No better age is coming, we can only try to protect what we have
With temperature rises threatening mass extinction, it's humans who could soon be endangered if we're not carefulON THE DANGER LIST: As the ice and food supply disappears, polar bears face the prospect of dying out in the wild. existing only in zoos or as exotic baubles for the super rich
Extinction is a natural part of the life of this planet. Leaving aside the flora, there are probably at least 70,000 main species in existence. If you count everything being studied -- mammals, amphibians, marine creatures, birds, insects, that would make it more like 1.8 million species. And that's not counting the unknown ones or the bacteria. Those are the estimates.
Then there are guesstimates that put the total as high as anything between eight and 15 million. Take your pick. For example, there are reckoned to be hundreds of species completely unknown to science in the deep waters of the Antarctic region. But for every one of those species, probably a thousand more had become extinct previously -- most before we humans even evolved. That natural process is normally gradual, except when there have been extreme climate changes or geological activities, meteor strikes or other natural occurrences.
Outside of these events, we reckon that we can lose up to 10 species a year --many of them before we have even discovered them. New species are being discovered all the time. Sure most of them are butterflies or frogs or some such, but there are the occasional mammals still being found, too.
The present threat of mass extinction really had its first beginnings about 100,000 BC when man first started moving around the planet; and it got into its stride about 6,000 BC when we hit on the idea of agriculture to feed ourselves. And when we took over new eco-systems to farm, we hunted and brought diseases that previously did not exist there. We have always been pretty good at making our presence felt. But it was only in the final hundred years or so with the industrial revolution, as our numbers and therefore our needs expanded dramatically, that we really sent natural selection extinction into overdrive and the rate rose hundreds, even thousands of times higher than the background rate. Introducing poisonous chemicals, such as DDT, was one of our pre-emptive strikes.
This speeded-up extinction was well under way before we woke up to the fact that we should do something about it. There wasn't really any excuse for the delay, everyone knew about it because it was a huge media topic for ages. Animals make great television, especially if you are being told they are rare and getting more so. And the dire warnings by the experts gave some added drama, but not enough to move a bored population. There were lists of endangered species but only very few of those that were really in danger of disappearing permanently made it on to those lists. And getting on a list was no guarantee of survival. Most of them quickly moved on to another list headed "extinct".
Just last month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report warned that almost a third of the world's species face extinction if temperatures rise by more than 2C -- now expected to happen by 2050. Another recent report from the World Conservation Union tells us that six of the eight species of bear are facing extinction. And the WWF's Antarctic Penguins and Climate Change report announced just weeks ago that four species of Antarctic penguin, including the biggest, the Emperor, are at risk as temperatures rise and the ice and food supply disappear.
At this stage, we face the possibility of being able to do little that does not come under the heading of maintenance -- and even that could be ambitious. We may soon have to replace those efforts with zoological preservation. We will preserve what we think are the noble animals or the cuddly ones -- lions, tigers, elephants, giraffes, rhinos and bears. The BBC has already run telethons with celebrities encouraging the public to lobby for their favourites. Eventually, outside of zoos, they will exist only as exotic baubles for the super-rich.
Of course, we can use DNA as a way of keeping something of what we losing, but that is just faking and so second rate it is depressing; holograms compared to the natural original. It's like putting them away to bring back out in a better age.
But there is no better age coming. Just worse ones. And most of that effort will probably be put into plants anyway when we realise that in letting the flora go, we would be losing a huge source of chemicals needed for the treatment of various ailments. Of course, we will keep some roses and orchids -- the noble and cuddly equivalents in plant life -- but no poison ivy or stinging nettles.
The creatures we save will have lost most of their survival instincts. They could no longer live in the wild even if there were any lesser species for them to prey on. The food will be gone from their food chain. But that will be academic anyway, because productive wilderness won't exist anymore for them to survive in.
In a short space of time, we can lose thousands of species. Then we will be the endangered ones.
