The unimaginable consequences of living beyond our planetary means, ravaging the very ecosystems that support us. If you've been paying attention to the science, today's UN report will come as no surprise. Still, the deeply disturbing consequences for human life are just flat-out depressing. Humans are a mere strand in the web of life and yet we're destroying our habitat at an astonishing rate.
Human
beings are more prosperous and numerous than we’ve ever been, while the
Earth’s other species are dying off faster than at any time in human
history.
These
two conditions are related. But if the second one persists long enough,
we will be following our fellow organisms into the dustbin of
geological history.
This is the primary takeaway from a new United Nations report
on our planet’s rapidly diminishing biodiversity. Humanity is reshaping
the natural world at such scale and rapidity, an estimated 1 million
plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction, according to the
U.N. assessment. Climate change is a major driver of all this death,
but burning fossil fuels is far from our species’ only method of mass
ecocide. We are also harvesting fish populations faster than they can
reproduce themselves, annually dumping upward of 300 million tons of
heavy metals and toxic sludge into the oceans, introducing devastating
diseases and invasive species into vulnerable environments as we send
people and goods hurtling across the globe, and simply taking up too
much space — about 75 percent of the Earth’s land, and 85 percent of its
wetlands, have been severely altered or destroyed by human development.
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