Biologist E.O. Wilson calls the stunning destruction of wildlife on our planet "the death of birth." We all must die in time, and there is a natural justice to the succession of generations. Old men pass away, but they can take comfort in the renewal of the babies they leave behind. For species facing extinction, birth itself dies. For the last mountain gorilla hacked to death in the jungles of Africa, death is absolute.
The last year brought a torrent of bad news regarding our planet, especially for the living things that have the misfortune to live in this age of man. The largest survey of mammal species ever conducted found that one in four is threatened with extinction, and about half are in decline. More than one-third of amphibians face extinction, along with one-third of the animals that make coral reefs.
Last summer, scientists counted more than 400 dead zones in the ocean, the foul bounty of our indiscriminate use of fertilizer. That's up from about 50 in the 1960s. In the Mediterranean, hundreds of swimmers were stung by massive swarms of jellyfish drifting close to shore, jellyfish that thrive in dead zones. In the Pacific Northwest, the salmon fishery collapsed, joining a long list of species we have polluted and fished to the verge of annihilation. We are fast turning the oceans into a poisoned soup that can support little more than algae and stinging invertebrates.
There was also new evidence that global warming is accelerating. While know-nothing "skeptics" muddy the waters with junk science, we charge ahead toward catastrophic climate change. Since the Industrial Revolution, people have boosted levels of atmospheric carbon by about 40 percent. It is all but certain that by the time I'm an old man, we'll reach levels of atmospheric carbon not seen in 55 million years. Scientists are busily tracking how global warming will push many threatened species over the edge.
It is difficult to know how many species we are driving to extinction because we are killing them faster than scientists can identify them. Estimates range from two to 10 extinctions every hour.
Death is part of life, and extinction is part of the natural order. Scientists estimate that more than 99 percent of all species that ever lived have gone extinct. But only a few times in Earth's history have so many species died at once. The most famous mass extinction killed all dinosaurs except the birds about 65 million years ago, when a giant asteroid struck the Earth. In the worst mass extinction, about 250 million years ago, more than 90 percent of species in the oceans died. Scientists still debate the cause. Now, we face the sixth mass extinction on our planet. For the first time, one species is killing all the rest.
There are many steps each of us should take, as a matter of basic self-respect.
Eat little meat, especially beef. Growing one pound of beef releases 57 times the greenhouse gases of growing a pound of potatoes. Cattle require vast grazing lands that contribute to deforestation. Avoid eating fish like bluefin tuna, which we are quickly eliminating from the ocean.
Eat organic food when possible. We dump more than 60 million pounds of atrazine herbicide onto our farms each year. The European Union has banned atrazine because it causes deformities in amphibians and may cause cancer in human beings. Along with atrazine, industrial farms use more than 10 million tons of fertilizer each year, much of which washes down the Mississippi River to cause a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. The dead zone last year was the second largest on record, an area of 8,000 square miles devoid of most animal life.
Drive responsibly. Unless you're rushing diplomats in and out of Baghdad's Green Zone, you do not need an SUV. When you drive an SUV, you destroy something beautiful for the sake of something ugly, your vanity.
Do not vote for politicians who are openly hostile to protecting endangered species. The party of Teddy Roosevelt has devolved into the party of Sarah Palin, who has never encountered an animal she values over oil development. In this, Palin follows in the footsteps of George W. Bush, who did everything he could to destroy the Earth. A December 2008 report from the inspector general of the Fish and Wildlife Service found that a Bush appointee named Julie MacDonald improperly blocked dozens of endangered species from being protected. MacDonald, who has no training in natural science, was such an impediment to protecting wildlife that employees came to use her name as a verb, calling meddling from the top "getting MacDonalded." Bush protected fewer species than any president since the Endangered Species Act became law in 1973.
Do these things because they are right, and then pray that human beings around the world act to avert the impending collapse. The next 200 years may determine the shape of life on Earth for the next 10 million years, as that is how long it takes for life to recover from a mass extinction. Enthralled to greed and vanity, we have already done so much damage. Will our legacy be the death of birth?
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