[nyc_data_geek]

Because we are all interdependent, and monocultures fail. Loss of biodiversity means you are more likely to die of starvation. Loss of habitat means you are more likely to die of disease. Loss of biodiversity means less resiliency to a changing climate and world.

We get a lot of our medicines and medical treatments from plants and animals, historically and to this day. If not for those creatures, these avenues of progress may well be inaccessible dead ends.

Life is a unique information form given rise through evolution. Elements are plentiful in the universe, but as far as we know, the information in the DNA of a species exists nowhere else. Thus, every species unique in the universe - we don't even know what we don't know about life yet, but we do know that every species extinct is an irreplaceable loss to the frontiers of knowledge we mostly haven't even managed to explore yet.

Some reasons offhand.

[ffsm8]

You're making it sound a lot more straightforward then it is.

We're currently producing incredible amounts of food through monocultures, which is kinda the opposite of biodiversity. So the relationship with starvation is objectively inverted: we sacrificed it to boost yields!

Resilience is another thing that's very hard to reason about, because why would resilience matter to you if your race dies out? Sure, some animals and insects would have a higher chance of survival under different settings, but why does that matter to you, a human?

The medicine is a valid point, but I don't think random people on the Internet would prioritize that higher then cheap food, which we just established is enabled by sacrificing biodiversity.

While I'd agree that biodiversity is probably important, finding reasons for why - which actually matter to the average Joe - isnt quiet as easy

[jandrese]

> We're currently producing incredible amounts of food through monocultures, which is kinda the opposite of biodiversity. So the relationship with starvation is objectively inverted: we sacrificed it to boost yields!

But we have almost lost Florida as an orange producer due to the fragility of a monoculture against disease. So in some ways it is even worse. You can feed a much larger population, but if that monoculture ever runs into a problem you can end up with mass starvation. See also: the Irish potato blight.

[kergonath]

> We're currently producing incredible amounts of food through monocultures, which is kinda the opposite of biodiversity. So the relationship with starvation is objectively inverted: we sacrificed it to boost yields!

Even those monocultures depend on a working ecosystem around them.

Regarding yields, it’s a risk assessment. They can be great in the short term and then crater when the soil is destroyed. At this point fertilisers are required just to keep production level. And if there is a disease that wipes out a species, then it’s game over. And it happens occasionally, from the Irish potato blight, the almost-complete destruction of European vines, whatever is destroying olive trees near the Mediterranean. There are several examples. Lack of flexibility in the long term means lack of resilience.

> Resilience is another thing that's very hard to reason about, because why would resilience matter to you if your race dies out? Sure, some animals and insects would have a higher chance of survival under different settings, but why does that matter to you, a human?

There are philosophical problems with this (those species are not less deserving than we are), but let’s put them aside for the sake of the argument.

The problem is that there is a lot that we don’t understand about the world around us, and we occasionally discover that a species was useful when it disappears. Or the contrary, that it is an invasive pest if we introduce it somewhere. Or that useless things like mangroves are actually critical to avoid unchecked erosion. Or that burning that useless Amazonian forest is actually terrible on at least 3 levels (direct emissions, that forest is not available anymore to absorb other emissions, topsoil erosion and degradation that makes it terrible agricultural land over a generation).

This is very bad because we have only one planet and we cannot shrug, write it down, and do it better next time.

[nyc_data_geek]

Fair point about monocultures increasing yields. That said, they are also more susceptible to being wiped out by black swan events (see:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_disease)

Resilience of your food supply should matter to you, as an organism that needs food to live.

[ffsm8]

But the reality is that whenever such an event happened... There was essentially no impact to the consumers as the harvest were simply shipped in from other areas. Once again, hard to convince anyone under these circumstances

[nyc_data_geek]

There was an impact to consumers! The Cavendish is not equivalent to the Gros Michel, it is supposedly an inferior fruit as far as size, texture and flavor. Granted a slight degradation in quality just may not grab people, but they should see that climate stresses increase the chance of their favorite food being next lost, or of missing out on a vital cure yet to be discovered. These things have immediacy.

[kergonath]

> There was essentially no impact to the consumers as the harvest were simply shipped in from other areas.

… in the US. You left that critical bit out, and even then you have things like the dust bowl. Even to this day, without going back to the potato blight, there are famines regularly. It’s really hard not to see that as a direct effect on consumers.

[hollerith]

During the Dust Bowl, there was no welfare, so the families in Oklahoma and nearby who were relying on a harvest and had no other plan for getting income and no savings ended up without food and without money with which to buy food.

There's never been a time in US history or a place in the US such that there was a shortage of food for people who had money to buy food unless you count situations like the Donner Party in which a caravan spent the winter of 1846–1847 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

The US not only has the most productive chunk of farmland in the world, but also much fewer natural barriers to efficient transportation compared to productive farming regions in the rest of the world. Certainly during the Dust Bowl, there was plenty of food grown in places like Iowa and Illinois that could easily and reliably have been shipped to Oklahoma, but no one did because no one (not even the federal government) considered it their job to help the hungry people in Oklahoma.

Part of the reason it took so long for the US to grow a welfare system is the American ethic of individual freedom and distrust of government, but another part is that it was easier for people to get the basics of survival than in places like Germany where the welfare system developed many decades earlier (the Dust Bowl being of course an exception to the general easiness).

[kergonath]

> During the Dust Bowl, there was no welfare, so the families in Oklahoma and nearby who were relying on a harvest and had no other plan for getting income and no savings ended up without food and without money with which to buy food.

This is still pretty much the situation in most of the world. Your argument is completely American-centric, which is fine. But again, there are many examples of the lack of resilience of some agriculture practice doing quite a lot of damage.

> There's never been a time in US history or a place in the US such that there was a shortage of food for people who had money to buy food unless you count situations like the Donner Party in which a caravan spent the winter of 1846–1847 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

I did not know about that episode, thanks for the rabbit hole :)

That said, the “who had money to buy food” is problematic. Of course there will always be people who can afford 1) unsustainable practices to secure their supply of food, 2) importing stuff from the other side of the world, or 3) just move to where life is easier. It does not mean that famine does not exist, just that some people have more than they deserve.

[Teever]

On a long enough timeline it is that straight forward.

These monocultures and the carbon-based energy systems and the capitalist systems that depend on will fail and millions will die.

We are heading for a cliff.