Regaining our Perspective: Raising Awareness of our Precious Animal & Plant Heritage

Friday 14 September 2012

The End is Nigh....

Ah! The cartoon placard that we see the doomsday soothsayers holding at the traffic intersections. However, this is very serious and the topic was also the May 2012 winning letter to Popular Mechanics. It's thought-provoking enough to want to share it : food for thought!

"OKAY, So Life is Doomed" by Johannes Bertus de Villiers in JHB :

"Your article on the many ways in which civilised life on Earth could come to an end, sketches some terrifying and realistic scenarios. However you might have added the fact that the sixth mass extinction of species in our planet's history is already underway - and no horror from the skies was needed to trigger it. Earth has been through five major extinctions, starting with the Ordovician-Silurian catastrophe that put an end to most of the brachiopods, conodonts and trilobites that inhabited the Earth 450 million years ago, and most recently the KT-event that culled the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

However in March last year, Nature published a study by Anthony Barnosky titled, "Has the Earth's sixth mass extinction already arrived?" His answer was yes, probably, and what makes this mass extinction so unlike the previous five, is that life seems to be destroying itself.

One need only look at the figures : according to the WWF's biannual Living Planet report, the number of animals on Earth has decreased by 30 percent since 1970. The WWF predicts ecological collapse by 2050. The UN's Global Diversity outlook of 2006 confirms this and states: "in effect, we are currently responsible for the sixth major extinction event in the history of the Earth, the greatest since the dinosaur disappeared 65 million years ago."

Where Earth's natural extinction rate for species is about 30 a year, current estimates are that we have pushed it up to 300 a year. These figures are almost unprecedented outside a scenario of nuclear winter caused by a space rock impact or a super-volcano eruption.

It would take no more than the destruction of a key group of species to collapse the food chain, and the environment with it. The ongoing decimation of pollinating bees in North America and Europe (due to pesticides, electric wiring and the globalisation of insect diseases) is just one of the many indications that this could happen soon. Bee diseases such as foul brood, previously unknown in South Africa, have also been imported to the Western Cape in the last few years. Hopefully, when an extra-terrestrial intelligence visits our lifeless planet some day in the future, they might take a few lessons away from this. For us, though, it is probably already too late. "


These are sobering thoughts! Consider the USA and the other large industrial nations' reluctance to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on limiting carbon emissions, nor to get any meaningful progress from the recent Durban chapter meeting. They are dithering about the cost to their industry and economies, while 2050 approaches. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns! Not much point in having a great economy in a non-existent world, is there?

We looked at an article the other day, discussing the global threat to bees. Effectively the message is ; when the bees are gone, so are we. One-third of all food production originates from pollination, and without the bees - no more food. People starve and economies collapse. Simple as that.

It might be a nice thought to get out there and enjoy everything you can, while it's still here. Take some photos - you can show them to your grand children one day and tell them what those creatures and plants were. Or just sit there and observe, and marvel, while there's still time.

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