What’s So Cool About Biodiversity?
Ever wonder why biodiversity is so important to human civilization? One reason is that the vast majority of the cures we’re developing for our wide range of diseases comes from various species of life forms, and thus mass extinction of even seemingly insignificant species is removing the possibility of developing important medicines.
Here’s another: for reasons that are not completely understood, pathogens are far less likely to cause infection under biodiverse conditions, as explained in this article in Science Magazine, and in the photographs below.
From 1970 to 2010, the global human population – the number of individual humans – nearly doubled.
In that same forty years, the global population of vertebrates – the number of individual mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians and fish – fell by 52%.
That’s based on observations of over 10,000 populations of over 3,000 species.
That’s the web of life that supports us all and on which all of us will always depend.
How many strands can you cut from a hammock before you fall on your ass?
Let’s find out.
Or, as my father used to say, “Let’s not and say we did.”
As did my mother – was your dad born in the 1920’s? 🙂
Yep, 1921. 🙂
🙂
How do we get huge swaths of people and leadership to realize the inertia – as in mass and momentum – of the challenges we’ve created and are creating for each other and ourselves, so that societies are reconfigured and supported to facilitate a transition to sustainability? How do we get ourselves on the proper path?
Are we and our progeny simply doomed to suffer increasing scarcity and conflict because of the strength of empowered greed, stubborn shortsightedness and the misinformation and infighting that result?