Destroying species by the millions and destroying the environment

Source: "Biodiversity: Fewer creatures great and small," The Economist, October 16th 2008.

I quote extensively:

Common birds are in decline across the world. Almost one in four species of mammals is in danger of extinction. If current trends continue until 2050, fisheries will be exhausted. As it is, deforestation costs the world more each year than the current financial crisis has cost in total, one economist argued.......

In 2002, under its auspices, they vowed to bring about “a significant reduction” in the rate of loss of biodiversity by 2010. The pledge became one of the Millennium Development Goals, the United Nations’ eight fondest ambitions for the world. Yet this target now looks unattainable.....

The IUCN also released a “comprehensive assessment” of the status of all known species of mammals. It found that 22% were threatened or extinct, and the well-being of a further 15% was unknown. For amphibians, the outlook is grimmer: a full 31% of them are at risk, and the status of a further 25% is uncertain. Sampling of species in other categories suggests similarly dire outlooks, with some 24% of reptiles and 32% of crabs thought to be threatened. For the most part, these findings do not reflect the latest data on global warming. But another IUCN study released at the congress found that 35% of the world’s birds, 52% of its amphibians and 71% of its warm-water corals were “particularly susceptible” to the threats from warming.

Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is studying global warming for the UN, said 20-30% of species could die out if global average temperatures rise by more than 2°C or so. And even today’s rate of extinctions, one Barcelona delegate noted, is 1,000 times faster than the norm before man made a mess.

Source: National Geographic

Comment: "The footsteps of civilization are written in shifting sands." Look at the photo of Mohenjo Daro in India, once one of the cradles of civilization and now a ruin in the desert. As Jared Diamond explained in his book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, many civilizations in the past have failed when their economies and populations grew to the point that they could not survive an environmental downturn, leaving ruins in the midst of a degraded environment, the remnants of their populations either fleeing or living in much reduced circumstances.

In the past, civilizations only had the size and power to ruin a limited piece of the environment. Today our powerful, global society is seriously degrading the environment of the entire earth. Will we choose to fail or will we choose to take the necessary steps to protect the environment. One of the first and most important of those steps will be to stop the loss of biodiversity. JAD