Half of All Animal Species Could Be Extinct in Our Lifetime!
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Sadly, this is not just a tabloid heading predicting apocalyptic doom.
Research conducted by Met Office scientists recently discovered that if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, with no heavy attempts to lessen them or at least keep them under better control, then global warming will exceed 4 degrees by the end of the century.
What does this mean?
- Different parts of the globe could warm up by 7 degrees or more; the Arctic is at risk of a 15 degree increase, while Africa could warm up by 10 degrees.
- At least half of the world will have an inadequate water supply, while other portions will be overly flooded.
- And, of course, it could have an extremely negative impact on wildlife everywhere.
According to Dr. Richard Betts, Head of Climate Impacts at the Met Office Hadley Centre, “Together these impacts will have very large consequences for food security, water availability and health. However, it is possible to avoid these dangerous levels of temperature rise by cutting greenhouse gas emissions. If global emissions peak within the next decade and then decrease rapidly it may be possible to avoid at least half of the four degrees of warming.”
For more information on this, check out 4 Degrees and Beyond; where slides and audio files will be available from the recent conference discussing this issue.
By Heidi Marshall
And would life really be less incredible without them? Yes, if you’re totally focused on defining nature by it’s inevitable failures (all species including polar bears and Humans) rather than it’s transient successes (some species, like humans and cane toads), it would. But if you’re happy to accept that life is life regardless of what it looks like, then the miracle of nature will not be completely obscured by the inevitibility of extinction (which is just death after all) and you will always be able to stare in objective wonder at life’s magnificient resilience. In the words of Charles Darwin:
“We need not marvel at extinction; if we must marvel, let it be at our own presumption in imagining for a moment that we understand the many complex contingencies on which the existence of each species depends.” – Charles Darwin, On The Origin Of Species.