The Biggest Predator of All Time: Us. New research confirms that humans push many species to extinction. A recent paper published in Communications Biology illustrates just how true that is.  Humans collect,slaughter, or entrap almost 15,000 vertebrate species out of close to 47,000 over six classes, according to the findings of the new report. Of these, our predation threatens 39 percent. Our activities push around 13 percent of all species to the brink of extinction. For mammals alone, 36 percent face extinction because of us. Those facts only apply to present trends. They do not account for our destructive footprint throughout history and prehistory, including many iconic extinctions that we caused, such as that of the passenger pigeon. The researchers—from Canada, the United States, the UK, and Brazil—relied on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List database, a compilation of globally at-risk species, for the bulk of their findings. They were able to calculate the extent of our impact on other vertebrates, from axolotls to zebra sharks.  One conclusion that surprised researchers was how many of the 15,000—around half—do not end up in the human food chain. Each year, an alarmingly high number of animals supply the multibillion-dollar global wild-pet trade or are killed for trophies and traditional medicines. All of these practices end up "turning animals into 'things,'" Chris Darimont, of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, said via email. The paper concentrates on classes of vertebrates containing more than 100 species: ray-finned fishes, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and cartilaginous fishes (e.g., sharks). "Our estimate of humanity's predatory niche is likely conservative," they state.  How did we come to occupy such a large predatory niche compared to other species with similar dietary needs? "Humans evolved as collaborative group hunters, using advanced cognition, social cooperation, and sophisticated tools to bring down prey much larger than us," said Boris Worm, professor of biology at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, via email. "We simply got better and better at it and expanded our reach via trade and globalization all around the planet and to a very large number of species we take for our own benefit." Most of the meat we eat now comes from industrialized farming (itself a source of biodiversity loss, through habitat destruction, water pollution, "pest" control, and so on). Ironically, our heavy reliance on livestock and fish farms does not take much pressure off wild populations. "If anything, food from agriculture and aquaculture allows us to be a better predator," Darimont observed. "It subsidizes us. [This is] in contrast to other predators who overexploit prey and then fall in their numbers; we can just move on to more prey, not yet overexploited."         https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/biggest-predator-all-time-us

The US is a rogue state leading the world towards ecological collapse.  George Monbiot   Fri 9 Dec 2022 16.36 GMT  There are two extraordinary facts about the convention on biological diversity, whose members are meeting in Montreal now to discuss the global ecological crisis. The first is that, of the world’s 198 states, 196 are party to it. The second is the identity of those that aren’t. Take a guess. North Korea? Russia? Wrong. Both ratified the convention years ago. One is the Holy See (the Vatican). The other is the United States of America. This is one of several major international treaties the US has refused to ratify. Among the others are crucial instruments such as the Rome statuteon international crimes, the treaties banningcluster bombs and landmines, the convention on discrimination against women, the Basel convention on hazardous waste, the convention on the law of the sea, the nuclear test ban treaty, the employment policy convention and the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. In some cases, it is one of only a small number to refuse: the others are generally either impoverished states with little administrative capacity or vicious dictatorships. It is the only independent nation on Earth not to ratify the convention on the rights of the child. Perhaps this is because it is the only nation to sentence children to life imprisonment without parole, among many other brutal policies. While others play by the rules, the most powerful nation refuses. If this country were a person, we’d call it a psychopath. As it is not a person, we should call it what it is: a rogue state. Through its undemocratic dominance of global governance, the US makes the rules, to a greater extent than any other state. It also does more than any other to prevent both their implementation and their enforcement. Its refusal to ratify treaties such as the convention on biological diversity provides other nations with a permanent excuse to participate in name only. Like all imperial powers, its hegemony is expressed in the assertion of its right not to care. Take the nitrogen crisis in the Netherlands. Scientists there have been warning since the 1980s that the excessive release of nitrogen compounds – primarily by agriculture – exceed the land and water’s capacity to absorb them, killing rivers, polluting groundwater, damaging soil, wiping out wild plants and causing a severe but seldom-discussed air pollution crisis. But successive governments could not be persuaded to care.  This has triggered a furious reaction from the industries most affected, primarily livestock farming. The farmers’ protests have, like the Ottawa truckers’ strike, now become acause célèbre for the far rightall over the world. Rightwing politicians claim that the nitrogen crisis is being used as a pretext to seize land from farmers, in whom, they claim, true Dutch identity is vested, and hand it to asylum seekers and other immigrants, at the behest of “globalist” forces such as the World Economic Forum.   In other words, the issue has been co-opted by “great reset” and “great replacement” conspiracy theorists, who claim that there are deliberate policies to replace local, white people with “other cultures” .          https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/09/us-world-climate-collapse-nations    

