Mankind’s #1 Priority Today – Stop Destroying The Planet Before We Destroy Ourselves

First of all, what needs to be understood in the conversation about climate destruction is that this has the more grievous consequences for the survival of the human race itself. It’s not just the polar bears. It’s not just the ice caps. It’s the future of the human race.

Now whatever happens, nature will survive. In the Earth’s 4.5 billion years of existence, nature has endured 5 major mass extinctions that destroyed most of the life on the planet (at least 60%), and nature will survive humanity, even if it takes a couple hundred thousand or million years for nature to get back on track. However, it is not certain that humanity itself will survive.

Today, mankind is presiding over what scientists are unanimously describing as a sixth major mass extinction event.

According to the Living Planet Report put out in 2014 by the World Wildlife Fund, humans have killed up to half of the wildlife on the planet in the last 40 years (World Wildlife Fund). And according to the Living Planet Report put out in 2016, this level of decline could increase to two-thirds by 2020. And now a recent study 2018 has said that humans have killed off 83% of wild mammals.

What is also terrifying is that the Permian Extinction (the most deadly extinction event on Earth) may have been caused by circumstances similar to the causes of global warming today. A team of researchers from Canada, Italy, Germany and the US say they have discovered what caused the Permian Extinction. According to a paper published in the journal Palaeoworld, volcanic eruptions pumped large amounts of carbon dioxide into the air, causing average temperatures to rise by eight to 11°C. This melted vast amounts of methane that had been trapped in the permafrost and sea floor, causing temperatures to soar even further to levels lethal to most life on land and in the oceans.

Professor Peter Wadhams, head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at Cambridge University, has said, “If there were a large methane release, which is now possible because of the instability of the methane hydrates underneath the Arctic continental shelves, the off-shore waters, that could quite easily give rise to a very large [methane] pulse.” He was one of the authors of a paper in the journal Nature, which suggested it was possible for a truly vast amount of frozen methane to be released over just 10 years – a blink of an eye in geological terms, which could theoretically lead to similar events that caused the Permian Extinction (Independent).

So this is the key issue we face today. This should be a political focus, a spiritual focus, and a psychological focus of all our current endeavors. Doing what we can to stop this destruction before it is too late.

METAL GAIA ARTICLES

Earth Day Realities and Environ-metal – Change is Needed Before We Reach The Point of No Return

The Era of Fake Reform. When Will We Actually Fight for the Planet?

RESOURCES

Humans Are Paving the Way for a Sixth Major Mass Extinction (World Future Fund)

Neil deGrasse Tyson scolds cherry picking climate science (CNN YouTube)

Sixth mass extinction: The era of ‘biological annihilation’ (CNN, 7-11-17)

Earth’s worst-ever mass extinction of life holds ‘apocalyptic’ warning about climate change, say scientists (Independent, 3-24-17)

Study: We’ve wiped out half the world’s wildlife since 1970 (VOX, 9-30-14)

Are We in the Midst Of a Sixth Mass Extinction? (New York Times, 6-1-12)

Extinction Threat, A Call to World Leaders at Rio Earth Summit: (CNN World News, 6-20-12)

According to the article above: 41% of amphibians, 25% of mammals, 13% of birds, 30% of conifers and 20% of all plants are all threatened with extinction.

One in Five Mammals Threatened With Extinction (Common Dreams, 11-3-09)

The survival of 17,921 species is in jeopardy.

Almost 50% Of The World’s Primates Are In Danger Of Extinction (CNN, 8-5-08)

Habitat destruction as well as hunting are the greatest threats to primates today.