Post No.: 0978
Furrywisepuppy says:
Although we’re doing so much to affect this planet – we’re still not the masters of it. Nature is still far more powerful than us. So we’d better look after the life that looks after us. We need to care about Earth’s biodiversity.
Biodiversity is vital for humans. A range of micro-organisms, fungi, flora and fauna combined are required to produce the oxygen, food, fresh water and medicines that humans depend upon.
For simply living, we’re constantly creating life – like the gut bacteria that thrives on whatever we swallow, the insects that feed on our dander, and when we’re cultivating plants and raising animals.
We’re constantly killing too – from the bacteria that cannot survive in our stomach acid, when trampling on insects inadvertently, to the plants and animals we eat to live (which is a main purpose of cultivating those plants and raising those animals above in the first place), for instance.
But there’s something about the intentions, avoidability and proportionality to requirements of our actions.
Species routinely naturally go extinct. But human industrial and commercial activities, like deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions, have accelerated the rate of biodiversity loss. And now we cannot feign ignorance or therefore claim that our actions are wholly unintentional or unavoidable.
A rich and diverse wildlife is essential for robust ecosystems. Take out one species and watch the potential collateral effects upon the entire food chain, the production of oxygen and the removal of ‘waste’ products. It’s not always obvious which species are most critical to protect. We cannot look after ourselves without looking after nature too because it’s our home, our food basket, our medicine box and source of joy.
Nature can take millions of years of evolution to create a thriving ecosystem, but things are far easier and quicker to destroy than to build. So habitats can be fragile and whole ecosystems can sometimes deteriorate quite fast. Because everything in nature is intrinsically interconnected and often exists in sensitive balance – losing one species could have massive cumulative effects upon other species. To strengthen ecosystems therefore requires high biodiversity – diversity is a case of having eggs in many different baskets instead of just a few. However, changes in land and sea use and direct exploitation, plus the introduction of invasive species, have led and are leading to a loss of biodiversity in numerous places.
Biodiversity loss can be caused by human activities via direct poaching, pollution that kills life directly, by affecting food chains, affecting a specie’s fertility, taking wild habitats and converting them for agriculture or to accommodate growing human populations, certain farming practices, through global warming as ice sheets melt and habitats generally shrink or change, and because different animals will then migrate or cluster in ways they didn’t use to before, which may lead to pathogens that they have no immunity against spreading between them rapidly.
It’s about how a rapidly changing environment decimates biodiversity. When life doesn’t have sufficient time to evolve or adapt to these rapid changes in climate and concomitant off-kilter or shorter breeding seasons, new predators, loss of prey, and so forth – they become endangered or extinct.
Wildlife didn’t evolve for this Anthropocene world. For instance, manmade perfluorinated/polyfluorinated alkyl substances or PFASs – dubbed ‘forever chemicals’ – left in the environment may be problematic for the health and reproduction of wildlife. It’s absurd to think that human activities don’t have a huge impact on this planet, and that includes in a negative way. Humans have, intentionally and unintentionally, drained entire lakes, melted glaciers, flattened rainforests, dumped mountains of waste in landfills, produced massive swirling ocean garbage patches, and more.
A change of temperature leads to less food for a whale in its normal habitat, so it migrates to places where it might be exposed to new pathogens, more fishing gear, more microplastics and persistent organic compounds, which leads to more illness and more beached strandings.
2°C doesn’t sound like much of a difference but it is to life. Well a 2°C change to one’s core body temperature will cause serious problems, and most people will moan if their home is just one or two degrees higher or lower than what they like!
That concerns the average global warming too – some vital areas, like in Arctic regions where ice is melting, are warming more than the average. There are several domino effects, tipping points, positive feedback (which doesn’t mean ‘good’ but ‘self-reinforcing’) and runaway effects. For example, the methane positive feedback effect – whereby warmer temperatures increase methane production from micro-organisms in wetland areas, which contributes to even warmer temperatures. According to one study, if a rainforest depletes to a point where it loses too much moisture to sustain itself, the area will turn into a savannah.
There are keystone species that, if decimated, will have severe knock-on effects upon their entire ecosystems in a ‘trophic cascade’, such as wolves keeping elk populations in check so that willow tree shoots can flourish rather than all be eaten, which in turn helps beavers to flourish for they depend on these trees. Or sea otters control sea urchin populations so that the kelp can flourish, and in turn all of the other life that depends on the kelp. Or the great whales are often food for orcas but if they’re gone then the orcas will eat sea otters, seals and other animals and obliterate those populations. (There were thousands more great whales before humans hunted them for oil. We cannot just blame countries like Japan, Norway and Iceland today because whaling by the USA was rife from the 17th century, and under the Soviet Union, for instance.) Wolf spiders help rice to grow. There’s also wildebeest, pumas and starfish playing key roles in their respective ecosystems. Keystone species aren’t always predators but they often are. Everything is interconnected in an ecosystem such as via the food chain.
