Is the Plunge in Global Wildlife a Warning to Humans Too?

 

The emergence of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), including drug-resistant bacteria, or “superbugs”, pose far greater risks to human health than Covid-19, threatening to put modern medicine “back into the dark ages”, an Australian scientist has warned, ahead of a three-year study into drug-resistant bacteria in Fiji.

The Guardian UK, September 9^th.

The coronavirus appears to be nature’s efforts to contain the Malthusian explosion of people on planet with at least twice the number of human beings as it appears to be able to support. We consume, we waste, we pollute, and we destroy ecosystem after ecosystem. We rationalize. Evangelicals tell us that the Bible encourages mankind to use nature’s resources without concern, that God has pledged not to repeat global catastrophes like the Great Flood that Noah survived. Other Christian faiths preach responsibility. Politicians tell us that expanding agricultural land to feed expanding populations and allowing job-creating industries to grow even at the expense of global warming and toxic pollution are simple pragmatic necessities. Economists warn that environmental regulations will crush economic growth and job creation. 

Have we reached critical mass? Do floods, droughts, wildfires, increasingly severe mega-storms, ice melts and coastal erosion mean anything to most of us? Why exactly do leaders all across the world continue to do too little, too late (if anything) to address the combination of “all of the above”? That they hold office only for a limited time, so their focus is only on the here and now? That their constituents do not want to change or hamper growth? That rich and powerful corporations throw everything they can against regulations of any kind, financial or environmental… and money always gets it way? Even as the hard cash damage has now reached into the trillions and trillions of dollars? Even as death and destruction have exploded? 

We tend to be a reactive planet, struggle mightily with obvious longer term ameliorative solutions, and seem to focus on the immediate crises before us… and little else. Fires here. Floods there. Pandemic now. Drought and severe hurricanes and typhoons. Etc. But there is a unifying totality that we seem to be able to ignore. Still, the earth seems filled with so many “canaries in the coal mine” – clear existential peril – that we just continue to ignore. 

Where we can see how life is extinguished by man’s arrogant devastation of his own planet is contained in the World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Report 2020, issued on September 10th, which examines exactly how man has impacted the earth and its living creatures. It begins with this admonition: “Living Planet Report 2020 shows that our relationship with nature is broken – but we know what needs to be done if we’re going to turn it around. There’s no time to waste. We must take action now if nature is going to recover.” 

NBC News (September 10th) summarizes the findings: “Humans are wiping out wildlife at a ‘unprecedented’ rate with wildlife populations down by 68 percent on average since 1970… Unsustainable agriculture and deforestation are two of the main drivers, and urgent action is required to reverse the trend… 

‘Our planet is flashing red warning signs,’ said Marco Lambertini, Director General of WWF International, an NGO that focuses on preserving nature… ‘From the fish in our oceans and rivers to bees which play a crucial role in our agricultural production, the decline of wildlife affects directly nutrition, food security and the livelihoods of billions of people… 

“The situation is most stark in the tropics of Latin American where species have declined on average by 94 percent following massive deforestation and the conversion of wild spaces for agriculture… Land clearance and deforestation has hit record levels in Brazil in recent years as farmers seek to convert forest and grasslands for agriculture. Cattle grazing and soy farming — mostly used as animal feed for the meat industry — are the primary drivers. 

“Three quarters of the earth’s non-ice surface have been altered and no longer contain wilderness, the report states, while most of the oceans are now polluted and more than 85 percent of the planet's wetlands have been lost. 

“The report calls for the world to reform the unsustainable food system, increase protected areas for wildlife and for people in high meat consuming countries — like the U.S. — to shift their diets to a ‘lower share of animal calories.’” 

But the subtext, a most ominous subtext, is that we are both killing ourselves and mandating that nature is beginning to move the human overpopulation problem to her center focus. To kill as many people as she can. Good for the planet. Bad for people. Drought causes migration causes conflict results in war which kills people. Climate change moves disease-carrying insects to new human environments, unprepared for new strains of ailments. And then there are new strains of people-killing viruses. Ebola, SARS, MERS, Spanish Flu, cholera, COVID-19 and whatever nature has planned next (see above).

I’m Peter Dekom, and if we haven’t figured it out by now, nature started with nothing, cares little for what we value or economic worth, is unimpacted by politics or ranting leaders and lobbying industrialists and is simply out to rebalance the earth against mankind’s arrogant distortions.