I think the strongest argument for the maintaining of biodiversity is simply the absurdly complex web of organism interactions. It’s incredibly hard to predict the downstream consequences of biodiversity loss but it is the diversity of functions species play that is actually valuable not the diversity of species inherently.
I prefered to read the article. I believe biodiversity should be preserved even if it has no value. I do not believe we have the right to end it. But again, few people think like this, and if the little diversity left ends, I just hope we dont end ourselves.
> "no value" What kind of value are you talking about? There is no inherent value in the world, and no two people value the same kind of thing. If you prefer preserving biodiversity for its own sake, then it's clearly valuable to you, and saying that it has "no value" is nonsense. Are you perhaps equating "value" to "economic value", or something along these lines?
Why does this video seem to only care about biodiversity for the sake of human gain and its benefits to our economies, and not biodiversity for the sake of biodiversity. The fact that wild animals who have done no wrong and were here before us deserve to exist without us meddling in their habitats.
@@MUSTASCH1OIt might not have the intellectual capacity to understand the effect of its actions, but the eagle and its offspring's survival absolutely will be affected by the loss of prey species. It's clear from what we have learned that we still have a ton to learn about ecology. Once the species are gone we cannot bring them back. Even if we preserve the DNA we lose the information about how they were interacting with other species in the ecosystem. Certainly some species can go extinct without it causing giant ecological consequences. However I think it is important to try and preserve as much biodiversity as we can until we understand the value of each species ecologically.
Great video as always, and a really interesting perspective, even if I don't fully agree with it. As you say it is super important to consider what we talk about when we say "biodiversity" and our reasons behind wanting to protect it. A couple points of disagreement: For one, I don't think it's a contradiction to care about biodiversity and put extra effort into keystone species. Keystone species aren't just important for the services they allow an ecosystem to provide, they are important for keeping that ecosystem alive. They are critical for the function of an entire ecosystem, and we "care" more about them because they are representing much more than their ecological niches. In that way, putting extra effort into maintaining key stone species health IS caring about biodiversity, since they are maintaining the health of the whole ecosystem and the diversity within it. I think a key factor to bring up about biodiversity is one many ecologists, most that I've talked to at conferences, classrooms, etc. will freely admit: ecosystem diversity is one of the coolest aspects of nature that there is. The reason we care in the first place is that biodiversity is so interesting, both to study and just walk outside and appreciate, that we can't help but want to protect it. Ain't nothing wrong with that as a reason either, imo - ecology as a science isn't entirely built on damage controlling climate change or boosting ecosystem services, as important as those two things are: it is also built on investigating and learning about what we very subjectively find interesting - and I think for most ecologists biodiversity is near the top of the list. I mean one could argue that unique ecosystems and species have no inherent value beyond the services they provide, but that's just a depressing way to look at the world, and a view I don't think many ecologists (yourself/myself included) would agree with. The main idea I want to push back on in this video though is the comment on political sensitivity. it is wishful thinking to give a blanket "just tell the truth!" to scientists actively publishing in this field. You say yourself how easily misinformation spreads within ecological academia - misinformation in pop-sci and public discourse spreads 10x as fast, with way less oversight even then the small bit we get in academia. The reason we consult so many ethics committees isn't because we are afraid of provoking the ire of big leftist science, but because we don't want our studies to be clickbaited to hell by a hundred different climate change denial channels. We don't want to end up negatively impacting the environment that we care about so much about we made caring about it our job. In a magazine like Nature, one of the very few that the public actually reads, careful wording is *absolutely critical* to the dissemination of scientific information. If you're lucky enough to publish there, it goes without saying that you should spend as much time on how you're writing your article/study as the content of said article/study. That's not withholding truth, that's making sure that your study isn't misrepresented by the public. You want to make sure as well that nature is even the right place to be publishing. Journals like "Nature" and "Science" are for public facing research and articles - if you want nothing but the research, journals do exist and are more numerous then the public facing ones, they are just more obscure (and also less interesting to read so they get highlighted way less) - look at Methods in Ecology/Evolution, look at the whole PLOSone sphere, look at journals more specific to sub areas of ecology. Anyway it's great to hear differing perspectives about this, thanks for the video!
Thinking about it you make a great point on our role in maintaining world biodiversity in that we shouldn't try to become the master of the crypt here - any time we try to directly step in and manage ecosystems ourselves we usually make a mess of things (see how we deal with like 90% of invasives) - I do think humans have a role in damage mitigation though, specifically in trying to reduce the harm humans are *already* causing in reducing biodiversity/damaging ecosystems.
