Life on Earth

A study from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform On Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services presents a comprehensive overview of the consequences of human civilization. Chair Robert Watson:

We are at a crossroads. The historic and current degradation and destruction of nature undermine human well-being for current and countless future generations. Land degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change are three different faces of the same central challenge: the increasingly dangerous impact of our choices on the health of our natural environment.

Update (April 25):  Evaggelos Vallianatos discusses eudaimonia and quotes Philip Clayton.

Ecological civilization is not just contemporary global capitalism painted with green touch-up paint. It involves a radical transformation of every major sector of society. It requires a new worldview, beyond modernism, and a new way of structuring societies and economies. Similarly, it requires men and women able to evolve beyond the identity of acquiring and consuming. Only a comprehensive notion of human flourishing is adequate to describe the nature of citizens in an ecological civilization.

Update (May 6):  John Vidal summarizes the conclusions of the IPBES report.

Planet Earth has been put on red alert by hundreds of leading scientists who have warned that humanity faces an existential threat within decades if the steep decline of nature is not reversed.

[E]cosystems and wild populations are shrinking, deteriorating or vanishing completely, and up to 1 million species of land and marine life could be made extinct by humans’ actions if present trends continue.

If we continue to pollute the planet and waste natural resources as we have been doing, it won’t just affect people’s quality of life but will lead to a further deterioration of earth’s planetary systems.

Amanda Schupak examines why the loss of biodiversity matters. She quotes Kathy Halvorsen:

[Biodiversity] is vital to our well-being, our ability to feed ourselves, our ability to have clean water, clean air. We should care because it helps people. We should also care because caring makes us more human and more humane. There are other beings on Earth, and caring about wanting to protect them is something we have an ethical obligation to do.

Update (June 19):  Dharna Noor highlights the underlying issue within the IPBES report.

This mass extinction crisis, the report shows, is fueled by an economic system that prioritizes the growth of profits above all else. In an effort to outcompete their rivals and maximize profits, corporations exploit human and nonhuman life by suppressing wages and externalizing social and environmental costs, depleting the ecosystems and societies on which life depends.

Update (January 14, 2020):  The U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity has produced a proposal for protecting life on earth.

The 2030 goals include safeguarding 30% of all land and sea, with at least 10% put under “strict protection”; combating the spread and introduction of invasive species; and cutting nutrient and plastic pollution by at least 50%.

Update (February 16, 2020):  A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that up to 30 percent of animal and plant species could go extinct by 2070.

The study identified maximum annual temperatures—the hottest daily highs in summer—as the key variable that best explains whether a population will go extinct.

Update (July 20, 2021):  A report published by Pew Charitable Trusts outlines ways to greatly reduce plastic pollution in the ocean.