Debunking myths about saving the natural world

An Explorer Debunks 5 Myths About Saving The Earth,
National Geographic ecologist Enric Sala explains why protecting the planet is not a selfless act. Huffington Post , By Amanda Schupak 4 Oct 2o, ”…………. Sala picked apart five common misapprehensions about conservation for HuffPost. The following are his responses to each myth, edited for length and clarity.

Myth No. 1: Conservation is an altruistic, bleeding-heart pursuit.

Sala says: It’s a myth that conserving our life-support system is a luxury. Come on. Everybody’s so worried about the financial markets and the economy, but there is no economy without people. And there are no people without the natural world, because everything we need to survive — the oxygen we breathe, the food we eat, the clean water we drink — it’s produced by the work of other species. We cannot replicate any of the goods and services that nature gives us for free.

Myth No. 2: Conservation costs too much money.

Sala says: Actually, the lack of conservation costs more money. One example: the COVID-19 pandemic. Every single person on the planet has been affected by this. What is the cost of the pandemic? The International Monetary Fund estimated $9 trillion. Other estimates run as high as $15.8 trillion.

How much would it have cost to prevent this pandemic? Well, let’s look at the source of the epidemic: wildlife trade. In previous pandemics, it was also wildlife trade — moving species around the world like commodities — but also the destruction of their natural habitat. HIV, Ebola, SARS and many other infectious diseases have come from animals.

So, how much would it have cost to prevent the destruction of these places? We released an economic report this year that estimated that, on average, protecting what the science is telling us is the very minimum, which is 30% of the planet (land and sea), would cost $140 billion per year.

Is this a lot of money? Well, let’s compare it with a couple of things. One is how much money governments spend today to subsidize activities that actually destroy nature, like burning fossil fuels and industrial agriculture: hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars per year. So what it would cost to protect a third of our life-support system is only a fraction of what the governments of the world spend now to destroy it.

This $140 billion is less than what the world spends today on video games. So to people who say, “Well, can we afford it?” I would say that is the most disingenuous argument in the world. The question should be, “How can we afford not to?”

Myth No. 3: Ending deforestation is at odds with meeting humanity’s needs.

Sala says: We have let ourselves be hijacked by industries that monopolize the use of our land for just a single commodity, at the expense of all the other benefits that society gets if that land is not degraded. ………..

Myth No. 4: We cannot protect more of the ocean because we need to fish more.

Sala says: Today only 7% of the ocean is protected, and science is telling us that we need at least 30%. So why don’t we have more of the ocean protected? Because there is a conflict with fishing. We hear from the industrial fishing lobby that we need to fish more because we need to feed more people, but now we’re going to do it sustainably. Well, we reached peak fishing in the mid-’90s ― that was the maximum catch of wild fish and it’s been declining since. Eighty-two percent of fish stocks are overfished, meaning we’re taking them out of water faster than they can reproduce.

However, if we get at least 30% of the ocean protected [from fishing], the ocean actually would give us a net gain in fishing catch. In these areas where you don’t kill the fish, they take a longer time to die. They grow larger, they have more sex, they produce many more babies. So this helps to replenish the areas around these reserves. We protect the right 30% of the ocean, [then] actually fishing less, with less effort, we will catch more fish. So what’s not to like here?

Myth No. 5: Humans are separate from nature.

Sala says: We need to shift from our view of humans as masters of the universe and that everything is centered around us. We are one species living among millions of species of plants and animals and a trillion different types of microbes. And even though, ironically, the fate of all these species is in our hands, without them there will be no us, either. …… https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/explorer-debunks-myths-saving-earth_n_5f74de08c5b66377b27c92cc?ri18n=true