My last blog (The Facts We Fear to Face: Part One) referenced the new IPBES report on the multiple threats posed to wild plants and animals – not to mention us humans – by human activity, of which a primary threat is that posed by climate change. I mentioned the book I was reading, which addresses both the multiple reasons why so many people are in denial about what is recognized as an existential threat not only to the greatly increasing number of animals being pushed to extinction, but to human well-being – and even human survival – and addresses the horrific outcomes that lurk in the near future.
There have been literally hundreds of predictions of a coming catastrophe of cosmic proportions, but apart from those pertaining to such things as nuclear war, or perhaps antimicrobial resistance, they have been based on stupidity, misunderstanding of data, fraud, or nonsense. What is different about the IPBES report and others containing either similar dire warnings, or elucidations of accelerated rates of extinction, is that they are based on hard, empirical information agreed upon by numerous scientists deeply engaged in many relevant fields of research. The IPBES report is the work of 145 experts from 50 countries, and was compiled over a three-year period, drawing on work by 310 contributing authors and assessing measurable changes over the past five decades. News-wise, as they say, it’s huge, or should be.
As I said in the first blog, reading about the IPBES report coincided with listening on the radio about the problems already occurring in the arctic. We should fear more than the loss of polar bears and walruses. But, during the exact same news cycle the U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, illustrated the magnitude of the problem with a belligerent, error-filled speech to delegates from the seven other arctic nations, at an arctic nation conference, actually equating the loss of ice with the chance to extract still more “resources” and to access the northwest passage.
Science is self-correcting as information is refined and new information is made available. When they are adults, infants now around the age of that British royal baby thought more newsworthy than the IPBES report, lacking the layers of privileged protection he is likely to have, will assuredly wonder how we could have been so cruelly stupid as they struggle to survive the results of what we are doing now. We won’t be here to apologize; the suffering will be theirs to endure.
This is why we don’t give up. We have our victories, we fight for the animals and their environment; it is what we do. But, we must do so recognizing, and not denying or ignoring, the problems.
Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Barry
