Our Imminent Extinction
By; Catherine Ibarra
The network of life that supports our human existence on earth is commonly known as "the biosphere.” This is now disappearing according to many researchers and scientists.
"The biosphere” sustains life on our planet;
The biosphere is comprised of a living network consisting of a narrow membrane surrounding the earth that is so thin that it cannot be seen edgewise from a satellite. The species of life in this network is so prodigiously diverse that only a tiny fraction of its species have actually been discovered and named. Our living biosphere is the product of billions of years of evolution, and is virtually made up of a multitude of organisms occupying every square centimeter of the planet's surface and filling every imaginable niche.
In essence, biological diversity or biodiversity is the sum of all life on Earth. It includes the vast array of life forms, their individual genetic makeup, their life processes, and their interrelationships in communities and ecosystems.
Peter H.
Raven, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden offers us a more eloquent
definition:
"At the simplest level, biodiversity is the sum total of all the plants,
animals, fungi and microorganisms in the world, or in a particular area; all of
their individual variation; and all of the interactions between them. It is the
set of living organisms that make up the fabric of the planet Earth and allow
it to function as it does, by capturing energy from the sun and using it to
drive all of life's processes; by forming communities of organisms that have,
through several billion years of life's history on Earth, altered the nature of
the atmosphere, the soil and the water of our planet; and by making possible
the sustainability of our planet through their life activities now."
Many experts believe we are witnessing the first mass extinction since the dinosaurs were killed off 65 million years ago and the sixth in the four-billion-year history of life. The estimates vary.
Some studies suggest that the extinction rate of vertebrate groups globally could be 15-20 percent over the next 100 years. Others have said 50 percent of species on the planet could be wiped out over the next century because of human activities.
According to the United Nations, an estimated 90 million hectares (222 million acres), or 2.4 percent of the world's forests - an area larger than Venezuela - was destroyed in the 1990s.
Although tropical forest ecosystems cover less than 10 percent of the earth's surface, they are believed to contain as much as 90 percent of the world's species, according to the U.N.'s most recent Global Environment Outlook.
The U.N. also says that nine percent of the world's tree species are endangered. This is not only a threat to the birds and animals that depend on them for survival, but means a huge loss of potential medicinal benefits from botanical sources.
Taxonomists have named around 1.75 million different species, according to the United Nations. It is believed that most have not been identified - including insects, plants and fungi - and that there could be as many as 14 million.
According to a recent U.N. report, 12 percent of bird species, or 1,183 types, and 1,130 mammal species, or nearly a quarter of the total, are regarded as globally threatened.
"Humans are undoubtedly the most dominant species the Earth has ever known. In just a few thousand years we have swallowed up more than a third of the planet's land for our cities, farmland and pastures. By some estimates, we now commandeer 40 per cent of all its productivity. And we're leaving quite a mess behind: ploughed-up prairies, razed forests, drained aquifers, nuclear waste, chemical pollution, invasive species, mass extinctions and now the looming spectre of climate change.
(New Scientist) http://dodosgone.blogspot.com/2007/06/biodiversity-without-humans.html
A main threat to mammals and birds -- not to mention reptiles, fish, insects and plants - is habitat destruction caused chiefly by logging and the clearing of natural habitats for farming, industry or human settlement.
Climate change linked to global warming is another threat to biodiversity. It has been implicated in the bleaching of coral reefs and the decline of amphibians in tropical forests.
Pollution, damming and disasters like oil spills have also taken a toll on wildlife, while over-hunting, over-fishing and the trade in animal body parts have had devastating consequences.
North America's bison herds which once numbered millions were all but killed off by white settlers in the 19th century. The northern right whale was hunted to near extinction by commercial whalers and now number only around 300.
Degradation of our seas is rapidly wiping out our native marine fauna and flora which evolved in very clear waters. It is now threatening our coastal fisheries. We must understand how degradation proceeds and why our seas are equally sensitive.
So Just Why is Biodiversity so Important?
We may be insufficiently aware that all life on this planet depends on each other; that every species depends on hundreds, perhaps thousands of other species to survive within our fragile and invisible network of ecological relationships. No species can be removed without an effect on all the others. Worse still, no species can survive outside this network, including Man.
Most expert researchers of biodiversity agree that we are in now in the midst of a mass extinction. Even if the current rate of habitat destruction were to continue in forests and coral reefs alone, half the species of plants and animals would be gone by the end of the 21st century. If the destruction continues at the current rate, within a few short generations, our descendants stand to inherit a biologically impoverished world in which our humans survival and the survival of the children of all other species cannot be sustained.
No species alive today is likely to survive alone on some distant other world; or even on Earth 100 million years ago or 100 million years in our future, because there would be a different climate and ecological relationships.
Observant scientists have pointed out that Earth is a relatively young planet, in our galaxy.
Most other systems that exist in space are millions of years older.
Life may have evolved there to bear intelligence incomparably superior to ours. There is probably no hope to eventually seed human life somewhere else, because we are unlikely to encounter any planet with an ocean that has no preexisting life. Thus, Our hope to bring the requisite library of DNA, required to sustain human beings from Earth, is flawed, because the biosphere that sustains humans on earth was created in a 4000 million years process of change by a myriad successions of species and any planet with an ecology where our biosphere could be introduced already has a completely developing or developed system of its own.
So what can we do about it anyway?
To begin with, it is easy to recognize that we must start with our children.
After all it is their world that we are saving,
It is their children who will finally see the destruction of life as we know it on this planet. So our solution must begin by focusing on them.
First we must strive to accept and understand the fatal price that will eventually be paid by our children and our children's children if we cannot find a way change the process of ongoing destruction before it is too late!
A refocusing of our priorities and our awareness of ourselves as part of an incredible living network, and a global society has now become essential to our planet’s survival.
Our prevalent need to acquire more and more sophisticated toys and technology, more expensive cars, and other trappings of the modern insatiable consumer, is promoted by television and its myriad commercials, our magazine ads, and our need for an ever increasing gross national product to sustain our modern culture.
This of course is why we send our brave young soldiers out to win wars largely fought to sustain our first world control of all oil, wood, cattle, gold, and other resources needed to maintain our wealth and technological dominance over the planet.
If our children learn to seek short term economic growth, and find pleasure and success from becoming the newest generation of insatiable consumers, the biosphere itself will be eventually consumed and our children and their children, will suffer the fatal consequences of vanishing forests, polluted atmosphere, poisoned water, global warming, and a progressive loss of our network of life.
A rejection of
our commercially oriented society as the acceptable norm, and a simple reassessment
of what we need want and desire, to be happy fulfilled productive and successful,
may be easily communicated and accepted by our children and their children.
OUR GREATEST TREASURE
The greatest treasure we can give our children is a planet where they can survive and a beautiful bright and sustainable future for the children of all species.
Links;
http://www.kindplanet.org/kindnews.html
https://www.mygreenclick.com//b/index.php
http://www.seafriends.org.nz/index.htm
http://www.time.com/time/reports/earthday2000/biodiversity01.html
http://www.cbd.int/default.shtml
http://dodosgone.blogspot.com/