We need to always understand the bigger picture. For example, we cannot just think ‘these humpback whales are eating ‘our’ herring supply thus culling these whales will be good for us’ – when whale faeces could be feeding the phytoplankton that the fish feed on to flourish overall. Plankton locks in tons of carbon from the atmosphere too. Hence these whales are good for us. It’s a chain or loop of interconnected destinies.
Re-wilding or conservation efforts and legally protecting endangered species, like the furry grey wolf population in mainland Europe, can work.
However, a dilemma is that global environmental and biodiversity concerns can clash with securing employment for impoverished local peoples, like in the case of shark hunting for some coastal communities. And some contend that if we don’t buy products that come from the rainforest areas of the world then that’ll impact the poor workers living there.
It’s easy for foreigners to judge poorer countries using their local resources to try to improve their own economies and lives… whilst those in richer countries frack for gas or continue to drill for oil! It’s a pleasure to preserve nature but this doesn’t always put food on the table for the locals living there. We can also call for endangered predators to be conserved in these areas without considering how dangerous they are to the local people and their livestock.
But really it’s the huge multinational corporations who take the lion’s share of the profits and give these local workers relatively little in return. It’s a story of human exploitation too thus the impoverished need a better deal. We should try to only buy products that utilise sustainable resources and that pay the locals fairly.
It’s the executives and shareholders of huge polluting companies, and those who fund them, who are incredibly wealthy already yet their greed is unlimited. They have alternative ways to operate their businesses but they choose the most profit-maximising ways even if it’s the most polluting way. We can vocally complain about these businesses – but as long as we’re still ultimately buying their products then they won’t truly modify their ways. We need to hit their bottom lines via altering our own consumption habits and/or via regulations. They won’t change unless externally forced to.
The locals need viable alternative livelihoods. There are global solutions if the wealth were better (re)distributed but the international political will isn’t quite there for this level of cooperation. Competition overly dominates in this financial world. And wealthy countries aren’t doing enough of their own bit, hence it’s rich to hear from citizens from wealthy countries having a go at poor local farmers and fishermen in places like the Amazon or Indonesia.
Humans do however need to learn to somehow live closer with wildlife in some areas, like where wolves and bears live close to towns. Historically, people would just slaughter these ‘intruding’ animals but there has got to be another way. There are legitimate concerns for farmers who need to protect their livestock, and for children and others who may cross close paths with dangerous predators in general.
Vegans would assert this is another reason to ditch meat production altogether. But wildlife consumes food crops too. Notwithstanding, if the entire human population turned vegan, it’d reduce global land use for agriculture by ~75%. Just cutting out meat from cattle and sheep would reduce it by ~50%. This is because most agricultural land is actually used for growing animal feed. Vast swathes of forests are cut down in order to make way for land that feeds and raises livestock for humans to then consume. This is a highly inefficient use of habitable land and cancels out the trees that are planted to absorb and lock away atmospheric carbon.
Food will be more difficult to grow if there are more frequent droughts, heat waves and floods. Pests and diseases will also likely proliferate. A warmer world would mean more ‘tropical’ diseases (like those spread by mosquitoes) for humans to encounter in more latitudes of the world. According to some studies, higher carbon dioxide levels reduce the nutritional value of some crops too. Each year, more fertiliser and pesticides are required – yet still the world’s farming soil quality is degrading, which threatens our future food security.
A lack of insect pollinators, like bees, wasps, butterflies and moths, won’t doom all food crops but will still have a devastating effect on feeding the global population unless these pollinators are protected and/or alternative solutions can be found.
Wars, not just climate change, highlight how much we must diversify our main food crops too. Wars are major emitters of greenhouse gas emissions themselves – well it’s clear that war machines and explosives use tons of energy and produce tons of fire and smoke.
A wild garden with native plants that bear seasonal fruits and seeds is far better for biodiversity than an over-manicured lawn with a birdfeeder. Even worse is a plastic artificial lawn! ‘Looking neater’ isn’t better for life but many humans focus too much on what’s superficial.
Doing things like reviving tired bees with honey, putting up birdfeeders or ‘rescuing’ a baby animal one stumbles across, then subsequently learning that one shouldn’t do this for the bacterial risk, it could upset the natural order of things and the animal’s mother was highly likely nearby, respectively, can make one think ‘why bother at all’ though. Trying one’s best yet discovering one has potentially been doing harm can be quite demotivating. It’s therefore (and this is applicable to any context) not about castigating those who try their best or have been misinformed – just those who have misplaced priorities, don’t want to learn or don’t care at all. Woof.
There are people who claim to love animals and plants yet don’t seem to give enough thought about the environmental impacts of their careers, consumerism and waste.
And is one animal life less than another? Shouldn’t ‘I love animals’ mean all animals, not just the cute ones like pandas or tigers?
Woof! Ultimately – preserving biodiversity is an essential existential priority.
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