Thank you for your well reasoned and thoughtful comments. At some point in the future I want to do a full length video on this topic which will hopefully address more of these concerns.
wow... i remember seeing those glass sculptures you opened with on my visit to london, a seat of the powers of destruction, on an island that has been wiped of its natural habitats, forests, and wildlife. how ironic
I think your arguments are quite interesting, though your conclusion seems rather shallow to me Looking only at the first level of plants and animals that humans require and letting the rest die out is ridiculous. And that's foregoing the need for humans to want to eat and drink a wide variety of dishes requiring tens of thousands more species. When looking at the second level: What do these plants and animals require to grow and survive. You've already got a quadroupeling of species atleast. But then, what do those species require? And you can, and have to, follow along with that premise for a long time to make it work sustainably. Then you find a habitat full of plants, animals, insects, fungi, etc. where it's sustainable and stable enough, so not one species outcompetes all others, and the biosphere collapses. This range of plants and animals would be a different set for many environments, due to their inablity to grow unless with specific conditions. Creating another multiplication layer to this whole concept. Go through this thought process again, for the purposes of carbon sequestration, decomposition, soil improvement and a meriad of vectors I didn't think of right now, and you've got yourself more layers. Therefore saying that only a hand full of plants and animals are needed, is rather an odd conclusion. Then focussing on economic gains, while saying things like: "political pressure that exists to suppress narratives that run against the consensus of the environmentalist establishment" gives this a lot of hallmarks common of conspiracy theories and their spokesmen. Great video production skills though! I wish there was more like it.
Commenting this during the intro so forgive me if this is the direction the video takes. But conservations can make the claim that ‘biodiversity is beneficial in itself to human civilization’ to a logical extreme. It’s good for the biosphere. Keeps it resilient. The relative impact is small for each species, though our success can be maintained with a positive relationship with the biosphere itself
I think it is fairly clear to anyone who has a big picture view that our understanding of ecology is still progressing, and that we have no idea what the real value of many of these species are. I think its short sighted to only think about human commercial interests in a way that appears to assume we are at the peak of our knowledge. This reminds me of communist china trying to eliminate sparrows, because the sparrows were eating crop seeds, and that was seemingly lowering productivity. Its all well and good to say "only X plant species are responsible for carbon capture or pharmacology" but do you really know the entire ecological web for every species? The relationships between trees and fungi is incredibly complex. Likely we could increase our timber yields if we had a better understanding of those relationships. Are you totally confident there are not any downstream consequences that will affect our health from losing all of these apparently useless species? We make new discoveries about our own genome and biospheres constantly, it feels short sighted to assume we can even accurately judge how important every species is currently. We will almost certainly determine better methods of using biological systems in the future. We are in the early stages of generic engineering as one example. The more ecological diversity we lose now the less resources we have to study later.
thought provoking indeed! and fascinating perspective. i would generally agree with your takes here. if i had one argument to highlight the importance of biodiversity, however, it would be to highlight the amount of individual opportunities for environment modulating species presented with a diverse ecosystem. in my own uneducated words, the more species we have competing to perform certain ecological functions, the more opportunities for a supremely successful individual species or family. more dice on the board i guess.
Good video overall but I think you overstate your case a little. For example 12 plants might provide most of the calories but if all other plants went extinct every cuisine on Earth would take a massive hit. Far more than 12 food crops are economically and culturally significant. Many of them are probably only significant to a certain group of people but I hope you're not trying to make the case that the only species anyone should care about are the ones that can be said to be vital to humanity as a whole. Our whole lives after all are spent as members of specific communities with specific cultures.
It seems that you are only looking at biodiversity or just Nature through the scope of how it can benefit human economy. But what about the ethical side? What about the beauty of it all ? What about not being the only species that destroyed everything ? The (economic) payoff from preserving ecosystem and biodiversity should definitely NOT be the only factor motivating conservation efforts. Although I liked a lot how you end the video. We absolutely need to rethink and debate our trajectory. In Biology an ever growing cell not responding to anything is called cancer. I think that's exactly what the modern human society is for the nature around with the global worshiping of endless economic growth in a finite world. Cheers.
IMHO, if you value the activity of the human economy above the continued existence of species, their variety, and their general well-being then you have failed as a scientist. Especially since nothing deserves to lose its right to existence, protection, and preservation just because it does not meet arbitrarily defined human criteria in terms of value. Biodiversity and all related concepts do not need to, nor should they, conform to the human standard of value and/or profitability to be true and good. The reality is that doing the right thing is often very difficult and costly, especially when it comes to nature.
in equal measures edgy and thought-provoking, thank you
I think the strongest argument for the maintaining of biodiversity is simply the absurdly complex web of organism interactions. It’s incredibly hard to predict the downstream consequences of biodiversity loss but it is the diversity of functions species play that is actually valuable not the diversity of species inherently.
I prefered to read the article. I believe biodiversity should be preserved even if it has no value. I do not believe we have the right to end it. But again, few people think like this, and if the little diversity left ends, I just hope we dont end ourselves.
