Without biodiversity, there is no future for humanity,” says Prof. David Macdonald at Oxford University.
This is what www.GOESfoundation.com and others have been saying for many years, but we have been almost completely ignored. The realisation now transpires that the loss of biodiversity is much more critical than climate change. Humanity can’t survive without insects, but 90% of them will be gone from the planet in less than 20 years. https://lnkd.in/eCCmwF5G
We are told the climate is regulated by carbon dioxide and methane as greenhouse gases, yet water vapour accounts for 70% of all greenhouse gases. Terrestrial trees and plants account for 20% of biogenic aerosols and humidity and 80% of plants living in the ocean, and they are not even factored into the climate change model, nor are clouds.
Seagrass takes up 0.2% of the planet’s surface yet removes 10% of atmospheric carbon dioxide, but most of it has been destroyed by the fishing industry. Mangroves and wetlands are also critically important, but they are destroyed for agriculture. Rainforests are essential, but many are being cut down to make Balsa wood for wind turbines. Now the deep seas are going to be mined for rare earth metals to make batteries.
Then we have ocean acidification; around 50% of all life in the world’s oceans is made from carbonate, and it has started to dissolve. Over the next 20 years, the pH will fall to 7.95, and most life in the oceans and any possibility of controlling climate change will be destroyed along with the SML surface micro layer.
So why are we fixated on carbon? What good are an electric car and wind turbines going to be when most of the world is starving and we have catastrophic climate change?
We need to regenerate nature on land and marine life in the ocean. 80% of all municipal wastewater is dumped untreated into rivers. At least 50 million tonnes of plastic is dumped into the oceans every year, along with billions of metric tonnes of partially combusted black carbon soot, which is almost as toxic as plastic, yet it is ignored
We know the problems and we know the solutions; it will take the whole world to focus on delivering the solutions, but if we delay, then there is no future in as short a time frame as 20 years from now. What’s the point of reaching net zero for carbon by 2050 if we have killed the planet?
GOES report https://lnkd.in/ev6_2cXN
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/12/what-is-biodiversity-and-why-does-it-matter-to-us
