The earth has experienced five major extinctions, the result of each was the same: a demise of 70-90% percent of all species, depending on the event. All signs suggest we are now on the abyss of a sixth great extinction. To put this in some perspective. The earth is 4.5 billion years old. If we scaled that down to 45 years-we’ve been here for four hours and our industrial revolution began one minute ago. In that time, mankind has destroyed more than 50% of the world’s rainforests. In the last thirty-seconds alone, we have plundered the earth through global-scale habitat destruction and the mass extinction of species through overhunting, overfishing, pollution and mono-culture agriculture. We are now experiencing what climate scientists refer to as the feedback-loop; where the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. The permafrost and peat bogs are melting and releasing methane and carbon dioxide which warms the atmosphere. In turn, creating more melting and releasing more gases. We are altering the chemistry of the oceans, our environment and the climate very rapidly and it is happening at an exponential rate beyond what most scientists expected.
The reality is, even if we started today and began acting on the warnings, it would be too late. In 1987 we exceeded the one-earth line: we started using more resources than the earth can regenerate. This means were now living off an ecological credit card where we use 50% more resources than the earth can regenerate. The truth is so undeniable that it makes opposers of the argument as credible as Holocaust deniers. The same flat-earthers who deny the link between smoking and cancer. Who believe that vaccines cause autism, the moon landing was faked, chemtrails are a thing and that climate change is a hoax.
Discussion1 Comment
See ya! Aside from those who deny human participation in this environmental degradation, the ability to muster a response had been severely diminished by Republican administrations reducing taxes on corporations and the wealthy and generally sucking money out of government’s ability to respond to almost anything; including state and local levels. When do you think the country will come together and restore higher tax rates on these sectors or address the huge issue of income inequality? This would literally take a political sea change, pun intended.