> "no value"
What kind of value are you talking about? There is no inherent value in the world, and no two people value the same kind of thing. If you prefer preserving biodiversity for its own sake, then it's clearly valuable to you, and saying that it has "no value" is nonsense. Are you perhaps equating "value" to "economic value", or something along these lines?
blessed to be dropped this mid trip
Why does this video seem to only care about biodiversity for the sake of human gain and its benefits to our economies, and not biodiversity for the sake of biodiversity.
The fact that wild animals who have done no wrong and were here before us deserve to exist without us meddling in their habitats.
An eagle doesn't care if it eats the last dormouse. Biodiversity only matters because we as individuals place value on it
@@MUSTASCH1OIt might not have the intellectual capacity to understand the effect of its actions, but the eagle and its offspring's survival absolutely will be affected by the loss of prey species.
It's clear from what we have learned that we still have a ton to learn about ecology.
Once the species are gone we cannot bring them back. Even if we preserve the DNA we lose the information about how they were interacting with other species in the ecosystem.
Certainly some species can go extinct without it causing giant ecological consequences.
However I think it is important to try and preserve as much biodiversity as we can until we understand the value of each species ecologically.
@@MUSTASCH1Othat’s stupid but ok
Exactly my thoughts. Why is human economic value more important than other species' existence?
Because the RUclipsr is a Conservative.
babe wake up, new unimaginable horrors beyond all human comprehension just dropped.
Great video as always, and a really interesting perspective, even if I don't fully agree with it. As you say it is super important to consider what we talk about when we say "biodiversity" and our reasons behind wanting to protect it.
A couple points of disagreement:
For one, I don't think it's a contradiction to care about biodiversity and put extra effort into keystone species. Keystone species aren't just important for the services they allow an ecosystem to provide, they are important for keeping that ecosystem alive. They are critical for the function of an entire ecosystem, and we "care" more about them because they are representing much more than their ecological niches. In that way, putting extra effort into maintaining key stone species health IS caring about biodiversity, since they are maintaining the health of the whole ecosystem and the diversity within it.
I think a key factor to bring up about biodiversity is one many ecologists, most that I've talked to at conferences, classrooms, etc. will freely admit: ecosystem diversity is one of the coolest aspects of nature that there is. The reason we care in the first place is that biodiversity is so interesting, both to study and just walk outside and appreciate, that we can't help but want to protect it. Ain't nothing wrong with that as a reason either, imo - ecology as a science isn't entirely built on damage controlling climate change or boosting ecosystem services, as important as those two things are: it is also built on investigating and learning about what we very subjectively find interesting - and I think for most ecologists biodiversity is near the top of the list.
I mean one could argue that unique ecosystems and species have no inherent value beyond the services they provide, but that's just a depressing way to look at the world, and a view I don't think many ecologists (yourself/myself included) would agree with.
The main idea I want to push back on in this video though is the comment on political sensitivity. it is wishful thinking to give a blanket "just tell the truth!" to scientists actively publishing in this field. You say yourself how easily misinformation spreads within ecological academia - misinformation in pop-sci and public discourse spreads 10x as fast, with way less oversight even then the small bit we get in academia.
The reason we consult so many ethics committees isn't because we are afraid of provoking the ire of big leftist science, but because we don't want our studies to be clickbaited to hell by a hundred different climate change denial channels. We don't want to end up negatively impacting the environment that we care about so much about we made caring about it our job.
In a magazine like Nature, one of the very few that the public actually reads, careful wording is *absolutely critical* to the dissemination of scientific information. If you're lucky enough to publish there, it goes without saying that you should spend as much time on how you're writing your article/study as the content of said article/study. That's not withholding truth, that's making sure that your study isn't misrepresented by the public. You want to make sure as well that nature is even the right place to be publishing. Journals like "Nature" and "Science" are for public facing research and articles - if you want nothing but the research, journals do exist and are more numerous then the public facing ones, they are just more obscure (and also less interesting to read so they get highlighted way less) - look at Methods in Ecology/Evolution, look at the whole PLOSone sphere, look at journals more specific to sub areas of ecology.
Anyway it's great to hear differing perspectives about this, thanks for the video!
Thinking about it you make a great point on our role in maintaining world biodiversity in that we shouldn't try to become the master of the crypt here - any time we try to directly step in and manage ecosystems ourselves we usually make a mess of things (see how we deal with like 90% of invasives) - I do think humans have a role in damage mitigation though, specifically in trying to reduce the harm humans are *already* causing in reducing biodiversity/damaging ecosystems.
