While I was both following a blog tradition and indulging my "I can't be all DOOM all the time" mood when I wrote about Star Wars for the Revenge of the Sixth, some serious DOOM news came out that day. CBS News has the story in One million species facing extinction, U.N. report warns.
A new report involving hundreds of scientists worldwide warns that humans are accelerating the pace of extinction for many of earth's species, and the loss of biodiversity could be devastating. Patricia Miloslavich, a professor who contributed to the report, joins CBSN with more on the problem and what needs to be done.It was only last Friday that I mentioned "population and affluence, the P and A in I (impact) = P * A * T, where T is technology, which ideally could counteract the effects of the other two variables" in the comments to Going South at Kunstler's blog. Both the demand for resources caused by population and affluence and the amount of pollution produced by human consumption and abetted by inefficient technologies and bad habits are contributing to the impact of more than 7 billion people competing for resources with the rest of life on Earth. As I wrote first for last year's World Oceans Day and quoted for this year's World Wildlife Day, "Climate change, plastic pollution, and overfishing make a deadly trifecta of threats to all the world's oceans, not just the coral reefs." Many of the same phenomena are threats to life on land, too. Here's to hoping people's attitudes and government policy change to prevent the worst damage and technology catches up to the need.
Enough DOOM. Stay tuned for a post about Mother's Day.
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