Keep up the good work.
So, stop eating meat, especially beef. Also, dairy. Support lab created meat, which cuts the footprint to one percent. Then pick up on reforestation. In a thousand years, everything will be just fine.
Lab-grown meat has a bigger footprint than regular meat.
https://phys.org/news/2023-05-lab-grown-meat-carbon-footprint-potentially.html
(Plus, the linked article doesn't even mention all the energy and materials required to build the labs etc.)
In a thousand years, everything might indeed be just fine – if modernity ('civilization') has ended.
And the sooner the better for the many species we are extincting each and every day. Every day modernity continues is a catastrophe.
Humans and Livestock make up 95% of mammalian biomass, yet some people (like Elon Musk) think humans are underpopulated. How can someone possibly come to such a conclusion? Is he insane? Is he so amoral that he is willing to murder what remains of the Biosphere just to make more profit?
I posted this comment on Resilience, but it may be of interest here.
Thank you for your constant efforts to Do The Math improving our energy and ecological literacy. The figures you reference about wild mammal biomass decline were indeed shocking and as someone connected to country in rural Australia the idea that there is only 2.5kg live weight/person on the planet seemed hard to believe. Everywhere I have travelled (mostly the affluent countries) there seem to be more wild animals along with more bush as everyone lives from the oil well rather than the country. Anyway I decided to a quick search on wild animals in Australia starting the figures in your quoted study for Eastern Grey and Red Kangaroos. I assume that is good data because Australia has very strong monitoring for these harvested species. They account for 1Mt of the 1.14Mt estimated for marsupials in total (almost exclusively Australia apart from a few naturalised populations). I went looking for data and found although we have good studies for the harvested species above, I couldn't find much for other common species while there are lots for our most threatened species. I note the study admits most studies world wide are for more threatened species which could bias the study to underreporting total biomass.
Anyway my quick very rough summation was the study missed at least 0.25Mt of marsupials in Australia and given that there is at least 30million feral Brush Tail Possums in NZ plus wallabies, there could be a bit more marsupial biomass.
Anyway the total biomass of wild mammals in Australia is something in the order of 5Mt which makes 182kg live weight per person ( only 26million people) What I notice is a pattern where wild life studies in this country tend to under report native animals (to advocate for their conservation) but often over report naturalised animals to highlight the damage they do. Obviously countries like Australia are outliers in a world with 8 billion humans but nevertheless I think we need to very wary of advocacy science pushing agendas giving us a skewed perspective. But most importantly we need to remember how different the context is from place to place. If the report cited is anywhere near the mark for world average and my quick rough figures for Australia are the right order of magnitude then there must be whole countries and bioregions where there are only a few grams of wild animal biomass per/person. Surely house rodents would account for more than that. While on the subject of wildlife conservation you and your readers maybe interested in my brief essays on Koalas and Wombats
Hi David: delighted to see you comment, and "do the math" yourself. The central figures I use come from Greenspoon et al. 2023 (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2204892120) and Bar-On et al. 2018 (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1711842115). The first puts the wet mass of wild land mammals at 20 Mton and marine twice that. Bar-On has total dry carbon mass for all wild mammals at 7 Mton. Assuming 1/3 on land, 2.3 Mton and usual 15% dry carbon conversion gives about 16 Mton wet mass for wild land mammals. Divide by 8 billion people to get 2.5 or 2 kg/person for these two sources. So, I'm reasonably confident in the global average.
You make a great point, of course, that some regions are far from the average, like Australia. But am I to believe that Australia has one-quarter of all the wild land mammal mass (5 Mt out of 20)? A little difficult. At face value, it would make the global average outside Australia 15 Mt/"7.974G" = 1.9 kg (well above "grams"). But the chief point is absolutely valid: lots of regional variations by orders-of-magnitude.