Loss of intensity and diversity of noises in ecosystems reflects an alarming decline in healthy biodiversity, say sound ecologists
Sounds of the natural world are rapidly falling silent and will become “acoustic fossils” without urgent action to halt environmental destruction, international experts have warned.
As technology develops, sound has become an increasingly important way of measuring the health and biodiversity of ecosystems: our forests, soils and oceans all produce their own acoustic signatures. Scientists who use ecoacoustics to measure habitats and species say that quiet is falling across thousands of habitats, as the planet witnesses extraordinary losses in the density and variety of species. Disappearing or losing volume along with them are many familiar sounds: the morning calls of birds, rustle of mammals through undergrowth and summer hum of insects.
Today, tuning into some ecosystems reveals a “deathly silence”, said Prof Steve Simpson from the University of Bristol. “It is that race against time – we’ve only just discovered that they make such sounds, and yet we hear the sound disappearing.”
“The changes are profound. And they are happening everywhere,” said US soundscape recordist Bernie Krause, who has taken more than 5,000 hours of recordings from seven continents over the past 55 years. He estimates that 70% of his archive is from habitats that no longer exist.
Reminds me of that report from a couple years ago that wildlife populations have seen close to a 70% decrease in the last 50 years. Basically over my lifetime 2/3rds of what makes the world wonderful has disappeared.
In the same timeframe, the number of humans has grown by 100%. Basically twice as much of what makes the world terrible.
When you consider who causes the most destruction, it’s actually very few humans that do the most damage.
A small number of humans are commanding the resources to do that damage, but they aren’t the ones creating or even directly using the resources. e.g. People often talk about the damage caused by rich people using private jets - but the rich people didn’t build or pilot the jets. They just tell other people to do those things. So I think its not as simple as just a few people causing destruction. They are only able to cause that damage because the rest of us empower them to do it.
Nobody really cares about climate change, is the sad fact. People want to fly on a plane for a vacation, live in the suburbs, eat meat, and use their time consuming everything.
I think “nobody” is overstating it a bit. But certainly the majority of people don’t care enough.
A lot of people use the reasoning that they don’t need to adjust their livestyle to reduce the kinds of things you mentioned, because some other people are doing much worse. And there is some truth to that. It is definitely true that the decisions of a small number of people make a massively disproportionate impact on the problem. But it isn’t a helpful line of reasoning unless you’re intending to take steps to change those other people.
1 in a 100,000 people in first world countries might be environmentalists. Everyone else just pretends to be and continues booking flights to the Caribbean. Much like in the 1960s only a few people were hippies but everybody took on their esthetic. It’s a dead buzzword.