Imagine all the plants and all the animals on Earth, from the largest whales to the smallest bacteria. According to researchers, that's only .01% of all life that has existed on Earth. The other 99.9% is extinct, gone for good.
Worldwide it is thought that more than 500 species of land animal are close to extinction and could be lost within the next 20 years. The report was published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and studied 29,000 species of land vertebrate. They estimated that the number of extinctions expected in the next two decades would likely take thousands of years if not for the negative impact of humanity.
Scientists say “The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms – including humanity – is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts,” they write in a report in Frontiers in Conservation Science which references more than 150 studies detailing the world’s major environmental challenges. The report warns that climate-induced mass migrations, more pandemics and conflicts over resources will be inevitable unless urgent action is taken.
In Earth's history a gradual evolution has become more of a sudden revolution and a majority of the planet’s living species are wiped out in a relatively short space of time. In the last 500 million years, there have been five occasions when 75-90% of all species have gone extinct, in what is called a mass extinction.
It should be remembered that the ‘short period of time’ is described in geological terms, dating back across the vast period of time since the start of life on earth. With this in mind, it explains that a mass extinction event can take anything up to 2.8 million years.
Experts warn that ‘extinction breeds extinction’, as species reliant on lifeforms that become extinct also suffering as a consequence. What “mass extinction” means to you depends on your perspective. You could see it as proof that humans have blindly gone too far in pursuit of growth and consumption. It is also a wakeup call to realize that we have essentially already “gone off the cliff.”
The main point is that once you realize the scale and imminence of the problem, it becomes clear that we need much more than individual actions like using less plastic, eating less meat, or flying less. The point is that we need big systematic changes and fast
There is no real “going back” when it comes to extinction and once you have destroyed enough environments, ecosystems and species, many interrelated ones are sure to follow.
There are a number of key reports published in the past few years including:
The World Economic Forum report in 2020, which named biodiversity loss as one of the top threats to the global economy.
The 2019 IPBES Global Assessment report which said 70% of the planet had been altered by humans.
The 2020 WWF Living Planet report, which said the average population size of vertebrates had declined by 68% in the past five decades.
A 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report which said that humanity had already exceeded global warming of 1C above pre-industrial levels and is set to reach 1.5C warming between 2030 and 2052.