A comparison of the biomass of humans, wildlife and livestock is interesting. The livestock we rear makes up “more than 10 times the biomass of wild animals and birds” in the worlds of Godfrey-Smith.
Human domination can be measured in many ways but one crude yet revealing metric is biomass by Michael BroadHe is concerned about the welfare of farm animals and their impact on the planet. My understanding is that Godfrey-Smith (a philosopher) agrees that unless humans can do better in terms of their management of livestock and hence the planet in general, planet Earth would be better off without humans.
This topic is much bigger than any topic about one species of animal: the domestic cat, about which I have written a lot. It is about the arguably existential crisis that humans pose to the planet. Sir David Attenborough described, many years ago, the human as a king of disease spreading across the globe. It sounds very anti-human but I don’t believe that was his intention. He was simply highlighting the negative impact of humans on wildlife all over the planet. Human activities eating into wildlife habitat over vast areas, primarily the destruction of forests which are the lungs of the planet in converting carbon dioxide to oxygen.
It is obvious that humans dominate the world extensively and hugely. Humans need to demonstrate far more self-discipline in self-management and thereby the management of the planet that sustains them. It seems that humans are myopic on this. They are too self-interested. Self-obsessed. Often blind to the damage they cause to the planet. Or they like to conveniently forget it as it is too difficult to deal with. And if one group alters their behaviour to improve the planet, they are then at a disadvantage vis-a-vis another group. The human world is inordinately competitive and becoming more so to the detriment of us all and the planet in general.
Arrogant dominance of the planet has led humans to an insensitivity to sentience in other creatures and a blindness to their negative impact on the planet.
PETA
This is why PETA, the animal rights organisation exists. Their motto states, “Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, use for entertainment or abuse in any other way”. A lot of people dislike PETA (pronounced ‘Peter’) because the organisation places a mirror up to humankind and people don’t like what they see. They dislike the messenger for illuminating bad collective human behavior in respect of animal abuses across the planet particularly in terms of livestock to feed us but also in addition wildlife abuses and domestic animal abuses in vast amounts (China comes to mind immediately).
There is a lot of great human activity in support of animal welfare and protecting the environment but far too much that is frankly horribly wrong.
What is the effect of farm animals on the health of the planet?
This is just one aspect of human life on the planet and the negative impact that human activity has. I’m just raising this point as an example. We need livestock to feed ourselves. And as you can see in the Infographic the biomass of livestock is far, far greater than the biomass of humans. And this high livestock biomass negatively impacts the planet’s health.
There is, for example greenhouse gas emissions. Ruminant animals like cattle produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas during digestions. Emissions from manure management and fertiliser use contribute to global warming i.e. nitrous oxide.
Deforestation is a massive problem vis-à-vis livestock. Land is often cleared for grazing cattle leading to massive habitat loss and a decline in biodiversity. Overgrazing can lead to soil degradation and desertification in affected areas.
Raising livestock require substantial water and feed which strains freshwater sources. And there is the ever-present problem of run-off pollution from livestock farms which contaminate water bodies with nutrients and pathogens. There is also the problem of fertiliser running off into lakes causing algae which in turn damages the marine wildlife in the lake.
Feeding livestock destroys the environment causing habitat fragmentation which destroys wildlife. It creates pockets of wild animals of a size which is unsustainable because there’s inbreeding and inbreeding needs to loss of fertility and the gradual extinction of the species. Expansion of livestock farming can disrupt ecosystems and reduce habitats for wild species.
Another issue is the overuse of antibiotics to treat livestock resulting in antibiotic resistant bacteria which poses a risk to human health.
Heavy grazing can have a negative impact on soil structure and health i.e. soil compaction. These are some examples. There are more.
In general, human activity is arguably devastating the planet’s health. The greatest factor is probably plastic pollution. You will find microplastics in every part of the oceans and inside the animals that live in the oceans and therefore inside us. Yes, we have microplastics inside us. We don’t know how that impacts our health. We will find out in due course.
This is an example of self-indulgent human behaviour and the lack of self-discipline in properly managing waste from human commercial activities. For years we’ve totally ignored this. We are now seeing the devastating impact that it has had on the planet and it is coming back to harm us. It’s a form of karma. The Covid-19 is also a form of karma.
If you abuse wildlife as the Chinese have in wet markets, you end up spreading zoonotic diseases carried by these animals to the human population. Get too near to wildlife and you can damage human life. Or if you abuse wildlife, you damage human life. This is karma; nature striking back and reminding the dominant human that nature is in fact more dominant than any human population.
