It’s surprising how much this headline affects me. Who doesn’t like penguins? And seals are nice, but penguins are so likeable. We’ve really ruined everything.
I get a bit of this looming feeling every time there is discussion about the Awk programming language, because it reminds me we already got the closest thing to a penguin in the nothern hemisphere extinct by the XIX century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_auk
Hope this time around we do a better job of avoiding complete doom for these species.
I love penguins, and this news has me close to tears
My local zoo has a little event during winter where the king penguins get to go for a little walk around outside their enclosure. I've been a few times this year and they are just such fun animals. It has made me want to get involved with the zoo somehow, maybe not working with the animals directly but something. I don't know.
It makes me so sad how we humans know that we are messing things up on the planet but we keep doing it anyways because the economy must grow
About 15 years ago, I saw on the news in Europe that 8 students had been shot at some random high school in a random US state.
Having been conditioned by my environment to perceive such events as important, I turned to my friend and said “Man, 8 students were shot at a high school in the States!”
He asked me “What am I supposed to do with that information?” That response changed my life.
>“What am I supposed to do with that information?”
...Feel some sorrow? Think a bit about what could cause such a thing? Because one day, it may happen at your kid's school... And it may be your own kid.
An absence of both empathy and curiosity aren't exactly a response to be proud of. An unconscious life. The kind that leads to, one day, spouting the standard response: "I never imagined it could happen to me".
It's not as though people intentionally made these endangered because they have insufficient love for penguins. We have unintentionally done it because we have insufficient love (care) for them and many, many other things, creatures, people, etc.
It’s terrible that the side effect of humans creating a world of wealth, safety and comfort (for all?) is that we risk destroying the very comfort we create - but it is also awesome that we have sufficient wealth to allow people to study these birds full time, enough wealth to build communication systems that tell random strangers about the threat they are under and hopefully enough time to correct the problem.
I saw a speech by Carl Sagan that might be relevant - he said (sometime in 1990 judging by haircuts) that the US had spent 10 trillion dollars on defending itself from the threat of Soviet attack since 1945, but that the attack was not “certain” - not 100% sure. So if we were willing to spend trillions to prevent an uncertain catastrophe, why does the same logic not apply to climate chnage?
Those penguins and seals are certainly being ignored by the world at large. Thanks to trillions of dollars the renewable revolution has proceeded apace since 2010-2015 but reduction in fossil fuel use has not occurred. Quite the reverse and overall total energy demand is now greater than ever before. And from all this one concludes . . . ?
Life on this planet will be OK. Throughout geologic time countless species have gone extinct. The Anthropocene might be tragic for the natural world but not terminal.
But: what are we trading it for? Higher living standards for more people is a noble and good but I don't think there's evidence it requires this rate of ecological destruction. Have we ever seriously tried to decouple growth from extraction?
I'm not convinced a solar punk future exists where technology will eventually close that gap in time. Maybe it will. So far it seems that every efficiency gain gets swallowed by expanded consumption. What seems most probable now is that we don't get a better world but the same dirty one plus a Starbucks on Mars.
"According to the IUCN Red List criteria, a species is generally classified as Endangered (EN) if its population of mature individuals falls below 2,500"
Also IUCN, with only 180,000 individuals the Emperor penguin is now classified as Endangered.
That is objectively a wrong summary of how IUCN Red List is calculated. There’s a variety of factors including rate of decline, and any of those factors can lead to a species being in the Endangered category.
the article says 20,000 was 10% of the population
therefore the population is 180,000.
if "something might happen in the next 60 years to wipe out half the population" counts as making a species endangered, every species on the planet counts as endangered.
Hope this time around we do a better job of avoiding complete doom for these species.
"Trump Administration Seals Extinction Fate for Rice’s Whale in Offshore Drilling Decision"
https://www.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2026/03/trump-admi...
This indeed a sad story.
My local zoo has a little event during winter where the king penguins get to go for a little walk around outside their enclosure. I've been a few times this year and they are just such fun animals. It has made me want to get involved with the zoo somehow, maybe not working with the animals directly but something. I don't know.
It makes me so sad how we humans know that we are messing things up on the planet but we keep doing it anyways because the economy must grow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_4uEaZQ2Kg
Having been conditioned by my environment to perceive such events as important, I turned to my friend and said “Man, 8 students were shot at a high school in the States!”
He asked me “What am I supposed to do with that information?” That response changed my life.
...Feel some sorrow? Think a bit about what could cause such a thing? Because one day, it may happen at your kid's school... And it may be your own kid.
An absence of both empathy and curiosity aren't exactly a response to be proud of. An unconscious life. The kind that leads to, one day, spouting the standard response: "I never imagined it could happen to me".
[0] https://youtu.be/qVJzQc9ELTE?si=R8K7ow2cuSuAOfex
I saw a speech by Carl Sagan that might be relevant - he said (sometime in 1990 judging by haircuts) that the US had spent 10 trillion dollars on defending itself from the threat of Soviet attack since 1945, but that the attack was not “certain” - not 100% sure. So if we were willing to spend trillions to prevent an uncertain catastrophe, why does the same logic not apply to climate chnage?
Literally everything he described in there is precisely the world we live in today
But: what are we trading it for? Higher living standards for more people is a noble and good but I don't think there's evidence it requires this rate of ecological destruction. Have we ever seriously tried to decouple growth from extraction?
I'm not convinced a solar punk future exists where technology will eventually close that gap in time. Maybe it will. So far it seems that every efficiency gain gets swallowed by expanded consumption. What seems most probable now is that we don't get a better world but the same dirty one plus a Starbucks on Mars.
I'm not so sure. I'm reminded of this quote:
“How did you go bankrupt?" “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” ― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Also IUCN, with only 180,000 individuals the Emperor penguin is now classified as Endangered.
I think someone has been out hunting headlines.
https://www.iucnredlist.org/resources/categories-and-criteri...
No one is farming for headlines.
if "something might happen in the next 60 years to wipe out half the population" counts as making a species endangered, every species on the planet counts as endangered.