Mass Extinction and Climate Change

When I saw the headline of this story on the BBC web site, I thought this is not news, the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) have already reported that we will have up to a forty percent loss of species as a direct result of this man made pollution we call climate change. However, this research is new and marks an important change in the attitude of scientists. Previously the language used “Hedged the Bets” and spoke of what was theoretically possible rather than what was actually happening.

Part of the problem in dealing with the man made pollution that is climate change, is a psychological one. In the past we have seen pollution as localised, and no matter how bad it got, when action was finally taken, the environment improved and the problem dissipated. Even with acid rain as that was a regional problem, in Europe for example, when Europeans acted collectively the situation reversed. And while there still is some sulphur pollution that is causing acid rain, it is relatively negligible.

With Climate Change, we can not see (or at least some can) that there is anything we can do, as we psychologically assume that there is no point as China or India or what ever other country we want to use as an excuse, are not doing the same. What is needed is leadership, and that should be coming from America and Europe. As the USA is the biggest polluter, producing 24 tonnes of CO2 per head of population they should be taking the lead here.

But the problem is that everyone is hoping for that technological fix, that mythical grail of pollution free energy. As a planet we have squandered our energy resources. We have allowed a culture that is so reliant upon oil to develop that we are prepared to fight wars for access to it, and allowed our whole way of life to become dominated by the automobile. The problem is that to power our way of life we are burning billions of tonnes of oil and releasing all the carbon dioxide that the planet sequestrated away back into the atmosphere.

What this new research shows is that while climate change has naturally occurred in the past, and effected the biodiversity of our planet, our current man made driven warming of the globe could wipe out most of the life on our home world. That as I am sick of having to point out includes us.

If we lost important pollinators like bees how long would we last? That’s not a rhetorical question, but fortunately minds far better than mine have already done the research and tell us that we would last only six years. We would loose our ability to grow over ninety percent of our food. That is what mass extinction will do to us.

Even now when there are clear signs of the effects of Climate Change in the forest fires in California, we still do nothing. Unless we act now, if we survive, we will become the most hated generation of humans within our children’s history.

The BBC Article