A Meeting of Minds of the Clan- Climate Deniers and Far Right Politicians........“The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice”. This Martin Luther King quote was used by Conservative peer Baroness Stroud to introduce the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), which launched in March.  Set up by the owners of GB News and involving “senior leaders from politics, media, culture, business, and academia”, ARC claims that it will address the six “fundamental issues of our time”, including “energy and resources” and “environmental stewardship”.  In reality, ARC appears to be the latest attempt by national populist forces to shape culture and politics. And as climate change has been swallowed up by the “culture wars”, ARC’s advisors include some of the world’s leading opponents of climate action. In her launch blog, Baroness Stroud gives an indication of where the alliance stands on climate change. She states that “we risk driving policy interventions to address environmental concerns without having an honest conversation about the trade-offs for the poor at home or in developing and emerging nations”. The notion that green reforms unduly punish the poor is a common refrain among those who oppose climate action.  In reality, poor and indigenous groups in developing countries will be hit hardest by the impacts of climate change, while those suffering from poverty at home have seen their energy bills soar as successive governments have failed to implement green reforms. ARC is hosting a major event at the O2 Arena in London in November, headlined by psychologist Jordan Peterson, which it claims will play host to “more than a thousand high level leaders from politics, culture, business and academia”. Peterson has regularly posted about “climate apocalypse insanity” and “eco fascists” to his millions of online followers, while claiming in a Telegraph article in October that “eco-extremists are leading the world towards despair, poverty, and starvation”. Peterson has played a key role in amplifying fringe climate crisis deniers to millions of people via his YouTube channel, according to a new DeSmog analysis. Peterson is joined on the ARC advisory board by Tony Abbott, a director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) the UK’s principal climate science denial group, the writers Bjorn Lomborg and Michael Shellenberger, both of whom have written books downplaying the threats posed by climate change, and Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy, who recently claimed that the green agenda is a “hoax”.    https://www.desmog.com/2023/09/05/climate-science-denial-gb-news-legatum-alliance-for-responsible-citizenship-arc/

Bill McKibbon Aug 19, 2023 The Crucial Years Extraordinary Quantities of Human Tragedy Are in Motion.  Yellowknife, though, was charming: I hadn’t been off the airplane three minutes before the northern lights broke through, a green wave cracking across the sky. The next morning I wandered the shores of Great Slave Lake, past houses perched on the rocks of the vast shore like the most picturesque parts of downeast Maine. And now Yellowknife is being evacuated—its 20,000 residents trying to drive south down the long road towards Edmonton, or being flown out in shifts from its small airport, even as flames and smoke lick at the city limits. It’s important—in this year that has seen global warming come fully to life—to describe accurately what’s happening on our planet. And one key thing is: the number of places humans can safely live is now shrinking. Fast. The size of the board on which we can play the great game of human civilization is getting smaller. Every-man-for-himself politics will have to yield to we’re-all-in-this-together; otherwise, it’s going to be far grimmer than it already is. The story of human civilization has been steady expansion. But that steady expansion has now turned into a contraction. There are places where it's getting harder and harder to live, because it burns or floods. Or because the threat of fire and water is enough to drive up the price of insurance past the point where people can afford it. For a while we try to fight off this contraction—we have such wonderfully deep roots to the places where we came up. But eventually it’s too hot or too expensive—when you can’t grow food any more, for instance, you have to leave. So far we’re mostly failing the tests of solidarity or generosity or justice that these migrations produce,,,,,,,,,,,read on      https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/human-tragedy-in-motio