Christopher Ingraham flags a highly disturbing study:
The new Living Planet Index report from the World Wildlife Fund opens with a jaw-dropping statistic: we’ve killed roughly half of the world’s non-human vertebrate animal population since 1970. … The declines are almost exclusively caused by humans’ ever-increasing footprint on planet earth. “Humanity currently needs the regenerative capacity of 1.5 Earths to provide the ecological goods and services we use each year,” according to the report. The only reason we’re able to run above max capacity – for now – is that we’re stripping away resources faster than we can replenish them.
The report attributes this insane drop almost entirely to human activity, including overfishing, unsustainable agriculture, a dramatic loss in natural habitats, and—of course—climate change. The most severe decline was experienced by freshwater species, whose populations fell a shocking 76 percent—nearly twice the rate experienced by marine and terrestrial species (both of which dropped by 39 percent).
Brad Plumer compares this report to an earlier one:
In its previous 2012 report, the WWF estimated that vertebrate populations had declined just 28 percent since 1970. Now they estimate that there’s been a 52 percent decline. Why the change? In that previous report, the WWF’s scientists said, they had been over-representing trends in North America and Europe, which have actually had fairly stable wildlife populations in recent decades. Re-weighting their sample to account for steeper declines in the species-rich tropics — particularly in Latin America and Southeast Asia — makes for a bleaker picture.
The Dish 