In 2002 there was a global agreement to slow biodiversity loss by 2010. We failed, and biodiversity is still declining at an alarming rate.

Here is a recent article abstract from Science:

How much does the loss of biodiversity cost? A lot more than most people realize. In fact, we do nothing to address the issue, the coming ‘nature crunch‘ will make the current financial crisis seem like a cake walk.

Just as we are beginning to realize the incredible importance of biodiversity

Originally published by John Dupuis

Like it or not (I obviously don’t) the green movement has failed. It has failed to inspire the public to care about the environment we all depend on, it has failed to make the public understand the gravity and scale of our current environmental problems, and it has failed to get politicians to do anything at all.

Bashing economists is commonplace within the environmental movement, and while some of the criticisms are justified, they need to to put into proper context. The fact is that a large majority of economists agree that we need to cut our greenhouse gas emissions and that placing a price on carbon (be it via a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system) is the best way to do it.

The renowned biologist EO Wilson on conservation, and what he unabashedly calls Wilson’s Law:

If you save the living environment, the biodiversity that we have left, you will also automatically save the physical environment, too.

When I was in University I read a paper by renown biologist EO Wilson, about his dream to create an online database that contained the sum of human knowledge on all the millions of organisms that inhabit our planet.

The latest report from the IPCC describes the effects of climate change more specifically and forcibly than any other IPCC report. Yet The IPCC process is inherently conservative and many scientists believe that the report is understating the severity of climate change and some of the biggest risks.

Plants are the only source of oxygen on Earth — the only source. And studies around the world show that as plant species become extinct, natural habitats can lose up to half of their living plant biomass.

These seemingly insignificant, poorly understood organisms are essential to the survival of the ecosystems we depend on, yet there is little public interest or grant money to study these organisms. Since our understanding of these vital organisms is minimal, we may fail to detect the serious harm our actions can have on them.

Biodiversity loss is an even greater problem than climate change, yet it is even less understood by the general public, and therefore has received very little attention by anyone other than biologists, who have called the current extinction crisis the sixth mass extinction event.

The Species at Risk Act (SARA) is already a very weak act; no need to make it weaker. SARA only applies to federal lands, NOT provincial lands. Provincial land account for the vast majority of the Canadian land mass; federal lands are limited to waterways, national parks, and not much else.

From Climate Ark “Is climate change a terrible threat or a beat-up? A bang or a whimper? Perhaps it’s something in between – an issue that humanity must face, but not yet.

From National Gepgraphic “The term “endangered species” typically conjures up images of charismatic animals—tigers, pandas, orangutans, whales, condors. But a new study says that the vast majority of species on the verge of extinction is in fact humble insects.