Earth must be shared
EDWARD O. Wilson, the world’s foremost biologist, published a bold new proposition for legally preserving land and ocean for the world’s exponentially disappearing species. His 2016
book HalfEarth: Our planet’s
fight for life (WW Norton & Co.) recommends that we reserve 50% of Earth’s surface for the other animals, plants and microorganisms on which we humans depend for our survival. We are currently living through the sixth mass extinction event. This is being caused by human population growth, habitat loss and climate change, interlocked and operating in concert, reinforcing each other in an increasing spiral of destruction.
E. O. Wilson notes that existing national parks and reserves worldwide are insufficient to save many species from destruction because the areas set aside are too small. For that reason, species everywhere are vanishing from national parks and many are going extinct. Humancaused extinctions of species are currently proceeding at between 100 and 1000 times the background extinction rate — that is, the standard rate of extinction during Earth’s geological and biological existence before human interference.
Biochemistry has proved that all animals, plants and microorganisms are related, while the science of ecology has shown that the various species fit together into interlocking ecological niches. The whole of life in fact functions together as a form of symbiosis. Every species is arguably as important and valuable as any other. All have mutually dependent roles.
But these facts clearly escape many leaders of human society, particularly those who support ‘‘endless growth’’ neoliberal capitalism.
When they promote growth at the expense of the rest of the biosphere, such leaders contribute to a strategy that will destroy humankind, and most of the living world.
This dire picture is not without hope, for there are currently some inspirational world leaders. For example, Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical letter Laudato si: On Care For Our Common Home shows that saving the biosphere has a moral dimension: that it is immoral to destroy the biosphere.
HalfEarth is gaining adherents — recent supportive articles appeared in The
Guardian and other prominent and respected journals: see Kim Stanley Robinson’s article in
The Guardian Weekly of March 30 to April 5, 2018. As climate change and habitat destruction put increasing and diverse pressures on human systems, our solutions can no longer be based on humancentric thinking, because that is what caused the problem in the first place. HalfEarth thus has great value, if only as a basic planning principle.