The dog is a gentleman; I hope to
go to his heaven, not man's
(Mark Twain)
The approaching silence
It's a remarkable picture making the
rounds on the internet: More than 30,000 walruses have come ashore in
Alaska because of disappearing sea ice in the Chukchi Sea, an area
where the oil and gas industry want to drill. This is the feeding
area for the walruses and where the females give birth. A similar
phenomenon is occurring along the Russian coast as well. Climate
change is so inconvenient.
The depressing numbers
The World Wildlife Fund recently
updated its Living Planet Report. In just two human generations half
the animals are gone (10,000 representative population sampling of
mammals, birds, reptiles and fish), which represents a 50 percent
decline over the past 40 years.
The major causes are familiar. In
addition to climate change, there is habitat destruction and loss,
devastation caused by unsustainable levels of hunting and fishing—for
whatever reasons—and exploitation in general. Right now between 23
percent and 36 percent of all birds mammals, and amphibians used for
food or medicine are now threatened with extinction.
A house of death eaters
While the industrial slaughter of
iconic animals like the elephant and the rhino is frequently in the
news, less well known creature have many scientists far more worried
and could have a direct and disastrous impact on Homo sapiens.
Some of us, for example, may know
that the world's food production (possibly more than 60 percent) is
dependent on bees and other pollinators, but how many know about the
importance of the lowly worm, which turns waste into soil nutrients
or that bats keep malaria rates down. It is the small, not so cuddly
creatures, that may ultimately change everything for humankind,
possibly much sooner than we might imagine.
Additional Reading:
What American Environmentalists Can Learn from Prime Minister Modi
'Moment of Truth' on Emissions
Germany's energy model can save the world
