Sunday, November 19, 2023

Dubious Success

Life on Earth is about dubious success and anonymous failure.

Let’s start with anonymous failure: more than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species, that have ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct.

What about the dubious success? That’s the estimated 8 billion people now on earth.

Humans alone represent about 33 percent of all the biomass of land-based mammals.

Livestock, excluding chickens and other poultry, represent 65 percent of land-based mammal biomass. Of this livestock there are an estimated 1.5 billion cattle, 1 billion sheep, and 1 billion pigs.

What about wild animals?

Wild animals represent only 2 percent of mammal biomass.


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