Does mass extinction sound bad to you? Because it sounds bad to me.
I recently read an article stating that Earth’s sixth mass extinction has already begun. This, according to scientists.
There is no doubt about it. Here lately, we’ve been killing off entire species without blinking an eye. Extinctions have been happening at an alarming rate in recent decades. The main causes, of course, are human involvement and climate change. We have been creating a world and habitats unsuitable for many species of wildlife. Or, more succinctly, we’ve been replacing their habitats with ours.
So now, the big authority — the “International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species and BirdLife International” — has conducted a comprehensive study. And they found that this mass extinction event is on the way.
A mass extinction. Sadly, this means that worldwide, more than 500 species of land animals are close to extinction and could be lost within the next 20 years. I don’t understand why this isn’t at the top of every major news broadcast. I don’t know why climate change isn’t the lead story, every single night of the week, on all the major networks. It should be. Because if Putin doesn’t kill all of us, this certainly will.
But no. This report was read by some go standing in some hotel conference to a bunch of nerds who already know all of this. It was published in the scientific journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”
It went on to say that they studied 29,000 species of land vertebrate. They have found that the number of extinctions expected in the next two decades would have — instead — taken thousands of years. Not 20. But thanks to the negative impact of us big, dumb, unthinking humans, we are in for it.
These researchers estimated that up to one in ten of Earth’s known species may have gone extinct in the past 500 years. Yes, since 1500, Earth has lost about a tenth of its 2 million known species. That’s a lot more than the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon.
I’m upset because we have accelerated the pace. We put the destruction of the planet and the climate on the fast track.
But, throughout its life, the Earth had undergone mass extinctions before. As an estimate, about 99% of all living organisms that have ever lived on earth are now extinct. Naturally, our ecosystem is constantly evolving. As the environment changes certain older species begin to fade away, like dinosaurs and flying reptiles the size of busses.
But the math, as of late, has gone off the charts. The first five mass extinctions took place over the course of 500 million years. Anyone who knows how to count can see that it involves a lot of zeroes. So what does a mass extinction effect, exactly? That is when 75-90% of all species have gone extinct.
Five in 500 MILLION YEARS. And here we are cooking up our sixth mass extinction in just under 500 years.
Typically, a mass extinction event can take anything up to 2.8 million years. We pushed things down a slippery, slippery slope.
This statement from MSN:
“Data collected as part of the IUCN’s report shows that 77 of the species who are most in danger have lost 94% of their populations in the last century. More than 400 species of vertebrate became extinct in the last 100 years, a figure that would take around 10,000 years to reach in the normal course of evolution.
This all points to a series of extinctions in the near future, which could have a catastrophic resultant effect on the natural ecosystem. The IUCN’s analysis shows that 388 species of land vertebrates had populations of less than 5,000, and that 84% are primarily found in regions where other species have a population of less than 1,000.”
I tell you all of this because. Simply. Because.
As Mary Oliver wrote.
“I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2
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We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.
— Native American proverb
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I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
— Frank Lloyd Wright
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Preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
— Carl Sagan
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The mass extinction commeth. I kid you not.