Thank you for your well reasoned and thoughtful comments. At some point in the future I want to do a full length video on this topic which will hopefully address more of these concerns.
wow... i remember seeing those glass sculptures you opened with on my visit to london, a seat of the powers of destruction, on an island that has been wiped of its natural habitats, forests, and wildlife. how ironic
I think your arguments are quite interesting, though your conclusion seems rather shallow to me
Looking only at the first level of plants and animals that humans require and letting the rest die out is ridiculous. And that's foregoing the need for humans to want to eat and drink a wide variety of dishes requiring tens of thousands more species.
When looking at the second level: What do these plants and animals require to grow and survive. You've already got a quadroupeling of species atleast. But then, what do those species require?
And you can, and have to, follow along with that premise for a long time to make it work sustainably. Then you find a habitat full of plants, animals, insects, fungi, etc. where it's sustainable and stable enough, so not one species outcompetes all others, and the biosphere collapses.
This range of plants and animals would be a different set for many environments, due to their inablity to grow unless with specific conditions. Creating another multiplication layer to this whole concept.
Go through this thought process again, for the purposes of carbon sequestration, decomposition, soil improvement and a meriad of vectors I didn't think of right now, and you've got yourself more layers.
Therefore saying that only a hand full of plants and animals are needed, is rather an odd conclusion.
Then focussing on economic gains, while saying things like: "political pressure that exists to suppress narratives that run against the consensus of the environmentalist establishment" gives this a lot of hallmarks common of conspiracy theories and their spokesmen.
Great video production skills though! I wish there was more like it.
Here before this channel balloons to 1M+ subs
Commenting this during the intro so forgive me if this is the direction the video takes. But conservations can make the claim that ‘biodiversity is beneficial in itself to human civilization’ to a logical extreme. It’s good for the biosphere. Keeps it resilient. The relative impact is small for each species, though our success can be maintained with a positive relationship with the biosphere itself
I think it is fairly clear to anyone who has a big picture view that our understanding of ecology is still progressing, and that we have no idea what the real value of many of these species are. I think its short sighted to only think about human commercial interests in a way that appears to assume we are at the peak of our knowledge.
This reminds me of communist china trying to eliminate sparrows, because the sparrows were eating crop seeds, and that was seemingly lowering productivity.
Its all well and good to say "only X plant species are responsible for carbon capture or pharmacology" but do you really know the entire ecological web for every species? The relationships between trees and fungi is incredibly complex. Likely we could increase our timber yields if we had a better understanding of those relationships.
Are you totally confident there are not any downstream consequences that will affect our health from losing all of these apparently useless species?
We make new discoveries about our own genome and biospheres constantly, it feels short sighted to assume we can even accurately judge how important every species is currently.
We will almost certainly determine better methods of using biological systems in the future. We are in the early stages of generic engineering as one example. The more ecological diversity we lose now the less resources we have to study later.
thought provoking indeed! and fascinating perspective. i would generally agree with your takes here. if i had one argument to highlight the importance of biodiversity, however, it would be to highlight the amount of individual opportunities for environment modulating species presented with a diverse ecosystem. in my own uneducated words, the more species we have competing to perform certain ecological functions, the more opportunities for a supremely successful individual species or family. more dice on the board i guess.
22:25 we needed that debate 20 years ago, that ship has already sailed
Good video overall but I think you overstate your case a little.
For example 12 plants might provide most of the calories but if all other plants went extinct every cuisine on Earth would take a massive hit. Far more than 12 food crops are economically and culturally significant.
Many of them are probably only significant to a certain group of people but I hope you're not trying to make the case that the only species anyone should care about are the ones that can be said to be vital to humanity as a whole. Our whole lives after all are spent as members of specific communities with specific cultures.
Ah yes. The anime ecologist.
Oxygen.
It seems that you are only looking at biodiversity or just Nature through the scope of how it can benefit human economy. But what about the ethical side? What about the beauty of it all ? What about not being the only species that destroyed everything ?
The (economic) payoff from preserving ecosystem and biodiversity should definitely NOT be the only factor motivating conservation efforts.
Although I liked a lot how you end the video. We absolutely need to rethink and debate our trajectory.
In Biology an ever growing cell not responding to anything is called cancer.
I think that's exactly what the modern human society is for the nature around with the global worshiping of endless economic growth in a finite world.
Cheers.
Because the RUclipsr is a Reactionary Conservative, what else do you expect from him?
IMHO, if you value the activity of the human economy above the continued existence of species, their variety, and their general well-being then you have failed as a scientist.
Especially since nothing deserves to lose its right to existence, protection, and preservation just because it does not meet arbitrarily defined human criteria in terms of value.
Biodiversity and all related concepts do not need to, nor should they, conform to the human standard of value and/or profitability to be true and good.
The reality is that doing the right thing is often very difficult and costly, especially when it comes to nature.
Davis David Hernandez Amy Lewis Maria