Editor’s note: This commentary is by George Plumb of Washington, who is a board member of Better (not Bigger) Vermont and the organizer of the 2014 report “What is an Optimal/Sustainable Population for Vermont?” He wrote this commentary in honor of Earth Day April 22. It was first celebrated in 1970.
[T]here have been many commentaries written about global warming and how critical it is that we work to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. And justly so, as we can already witness catastrophic events happening all over the world, including now also in the United States.
However, there is another major potentially catastrophic environmental issue that is already happening, although rarely mentioned. That is the “Sixth Great Extinction” or, as it is often referred to, the “Anthropocene Extinction.”
We are amidst the largest period of species extinction in the last 60 million years. Scientists estimate that we are now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the normal rate, with multiple extinctions occurring daily. As we humans continue to expand our use of land across the planet, we leave other species little ground on which to stand. By 2070, increased human land use is expected to put 1,700 species of amphibians, birds and mammals at greater extinction risk by shrinking their natural habitats, according to a recent study by Yale ecologists in Nature and Climate Change.
As just one of many facts related to species, 40% of the world’s bird species are in decline, and one in eight is threatened with global extinction.
While we should be concerned about all forms of species, the biggest threat to human survival is the loss of insects. A study published in the Biological Conservation journal found that 40% of insect species are now facing extinction over the next few decades, and around 41% of all insect species have seen declines over just the last 10 years. Butterflies and moths are among the hardest hit. On a personal note, when was the last time you saw a grasshopper or cricket, or hornets building a nest on the ceiling of your porch?
If all of the insects disappear, there will be no pollination of a wide variety of plants that we eat. If much of our food supply cannot be produced, then there is going to be mass starvation and wars over the diminishing food supply.
So, what can we do to help prevent the worst of the Sixth Great Extinction?
The first thing is to stabilize and then reduce our population to a more nearly sustainable level. If everyone in the world lived as we Americans do, we would need fully five earths to support humanity. Just the few years left for us to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are not going to give us much time to reduce our population. Nevertheless, each couple should still consider having but one child, or perhaps even none, so that we humans put less demand on our remaining natural resources.
If we are currently living on a largely meat-based diet, the second thing for us to consider might be to switch to a more vegetarian-based diet. Our confined feeding operations to raise beef, milk cows, poultry, pigs and other mammals are significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions through the transportation of the grain they need and food they produce that is transported thousands of miles around the world. An amazing 26% of the planet’s ice-free land is used for livestock grazing, and 33% of croplands are used for livestock feed production, thereby taking away natural habitat for other species. Also, most of the meat we now eat is raised in huge confined feeding operations where thousands of animals are under a roof and never experience their natural feeding grounds. This is simply inhumane. So, let us at least think about a “meatless Monday,” and if we are going to eat meat, let’s be sure it is locally raised, pasture fed and, of course, slaughtered as humanely as possible.
Among all of humankind’s activities, agriculture probably has the most detrimental impact on wildlife habitat and health. Consequently, we should all consider limiting our diets to choices that have the least impact on wildlife while maintaining our own health and encouraging sustainably fertile farmlands. But the most effective method, by far, for reducing agriculture’s huge contribution to species extinction is to reduce our vast need for agriculture by ending and ultimately reversing human population growth.
The third thing for us to do, of course, is to stop employing those widely used pesticides and herbicides that kill our insects as well as the very important soil microbes needed for healthy and productive soils.
Yes, we certainly do need to immediately address global warming, but at the same time we need to deal with species extinction, the two being tightly linked.
