HPD’s quote was “your side of the debate would’ve resulted in an extinct species.”
Many areas of Pakistan are very scenic, it’s just not a place for Americans (or maybe Westerners in general I’m guessing.) Does that extend to Asians or Middle Easterners? China, India, etc have a middle class that travel. Or is Pakistan just too dangerous for anyone? I honestly don’t know.
Edit: Can go mountain climbing there ;)
Of course there are many strategies and tactics which can contribute to saving a species.
But for this specific species in question, it’s reasonable to extrapolate from what was happening before: unrelenting poaching with rapid population decline. That ends in extinction.
As others have stated, ecotourism is an awesome thing in places where it’s a workable solution. But good luck on getting enough people willing to spend enough money to travel to a hazardous, remote region in order to see a goat which results in enough money to change the economic value of the species for the local population.
Someday, ecotourism could be a factor for this species but during recent times when the species was in mortal danger it was not feasible.
You would apparently willing to go back in a time machine, stop a program which we now know for certain is saving the species, then replace the working system with a roll of the die to try to save it using a method against which the deck is stacked, just because of your delicate feels about the way the species was saved.
Your’s is the morally repugnant approach.
MikeJ
4674
Getting back to climate, a NYT look at carbon capture:
At the moment, global CO₂ emissions are about 37 billion metric tons per year, and we’re on track to raise temperatures by 3 degrees Celsius by 2100. To have a shot at maintaining a climate suitable for humans, the world’s nations most likely have to reduce CO₂ emissions drastically from the current level — to perhaps 15 billion or 20 billion metric tons per year by 2030; then, through some kind of unprecedented political and industrial effort, we need to bring carbon emissions to zero by around 2050. In this context, Climeworks’s effort to collect 1,000 metric tons of CO₂ on a rooftop near Zurich might seem like bailing out the ocean one bucket at a time. Conceptually, however, it’s important. Last year’s I.P.C.C. report noted that it may be impossible to limit warming to 1.5 degrees by 2100 through only a rapid switch to clean energy, electric cars and the like. To preserve a livable environment we may also need to extract CO₂ from the atmosphere. As Wurzbacher put it, “if you take all these numbers from the I.P.C.C., you end up with something like eight to 10 billion tons — gigatons — of CO₂ that need to be removed from the air every year, if we are serious about 1.5 or 2 degrees.”
You’re advocating a position that would’ve domed a species to extinction, and you think I’m the jerk in this scenario?
Trans. “Hey guys, remember that time a flyball bounced off my head and then over the wall for a home-run? Yeah, I’m that dumb, and I’m broke now too.”
I’m advocating against big game trophy hunters claiming that their fees are the only way to save a species that’s endangered. They’re not culling the weakest member of the heard, the old males, the wounded or the sick. They’re taking the healthiest member of the herd. Most successful conservation efforts don’t entail trophy hunter fees. And if they care as they claim for the welfare of a species, a 100 grand for a billionaire is like a 100 bucks to us. You can drone on with your condescending superiority about “feels” all you want if that makes you feel better.
Edit: Sorry to shit up the thread. HPD if you want to carry on the conversation feel free to PM me.
This fact, with which I agree, does not invalidate the analogy. If one child is valuable, many children are therefore tremendously valuable, so the proposed trade off remains.
Oghier
4680
Well, you ended a well thought out, well written post with a gratuitous insult.
I stand by the substance of my arguments but what can I say… I try to not go over the top too often but when I do I go with gusto!
My apologies to @MrGrumpy!
Thank you, and apologies back.
Nesrie
4683
I really don’t know if trophy hunting is working or not. I know we have some real assholes doing it. Waiting 12 hours to watch an animal die is repugnant. We also have animals that these guys can’t really hunt that we’re losing so trophy hunting can’t even be the answer to everything.
What I do know is what we’re doing isn’t working for a number of species, and I’m sure we can do better. Eco tourism isn’t bringing in enough dough. The zoos try but they’re under constant attack from well meaning people… there’s got to be a way though.
Timex
4684
We generally live in harmony because we kill them.
rowe33
4686
On an related note, do you think there are actual places in the world in 2019 where a wealthy enough person could pay to hunt a human? I assume this sort of thing must happen somewhere, given that some people are still evil enough to keep slaves, etc,
Cormac
4687
Well, this isn’t hunting, but Sri Lanka is apparently looking for executioners? So if they want to get their kicks killing people, perhaps this is something for them.
@ArmandoPenblade
Armando: Yeah, dealing with climate change in any kind of useful, longterm way, is probably going to require a political party to essentially commit suicide to ram through a package of proposals and laws more complicated and overwhelmingly transformative than the ACA, because it’s not a problem that we as a species can afford to deal with slowly and piecemeal. That approach has gotten us to the suicide cliff we’re all dangling five feet beyond in open air, Wile E. Coyote style.
I dunno, I guess I’m skeptical this will happen. Is there any example of a representative democracy dealing with a looming crisis of this magnitude rather than one that is already upon them? It’s not something democracies are very good at. Britain and the US more or less steadfastly refused to arm up until they were actually dragged into WW2. And the way Brexit is playing out is instructive: All parties can see it’s a looming disaster, but none have the sense of responsibility to take the bullet for calling it off.
It seems way more likely that climate change response will all be reactions to actual crises as they happen, rather than any action to prevent or mitigate them before-hand. Governments will react to refugee crises, probably badly as usual. Think Katrina or Puerto Rico FEMA response, but happening in slow motion with hundreds of thousands or even millions flooded. The response will be typically stupid, e.g. government making good on flood insurance so people can rebuild houses more or less in the same place that will be flooded again.
Same thing with agriculture: Crop failures will happen slowly, over time, and get gradually worse, and the government response will be wholly inadequate and probably wrong, e.g. focused on pouring money into farmers and farming regions that are basically doomed.
I mean, the problem with climate change is that it will for a long time be irritating, then suddenly it will be very bad. There will e.g. be periodic flood / recede cycles in coastal areas, until suddenly the West Antarctic ice shelf will slide into the sea and lots of places are permanently flooded. No one will do anything useful about it while it is irritating, and then it is a massive crisis.
“Send a hunter in to track and shoot man shaped creature”
The hook: We sent out 30 hunters and didnt tell them.
Even better hook: Dont film it, just say you are and leave them on the mountain. Do this a lot. Regularly.
I like it! Maybe we can even charge them license fees.
Better still combine it with one of those Paelo Survival shows and you can have 30 half naked mud smeared hunters building traps and trying to get within ambush distance of what looks like a half naked mud smeared man.
“yeah, its all on drone and tiny camouflaged cameras, see you in the a month”
