"Ten thousand years ago, 99% of biomass (i.e. zoomass) was wild animals. Today, humans and the animals that we raise as food make up 98% of the zoomass."
""Research by Professor Vaclav Smil from the University of Manitoba in Canada shows that as a percentage of mammalian zoomass, human beings and our domesticated mammalian animals (for food, beasts of burden and as pets) have gone from <0.1% 10,000 years ago, to 10–12% at the start of the industrial revolution to between 96–98% today."
Has total biomass (not just wild biomass) declined? I would expect it has, because most modern farming tries very hard to make sure the only thing growing is the thing that makes the farmer profit. A lot of farms are ecological wastelands; or rather, they sustain less biomass than they could.
I suppose it has. Farm land has 2% of a forest biomass (iirc). Agriculture (meat/dairy/sea-food) is worse than most want to acknowledge.
Land and marine ecosystems are decimated (70-90% die off, incl. soil & plankton). We've killed off almost everything.
The change has to come, there is nothing more important imho, or we'll be heading directly into blade-runner like future. Personally I would prefer star trek.
Wild mammals:
100.000 years ago ... 20 mil. tonnes of carbon
10.000 years ago ... 15 mil. tonnes of carbon
100 years ago ... 10 mil. tonnes of carbon
now ... 3 mil. tonnes of carbon
https://ourworldindata.org/mammals
"Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of human civilizations. This was mainly driven by overhunting and habitat loss."
"Wild animals only make up 4% of the world’s mammals; humans account for 34%, and our livestock for 62%."
"More than 178 of the world’s largest species went extinct during the Quaternary Extinction. Overhunting was likely the main driver."
"One-quarter of the world’s mammal species are threatened with extinction. Most are in the tropics."
"It is the largest mammals that are at the greatest risk of extinction. Most due to overhunting and poaching."
Cowspiracy [https://www.cowspiracy.com/facts]:
"Ten thousand years ago, 99% of biomass (i.e. zoomass) was wild animals. Today, humans and the animals that we raise as food make up 98% of the zoomass."
Postgrowth [https://medium.com/postgrowth/the-bomb-is-still-ticking-2810...]:
""Research by Professor Vaclav Smil from the University of Manitoba in Canada shows that as a percentage of mammalian zoomass, human beings and our domesticated mammalian animals (for food, beasts of burden and as pets) have gone from <0.1% 10,000 years ago, to 10–12% at the start of the industrial revolution to between 96–98% today."