Earth’s average surface temperature has gotten hotter, and the oceans have warmed. The sea level has risen, and the ocean ice sheets have shrunk. Glaciers are retreating, and sea ice is thinner.
All of these changes have been documented by NASA, which has concluded with near certainty that the changes are the result of human activity.
Now comes the news from the World Wildlife Fund that there has been a 60 percent decline in wildlife populations globally over the past 40 years — another result of human activity.
The organization measured 16,704 populations of 4,005 species of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. The biggest declines were among creatures that live in fresh water as well as those in the rain forests of South America and Central America. Some 20 percent of the Amazon has simply disappeared and half of the world’s shallow-water corals have evaporated.
“Humanity and the way we feed, fuel and finance our societies and economies is pushing nature and the services that power and sustain us to the brink,” the report states.
It is not all hopeless. Intentional efforts to change course can help. For example, the WWF reported that concerted initiatives toward habitat restoration helped boost populations of giant pandas, mountain gorillas and endangered dolphins in recent years.
To fix a problem we must accept that there is a problem. And sometimes, the problem seems almost too big to grasp, like seas turning more acidic and glaciers melting. But the findings of the WWF are very visual. Picture this: Almost all of the world’s seabirds have fragments of plastic in their stomachs. That’s one of the tidbits in the study.
While there are myriad implications to consider in any discussion of environmental protection and climate change, one thing is certain: Politics must be set aside. Stewardship of resources. Preservation of the environment. Protection of our air and water. These are the stakes and they get no higher.
“The good Earth — we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and lazy,” wrote Kurt Vonnegut. Let us hope he was not prophetic.
First Published November 14, 2018, 11:00 a.m.
