## Metadata - Author: [[brookings.edu]] - Full Title: Chapter-Five_Breakthrough - Category: #articles - URL: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Chapter-Five_Breakthrough.pdf ## Highlights - The 2020s will be the most consequential decade for nonhuman life in recorded history. We are facing, in our lifetimes, a sixth mass extinction event in the last 500 million years.3 There are half as many wild animals alive today as there were in 1970. The biomass of chickens exceeds that of all wild birds. The biomass of humans and livestock is twenty­-five times that of all wild ani- mals. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gs4g2gc8v3gey9enj9y09004)) - Some US$24 billion a year is spent on conservation worldwide. Most of it is spent in industrialized coun- tries; only a tiny fraction ends up in the hands of the extreme poor. The sum is itself dwarfed by the US$97 billion the world spends each year on pet food: even as wild animals go extinct, there is a humanization of pet animals. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gs4g3f62r6ybebd7yzjgb7hc)) - By some calculations, the direct services nature provides to industry are worth US$40 trillion annually and the total value of natural capital may exceed the US$80 trillion value of Earth GDP. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gs4g4kb0be7rrpt1ehk3yyef)) - Some studies have shown that ecosystem services can be quantified to the individual life­-form. African forest elephants may give US$1.75 million value per animal against US$40,000 value for their tusks. Large whales may be worth US$2 million per animal because of their ability to draw down carbon. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gs4g53svt9y0r8vhbhz99kcf)) - Nonhumans undoubtedly have economic value within large complex systems, but their protection cannot be made on economic grounds. At some point, the economics of biodiversity becomes as meaningless as the economics of the entire biosphere. Nor is it clear that interspecies money can be modeled on the basis of extinction risk, because only a fraction of existing species have been recorded. Quite the opposite: LM may have utility as a species discovery tool payment mechanism precisely because our knowledge of the living world is so patchy. ( ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gs4g5wy9bjv4qk5gznxd111q)) - Anthropogenic mass in plastic, metal, glass, textiles, cement, gravel, and other materials has doubled every two decades and will continue to increase over the next decade. In 2020, anthropogenic mass exceeded global living biomass for the first time. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gs4mtgmyk3c1xv8sq0qa2v8g)) - AI amplifies anthropocentrism. The animals we most often interact with are pets, subject to humanization (with names, toys, clothes, and so on), or else digital simulacra in gaming domains (for instance, US$1.5 billion was spent in 2020 on Animal Crossing, a bubblegum­-colored game for the Nintendo Switch console, in which players build worlds with virtual animals). We can posit a rule that nature will recede in our consciousness for as long as the digital advances, unless and until it is well represented. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gs4mvfe468vngs0t3rqycdx3)) - Because it is capital­-intensive and financed by venture and military interests, the evolutionary arc of AI bends toward profit and security. The AI community shows little interest in the natural world. Stanford University’s first report of its vaunted 100­-Year Study on AI (“AI and Life in 2030”) contained long sections on gaming and entertainment, but did not mention nature. Whatever AI finds remunerative goes fast, and whatever it judges powerful goes deep, while the unremunerative and the powerless go ignored. Since wild animals, trees, birds, and other beings lack money and voice, there is every chance AI will be incurious of them at precisely the moment it should be paying attention. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gs4mw4b18tty32jqv39f31qn)) - First of all, the LM would give a Nubian giraffe a trusted identity based on facial recognition, gait recognition, and individual markings. With this identity, the animal would hold some financial value (say, US$32,000 in LM) and begin to disburse it in order to improve its life outcomes. It will pay to distribute mobile phones and for sensors to be deployed at water holes and along paths. It will pay for preferential access to water holes over cattle and goats. It may, in some instances, pay for security to stop poachers and charcoal burners. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gs4n3c22nfnecfzv2nnv5wcy)) - Note: There is a sleight of hand here. It's not really the giraffe paying for it. It's the projection of our own values onto the giraffe. We are using the giraffe as an avatar, much in the same way we use digital avatars to feed our own desires. - The animals will pay for periodic drone and satellite imagery, weather and farming data, and economic and security intelligence; internet connectivity from provid- ers such as Starlink may be paid by the animals in LM. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gs4n47rxwq59fyae2jaaf9xb)) - Note: This whole system reinforces the technology fetish which serves the existing Western powers - Directing LM from charismatic to umbrella species will increase protection for the same investment (for example, a study in Australia found a conservation approach targeting umbrella species increased protection of terrestrial species from 6 percent to 46 percent) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gs4rg6w9mv54sqv4hrwc6ge6))