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The “Sixth Extinction” Adds Urgency to Habitat and Climate Protection
The “Sixth Extinction” Adds Urgency to Habitat and Climate Protection
It’s now unequivocal: the sixth great spasm of species extinctions has begun. We – homo sapiens – are its cause. And only we can slow it down.
Over the last century, the average rate of loss of vertebrate species — fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals – has been up to 100 times higher than the background extinction rate, according to a new study published last week in the journal Science Advances.
In order to help settle the question of whether a sixth extinction episode has indeed begun, the scientific team chose assumptions that would tend to minimize evidence that it has. As a result, their calculations almost certainly underestimate the severity of the extinction crisis under way.
“[W]e can confidently conclude that modern extinction rates are exceptionally high, that they are increasing, and that they suggest a mass extinction under way – the sixth of its kind in Earth’s 4.5 billion years of history,” the researchers write.
The study team included scientists from Princeton, Stanford, the University of California-Berkeley, the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and the University of Florida.
The last episode of mass extinction occurred about 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs and about half of all species living on Earth at the time were wiped out.
A huge crater off Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula dated to the time of this event suggests an extraterrestrial impact as a leading cause.
But, in a first, the current mass extinction is driven by human activities – deforestation, dam-building, over-harvesting, wetland-draining, pollution and the myriad other ways we destroy the lives and homes of the rich diversity of animals with which we share the planet.
And this will not end in some Darwinian-style victory for we humans.
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No Climate Protection without Climate Justice; No Climate Justice without Degrowth
No Climate Protection without Climate Justice; No Climate Justice without Degrowth
Shortly before the most crucial UN climate change conference after the failure of Copenhagen, it seems that the international climate-movement is finally getting its act together: resistance against fossil fuel extraction is gaining ground and a rising global movement is putting pressure on institutions to divest their money from fossil fuels to finance renewables instead. Green jobs in the renewable energy sector have been a success story and it is broadly accepted that we need to keep 80% of the known fossil fuel reserves in the ground if we want to prevent runaway climate change. Last year, more than 400 000 people flooded the streets of New York City in the largest climate march in history and, as the global development of renewable energy increases in scale and efficiency, people are starting to believe in a transition away from fossil fuel dependency.
This is of course good news, and nobody concerned about climate change would seriously doubt that the global transition towards renewable energy is an absolute necessity. However, much as right-wing conservatives, mostly in the US, deny anthropogenic climate change, the majority of the climate movement tends to deny an equally important issue: that renewables are unable to maintain our Western growth-based consumer lifestyles on a global level.
“Renewable” does not equal “unlimited”
The limitations and environmental impacts of renewables are being discussed in breadth and depth elsewhere; suffice to say here that e.g. wind mills and solar panels are very energy-intensive in production – and intensive in other natural resources too, such as metals, minerals and rare earths. Windmills for example require lots of concrete which is a highly CO2 intensive industry. Solar photovoltaic systems use on average 23-59 kg of aluminium per kW – the aluminium sector being another CO2 intensive industry.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Climate Spending Falls, Threatening 2-Degree Target – Bloomberg
Climate Spending Falls, Threatening 2-Degree Target – Bloomberg.
Spending on carbon-reduction and climate-protection measures by governments and companies fell for a second year, threatening the United Nations’ goal to cap global warming at safe levels, according to a research report.
World expenditures on renewables, energy efficiency and measures that protect against the effects of climate change slid $28 billion, or 8 percent, to about $331 billion in 2013, according to the report published today by the Climate Policy Initiative, a San Francisco-based analysis company.
Governments are trying to devise a new global agreement by the end of next year that would cap the increase in the world’s temperature since the Industrial Revolution to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). To achieve that, annual spending on measures like wind and solar power needs to more than double to $790 billion by 2020, the International Energy Agency says.
“Global investments in a cleaner, more resilient economy are decreasing and the gap between finance needed and actually delivered is growing,” Barbara Buchner, a senior director of Climate Policy Initiative and lead author of the study, said in an e-mailed statement. “Climate finance is a key ingredient to bring the world on a 2-degree Celsius pathway.”
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