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Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970, report finds.
Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, leading the world's foremost experts to warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens civilisation.
The new estimate of the massacre of wildlife is made in a major report produced by WWF and involving 59 scientists from across the globe. It finds that the vast and growing consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the web of life, billions of years in the making, upon which human society ultimately depends for clean air, water and everything else.
"We are sleepwalking towards the edge of a cliff" said Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF. "If there was a 60% decline in the human population, that would be equivalent to emptying North America, South America, Africa, Europe, China and Oceania. That is the scale of what we have done."
"This is far more than just being about losing the wonders of nature, desperately sad though that is," he said. "This is actually now jeopardising the future of people. Nature is not a 'nice to have' – it is our life-support system."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 01 2018, @08:49AM (1 child)
Funny how you criticize the article for "emotion (rather than reason" but all your comment is nothing but an opinion, and obviously chock full of bias as evidenced by phrases like "eco-alarmism". You discredit no finding of the article and present no facts of your own. You're just pandering to the "business as usual" crowd.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday November 01 2018, @02:15PM
Actually, I quite suspect that once the bias is corrected for, the underlying facts (if not the alarmist conclusions) are either right or at least trending in that direction.
A problem is that there are many nuts who present "alternate facts" with zeal using emotional language to "sell" them because their information can't speak for itself.
When someone wraps actual science, data, or facts in that sort of nonsense, the whole assembly fades into the background of conspiracy theories instead of standing out, as it should, as actual reality, clearly distinguishable from nutty conspiracy theory.