Loss of keystone species[1]. Say, if bees went extinct, our agriculture would come crashing. We still rely on other organisms for a lot of important, sometimes poorly understood until too late[2] functions that sustain our civilization.
If bees went extinct, it would affect none of the essential crops we grow. Grains are wind pollinated, not insect pollinated.
More generally, I'm sure extinctions would wreak havoc on wild ecosystems. But we grow food by explicitly destroying wild ecosystems, replacing them with monocultures. Crops seem to grow just fine anyway.
I think it's a bit telling/alarming that you seem to be "okay" with monocultures and mass extinctions because we don't seem to be affected (at the moment).
This discussion is about the claim it causes civilization to collapse, not whether I'm okay with it. But hey, thanks for steering this in an ad hominem direction.
Which you steered there because you wanted to be nitpicky about the biodiversity issue, where what I originally said was that civilization is likely to collapse because we can't seem to address the climate, biodiversity and energy problems.
But hey, thanks for steering it in an ad hominem direction.
I'm not allowed to question a statement that loss of biodiversity could cause civilization to collapse in the next few decades? Really?
This is an objective statement about facts out in the world, and as such it is completely acceptable to ask how this position was reached. I questioned it because it looked like bullshit to me. You don't think bullshit should be called out?
The statement was that the climate change, biodiversity loss and energy crisis could cause civilization to collapse in the next few decades. You cherry-picked "biodiversity" there.
I was merely pointing out the irony that you complain about somebody steering the discussion somewhere while you actually did that in the first place.
To start, remember that in the 50s and 60s, the Gros Michel banana went extinct due to a blight that killed the entire strain because it was genetically homogeneous (there's the lack of biodiversity you asked for), and now what we see in supermarkets is the Cavendish.
Now, imagine if instead of a fruit, a blight did similar devastation to rice. But not just any of the 22 species of rice grown, no, let's get rid of one of the two that's predominantly consumed across the world.
One rice species fails and everyone relying on it as the staple carbohydrate/energy source in their diet is at risk of famine. Rice is what allowed Asia to become the most populated continent. Wheat can't compare. The diversity of grains humanity enjoyed in prehistory was already whittled down before this imaginary scenario started. Even if you rush in aid from around the world, even if you drop everything trying to figure out ways to successfully replace the lost rice strain with one of the others, people need to eat every day. There will be a starvation event, period.
There have been plenty of events that dropped population throughout history and it's always rebounded, like Black Death. COVID really messed up supply chains for a while. But losing an important strain of rice forever isn't a temporary setback like a disease. Civilization now is so complex that permanently losing a staple crop and population to starvation has a very real risk of undermining infrastructure to the point that there's not a critical mass of either physical or knowledge workers that can keep things running, especially if people are fighting over scraps, fleeing a breakdown of social order, or retreating into their family home hoping to weather the storm. Cascades are bitches.
And the world already has heightened tensions in other areas, Russia v Ukraine, Israel vs Hamas, Iran, China, India and Pakistan. Plus with other resources like oil and water already hotly contested, and the need to keep face against geopolitical rivals, could lead to all sorts of strange things. If China is particularly devastated by a loss of rice, would Xi be desperate enough to move into Siberia for more resources, or finally poke the Spratley Islands hard enough for them to ignite? If India's particularly plagued, maybe Pakistan will take advantage of that? The US will find itself drawn in. How long until someone is driven to use the football?
And, here's an extreme example: what if all biological matter on Earth was human? You think we could handle the "biodiversity loss" well?
More generally, I'm sure extinctions would wreak havoc on wild ecosystems. But we grow food by explicitly destroying wild ecosystems, replacing them with monocultures. Crops seem to grow just fine anyway.