Lyle Lewis

Since European colonization, North America has lost 9–11 billion birds. • ~5–6 billion before 1940 • ~1–2 billion from 1940–1970 • ~2.9 billion since 1970 The quiet collapse of abundance is how the Sixth Mass Extinction is playing out: fewer wings, fewer songs.

Different countries degrade the oceans in different ways.

@oliver_dreher Mitigation is almost always a myth we use to deceive ourselves.

@Race2Extinct What really is mitigation. Digging giant pits and them spreading it between them?

The fiction was irreversible environmental damage could be mitigated for $213,000. Now we’ve moved on to something simpler: the environment isn’t worth anything.

@AShoutOutfromMN It never ends.

@Race2Extinct x.com/MotherJones/st…

@Stanzupforit 😊

Guilty; CCP = Can’t Change Physics

@NBPTROCKS I had to stretch things to fit the acronym. I have no idea what CCP stands for.

@Race2Extinct Asterix-there are possibilities of enacting change in quantum physics. I did block the clown talking about China.

@GumboJawknee @DogsBreakfastAZ You’re embarrassing yourself. The ivory-billed woodpecker was officially declared extinct 77 years after the actual extinction. That was for a species that is easily found. Consider taking a rudimentary high school biology class.

70–95% of fish stocks depleted. Half the world’s catch comes from the same waters. We’re not pushing limits. We’re drawing down what’s left.

@SpeakingBee @skibidyenjoyer It’s a lot easier to name countries who haven’t depleted fish stocks.

@skibidyenjoyer @Race2Extinct Britain, Canada.

@sergioautonomo Don’t feel all alone. Anyone trying to shed a light on serious environmental problems is routinely ignored.

Lamentablemente llevo años hablando de esto y lejos de mejorar, ha empeorado: x.com/race2extinct/s…

Los Chinos no respetan ninguna de las medidas medioambientales ni de los tratados internacionales. Si tienen que ir con mini-ciudades enteras de barcos a pescar en las costas de otro continente (América) lo hacen y les importa una mierda la sobrepesca.

@Trierarch81 Exactly

K, I think we might have been talking past each other earlier. I'm saying that we need a worldwide solution and it has to include China. You're saying we need a worldwide solution and it can't be just about China. I think we have some common ground here. Has to be an international effort.

I have questions. Which country created a deep water fishing fleet because they depleted their own stocks in their EEZ decades ago and also created hypoxic dead zones from its massive ocean pollution? Which country accounts for 44% of the world's visible global fishing activity? Which country is consistently ranked as the top IUU (Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated) perpetrator? Which country accounts for 65% of unreported high seas catch including 83% of recent world carrier fishing? Which country routinely engages in AIS spoofing, illegal reflagging, and fishing without licenses? What do you think would happen to these overfished stocks if this country stopped having this outsized effect on overfishing?

China is a major player—no argument there. Subsidies, distant-water fleets, and enforcement gaps matter. But this isn’t a single-actor problem. It’s a system: global demand, subsidies across multiple countries, and a race in shared waters. The carbon analogy fits perfectly. Everyone points to the largest emitter. Everyone keeps emitting. Same system. Same outcome. Focusing on one country explains scale, but not the mechanism driving the decline.

China's fishing industry is 88 million metric tons. The US's is 4 million. What the US does will not effect the world's fishing stocks. What China does will, especially because they routinely invade the EEZ's of other nations with their fishing militia. And demand isn't the driver here because China heavily subsidizes their distant water fishing fleet (they're the world leader in subsidies) to the point where much of their DWF would not be otherwise profitable (it represents 45% of the profit with some operators). Do you understand? True demand is lower than the cost of this fleet's operations. The CCP has these subsidies because the fishing fleet is about sea control and Mahanian geopolitical power projection. We saw a similar dynamic with the Soviet Union's whaling industry which was completely detached from demand, and focused on meeting goals set by party bosses. (There's the famous phrase, “We should leave a desert behind us...”) Another reason we need to focus on China first and foremost because we need to make sure we're reducing fishing overall and not just transferring overfishing in a game of musical chairs. Because we ran into this problem with carbon emissions. Developed countries moved their industrial capacity to China, which made it look on paper like they reduced their emissions when in fact, they just sent it overseas (China now accounts for more emissions than the rest of the developed world combined) and overall world emissions are reaching record highs. Similarly, if China is allowed to continue to empty the world's fishing stocks with impunity, we could find ourselves in a situation where other countries reduce their fishing, but buy the same amount of fish from China to fill the gap, and thus overfishing remains the same. And the problem goes unsolved.

@Trierarch81 The US has collapsed cod, tuna, and salmon stocks and has “rules.” The demand for fish is worldwide. If the demand goes away, so does the pressure. 8.3B people are structurally dependent on depletion of fish stocks, soils, and forests.

I agree that one single country isn't doing all the overfishing. But we can't turn this around without dealing with the leading perpetrator. That is priority number one. Other countries will feel like suckers if they play by the rules and China gets away with murder. The rules have to apply to everyone.

China is a major player, but blaming one country misses the mechanism. Overfishing persists because it’s subsidized, globally demanded, and weakly regulated almost everywhere.

@Race2Extinct hermit warblers rely on mature and old growth forest purdue.edu/fnr/extension/…

@JohnGuaido69 No easy solutions.

@Race2Extinct my mostly native prairie is full of them to the brim but the neighbors let their cats outside and have killed some junco babies... I need solutions for dealing with cats

The warblers are still coming. But the system that sustained them isn’t. Each spring still feels intact—even as the conditions that made it possible are coming apart..

"The warblers are still coming. But the system that sustained them isn’t. Each spring still feels intact—even as the conditions that made it possible are coming apart..."

@MissJane_M_ We are hearing echoes, quieter and quieter.

@Race2Extinct To say your article is sad is an understatement. It carries more than the weight of truth. While we may yet hear birdsongs at the break of dawn, are we noticing how their voices are declining, fading into the distance? Humans have disrupted the cycle of life—

@skibidyenjoyer Yes. The chinese fishing fleets are awful, but it’s naive to think all of the other nations are innocents.

@Race2Extinct bro the chinese fleet is worldwide, just outside the EEZ of nearby countries, fishing everything dry with no remorse