Whats Happening onearth

Are We Losing the Race on Extinction?

When it rains, it floods. But what about our species? When they decline, do they also collapse?

The confluence of a few events has made me worry about this lately.

First, there was my series of posts about the collapse of Chinook salmon. In the Central Valley, only 90,000 adult Chinook returned last year, and scientists predict that as few as 58,000 will return this year. The numbers are even lower on the Klamath. Commercial fishing in these areas has been banned as a result.

Yesterday, there was a similar story concerning Chesapeake Bay blue crabs. The governors of both Virginia and Maryland pledged to cut back on the harvest of this struggling species which continued to be over-fished.

These are only two examples. There are many others. American bee populations are dying from what Elizabeth Kolbert described as an AIDS-like epidemic. Monarch butterflies are threatened by deforestation. Polar bears are starving to death. Our oceans are being bulldozed by bottom trawlers. The list goes on.

After years of inaction, people are waking up to the problem. The Washington Post quoted Virginia's Governor Tim Kaine as saying: "The price of inaction is greater than the price of action. We do not want to wake up in five or 10 years and realize we've lost this very important part of who we are."

As drastic as the cuts are, the decision hinges on the belief that these species can recover. Kaine said the cuts would only be in place for two to three years until the population rebounds.

But what if this belief in short-term species recovery is unreasonable? What if we've past the tipping point?

In Gus Speth's new and powerful book, The Bridge at the End of the World, Stephen Meyer offers this grim forecast.

Over the next 100 years or so as many as half of the earth's species, representing a quarter of the planet's genetic stock, will functionally if not completely disappear... Nothing - not national or international laws, global bioreserves, local sustainability schemes, or even ‘wildlands' fantasies - can change the current course. The broad path for biological evolution is now set for the next several million years. And in this sense the extinction crisis - the race to save the composition, structure, and organization of biodiversity as it exists today-is over, and we have lost.

Is this accurate? I don't know.

But we do know that the Chinook, the Chesapeake blue crab, and American bee colonies, are all collapsing. We know that this is threatening the continued vitality of local, state and national economies, and of coastal ways of life. And we know that it is largely our fault.

Despite all of this, I remain optimistic. Small as the environmental movement remains, I'm reminded of Margaret Mead's famous words, in which she urged us to believe that a "small, dedicated group could change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

Let us hope she was right.

Comments

  • Dagny McKinley wrote on April 20, 2008, 08:16PM : Flag this comment as inappropriate Flag this comment as inappropriate

    Have you read the book Collapse by Jared Diamond? He talks about the collapse of societies due to several effect, but one of the main ones was depleting necessary resources. I think that begins with the smallest life forms. Once they are gone, like the salmon, those animals at the top of the food chain also suffer. Black bears, grizzlies and the Kermode Bear in the Great Bear Rainforest will all die out when their food supply runs out. Thanks for bringing this information to people's attention.

    Dagny McKinley
    www.onnotextiles.com
    organic apparel

  • Anonymous User wrote on April 23, 2008, 03:45PM : Flag this comment as inappropriate Flag this comment as inappropriate

    Fascinating post!

  • Anon wrote on August 18, 2009, 02:35AM : Flag this comment as inappropriate Flag this comment as inappropriate

    You are right to be concerned, like you I’ve also become more than curious.
    Now that we here, we do have a massive problem on our hands.

    It actually all goes back to an unsustainable global economic system, installed by these ‘wonderful’ bankers we all have, years ago.
    They used a world war to install the banking system, and it may now take a world war to get out of it.

    I’m afraid humanity is about to pay for it, in one way or another, and as for innocent animals, these evil global bankers haven’t given them a chance.

    These bankers must have known from the beginning the system would collapse and result in the mess we all now in.
    I want to make greedy bankers pay for all this so badly, it hurts.

    They will probably get away with it… they just pay stooge presidents off and kill us all, like they did last time. It’s all related… 911, swine flue, this whole mad planet of death we now all live in is because of them… greedy evil central bankers.

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