As an undergraduate at UCLA sifting through courses in Ecology and Life Sciences, I was inevitably confronted by an unsettling issue that has since lingered and become deeply ingrained into the far recesses of my mind: the loss of biodiversity at an unprecedented scale.
Therefore, on May 6, 2019, when the United Nations published a landmark report confirming the rapid deterioration of Earth’s ecosystems, I was again confronted with this familiar affliction of desperation; only this time, there was beyond any doubt of the dire implications established by this imminent threat.
Indeed, via the systematic review of about 15,000 scientific and government sources, the UN biodiversity experts demonstrated that protecting the invaluable contributions of nature will be our defining challenge for decades to come.
To further elaborate, there has been a piling number of research indicating that we are currently undergoing Earth’s sixth mass extinction with no signs of desisting; within the next few decades, up to 1 million plant and animal species will be irreversibly devastated or ultimately face annihilation.
To be fair, there are also quite a few credible scientists that accuse these claims of mass extinction to be grossly exaggerated and reveling in irresponsible sensationalism.
For example, in Peter Brannen’s excellent article for the Atlantic, Smithsonian paleontologist Doug Erwin insists that, “to a certain extent they’re claiming [mass extinction] as a way of frightening people into action.”
However, Dr. Erwin clarifies that even though, “we’re not in a mass extinction yet… if we keep things up long enough, we’ll get to a mass extinction.”
Fundamentally, this distinction of whether we are presently facing a mass extinction appears to be purely academic in nature; in practice, the disturbing reality remains in that we are either undergoing a catastrophic loss in biodiversity or we soon will be.
When you break it down, the predominant culprits engineering the mass extinction of Earth’s inhabitants include climate change, loss of habitat, air and water pollution and the overexploitation of natural resources.
And who is chiefly to blame for it all?
You guessed it: Humanity.
Our contributions to this manufactured “biological annihilation” cannot be ignored:
- Littering has produced an island of plastic in the Pacific Ocean twice the size of Texas and three times the size of France.
- Human pollution and deforestation will implement a critical rise in temperatures and ocean acidification at the turn of the century.
With many other prevalent examples, it is not difficult to imagine how humans can adversely affect the ecosystems of our earthly neighbors.
Regardless, it can be easy to assume because biodiversity loss is such a large-scale problem, any single individual cannot possibly have any effect in reducing humanity’s carbon footprint.
Nevertheless, our culminated efforts can rival the influence of the world’s leading industries (especially those that contribute the most to species extinction). And despite the fact that the window for effective action is closing fast, the UN report confirms that nature can still be conserved, restored and used sustainably:
“The Report also tells us that it is not too late to make a difference, but only if we start now at every level from local to global.” – Robert Watson, IBPES Chair
Love to see this every day !
Just remember, we only have one Earth.