Animal Extinction - the greatest threat to mankind - Independent Online Edition > Environment
The subtitle to the story is, "By the end of the century half of all species will be extinct. Does that matter?"
What kind of society do we live in that asks this question? What kind of mindless killing sty do we find acceptable.
Bjorn Lomborg, conservative anti-environmental poster child, in his controversial book "The Skeptical Environmentalist," concedes that the extinction rate appears to be high. Really high. Like a hundred times higher than in the pre-human past. But he still low balls it (see here), and suggests that well, maybe it's not a big deal if it's merely a hundred times higher because of us.
And these extrapolations, like the mass extinctions, and global warming, while they are uncertain, are usually only taken out 50 or 100 years...as if that's the end of time. As if it's okay to wait and see if the middle-of-the-road scary predictions turn out to be true or not. As if the science behind the trends can be second guessed by waiting.
I'm not a scare monger, and think that Paul Erlich and his "population bomb" are, but I find it very disturbing how the basic science is now being held in scorn by many, or how many seem too narrow-minded to consider what these trends may mean. It's one thing when people need to be fed, and there are profits to be made doing it. It's another thing when it's a bunch of insects dying off, and you don't notice until it's the ones that pollinate your crops.
"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."
Einstein? (See here and here).