The Sixth Extinction

The Sixth Extinction

Driving home the other day listening to a podcast from ABC the presenter mentioned the sixth extinction. Curious I have had a look at it; here is a snapshot.

Our planet has been shaken by five major extinctions in the four billion year history of life. The first, 450 million years ago, occurred shortly after the evolution of the first land-based plants and 100 million years after the Cambrian Explosion of animal life beneath the seas.

 

The second extinction spasm came 350 million years ago, causing the formation of coal forests. Then the Earth experienced two mass extinctions during the Triassic period, between 250 and 200 million years ago. The fifth mass extinction, probably caused by a giant meteor collision, occurred 65 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period, and ended the reptilian dominance of the Earth. This led to the current mammalian domination of the Earth.

So what is the Sixth Extinction? When is it coming? And what is its cause?

"It's the next annihilation of vast numbers of species. It is happening now, and we, the human race, are its cause,"

Every year, between 17,000 and 100,000 species vanish from our planet. "For the sake of argument, let's assume the number is 50,000 a year. Whatever way you look at it, we're destroying the Earth at a rate comparable with the impact of a giant asteroid slamming into the planet, or even a shower of vast heavenly bodies."

1. 

The statistics are staggering. Fifty per cent of the Earth's species will have vanished inside the next 100 years; mankind is using almost half the energy available to sustain life on the planet, and this figure will only grow as our population leaps from 5.7 billion to ten billion inside the next half-century. Such a dramatic and overwhelming mass extinction threatens the entire complex fabric of life on Earth, including the species responsible for it: Homo sapiens.

 

A Snapshot of the Future:

Population    World population, 1970 approximately 3,300,000,000

World population, 2008 approximately 6,700,000,000

World population now 7,100,000,000

and growing by 1,000,000 every four days.

 

Pollution affects billions of people around the world; in many countries entire rivers and ecosystems are poisoned or threatened.   Deaths, disease and toxic poisoning affect many in the developing world. Acid rain, global warming, habitat and species loss is a continuing tragedy.

Are you part of the problem or part of the solution?