Sustainability — or decay
The Oct. 9 editorial in the magazine Science (pg. 149) was titled “Here today, gone tomorrow.” The authors, Peter H. Raven and Scott E. Miller are deeply concerned that we are destroying Earth’s life-support systems, and that our future is uncertain. This echoes the topic of my column last week, “Making the world livable,” in which I discussed the recent work of David Attenborough. Raven is president emeritus of the Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, MO. Miller is the chief scientist, and interim director of Smithsonian Libraries, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Recall that Attenborough feared that without changing human behavior the ecosystems that provide sustenance, and a livable environment could be irrevocably destroyed. The editorial provides additional support to this concern: “Unless we control the underlying causes, including overdevelopment, and climate change, we are in danger of losing 80% ormore of the world’s species, the proportion lost 66 million years ago when dinosaurs became extinct and many plants and animals known today began their ascent. We have clearly entered the world’s sixth major extinction event.”
Family leads to genus with its species. There are billions of species, many of which have not been identified. A recent United Nations Summit on Biodiversity reported that about one billion of an estimated 8.5 billion species of plants, animals and other organisms are gone. In thee past fifty years much of tropical forest land is gone. Unless the underlying causes can be controlled more land and species will vanish.
The remaining species are vulnerable to degradation and loss due to pests, humidity, fire, drought, and chemical use. Groups important to the ecology and environment are dying off to quickly to be understood: There are 25,000 named species of nematodes (roundworms), 64,000 species of mites, and 100,000 species of fungi. The authors insist that the DNA sequences of as many species as possible must be recorded and preserved. The new field of museomics shows promise whereby scientists can resequence DNA into living cells and generate new members of a bygone species such as sabre-toothed tigers, short-faced bears, Tasmanian tigers, glyptodons, woolly rhinoceri, dodos, giant ground sloths, moas, Irish elks and ancient gorillas.
Whether or not humans have the wherewithal to stabilizing population to equalize the number of people to the available food supply, provide birth control to those who need it, stop the use of fossil fuels, use clean energy, rid the environment of the poisonous effects of greenhouse gas emissions, cool the seas of excess warmth, revitalize the fishing industry, establish reforestation, reduce excess lumbering and restock the land with wildlife has yet to be determined. Current conditions in the United States are not encouraging. When fortysix percent of the population does not believe that the COVID-19 pandemic is serious, that face masks, social distancing and sanitizing are a crock, and that herd immunity is the best solution, Huston, we have a problem. In a letter to Lancet, eighty researchers have strongly condemned the notion of herd immunity saying it is “a dangerous fallacy unsupported by scientific evidence.” This repudiates the Great Barrington Declaration of October 4 that indicates that the many should risk getting the virus to restore the economy. This has left serious epidemiologists appalled and incredulous.
Japan and New Zealand provide more hopeful examples. Both nations took the necessary steps to curtail the health problem with excellent results. One consequence was that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern easily won re-election. Leadership and action matter.
What we must do here is replace doubters in government with those who care to do what is right. We all must commit to helping those in need: accessible healthcare, an improved economy, expanded civil rights, and provide a sustainable existence for all species. OB1 Biden, you’re our only hope!