Look, there are simply too many humans on earth.
And as long as there are many humans, there will inevitably be fewer animals. Such is reality when there are seven and a half billion members of a species at the top of the food chain who can’t play nice with others.
Case in point: according to the World Wildlife Fund, 60 per cent of the world’s wildlife has disappeared in the last four decades. That’s just one alarming statistic cited in the group’s 2018 Living Planet Report, which outlines a “global biodiversity crisis.”
“Our constantly increasing demands on nature are driving wildlife to extinction. It’s not just elephants, freshwater dolphins and rhinos, but Canadian wildlife too,” Megan Leslie, WWF-Canada president and CEO, said in a release. “Caribou, southern resident killer whales, burrowing owls — these Canadian species have been pushed to the brink by human impacts on nature.”
The animal population stats suck: mammals are down 43 per cent, amphibian and reptile populations 34 per cent, and fish populations 20 per cent. Some types of birds seen between 43 and 69 per cent of their populations fly south, to the slow embrace of death.
If we can’t create a nice place to live in this vast expanse, what hope do countries where elephants and rhinos live have?
Now, about the humans. “Only one-quarter of land on Earth is free from impacts of human activities and that number is projected to decline to just one-tenth by 2050,” said the WWF.
So there you have it: eating less meat is not enough to sustain our crock-pot plant. We must also stop living.