It’s happening in Mongolia, the New York Times reports.
The only other possible exception to the woeful trend, conservation experts say, is the apparent increase in wolves. That is hardly welcomed by herders. If the animals wolves prey on become scarce, these predators can be expected to become a greater menace to livestock, and there is reported evidence that this is already happening.
The Times is perhaps too timid to report that this extinction crisis is happening everywhere humans have come to dominate their ecosystems. Every plant or animal we couldn’t domesticate, we have killed off (some species are “protected,” though I would note that the entire Mongolian fur trade is “illegal.” Laws work, except when they don’t.) Coastlines have been fished to death, and now the deep sea is next in line. Forests are being cut for firewood in Africa and range land in South America.
The thing is, the extinction crisis won’t stop till humans either a) become extinct themselves; or b) get smart.
It’s bad enough that we’re taking petroleum that took millions of years to form and burning it off in a flash. Every drop of oil we burn today will not be available to our great-great grandchildren. Every scrap of aluminum or titanium we dig from the earth today will be denied to our great-great-great-grandchildren. Where will they get the metals to build the Starship Enterprise in 400 years if we use up every available metal in the next 20 years building submarines and aircraft carriers?
I’ve come to realize lately that the people who talk about sustainable lifestyles are not tree-hugging lunatics. They may well be the only ones who understand that societies are doomed so long as they depend on taking things from the earth that cannot be restored or rebuilt. The earth’s supply of oil, gas, coal and metals at some point will be used up. What’ll society be like then?
Humans are very good at killing, but we’ve also become very adept at keeping things alive (mainly ourselves). Every living thing is a potentially renewable resource, which lies at the very core of why we need to become zealous guardians of all biomatter, plant and animal alike. It may be the only thing that can keep humanity going after all the fossil fuels have been burned and all the metals have been extracted.
This may sound like little more than a disjointed rant — others are far more schooled in this stuff than I am. The main thing that strikes me these days is how little — like, zero, really — we are doing to preserve the lifestyle we enjoy now for future generations. The way we’re going, earth will be like Easter Island in 300 years — full of interesting statues and devoid of everything else but a few weeds, rocks and cockroaches.
Why worry about the world of the future? Well, if you have kids, they will have kids. Their kids’ grandchildren may well be born into a world that is running out of oil and whose oceans and forests have been decimated. That’s only a hundred years from now. They may even remember our names. And they might just wish, in between foraging for food and clean water, that we’d backed off on our own consumption so there’d be something left for them to live on.
Right now our plan for the future is “well, they’ll think of something.” I don’t think that’s going to cut it.
I know what you’re thinking: Tom, this is all just now dawning on you? And I have to admit, yeah.
Some it goes back to reading “Collapse,” by Jared Diamond. He, like the Times, doesn’t want to say current “society” is on a collision course with resource exhaustion but he describes a bunch of societal breakdowns that have more than a few parallels in the current era.
Your arguement is based upon the premise that humans and wildlife cannot adapt. Just check out Malthus’s 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population(just google it) for an example of how your thinking is limited and been proven wrong. History repeatedly demonstrates the point of how we can make more out of less. Did you know that oil consumption per person in the US has been steadily decreasing for the last 30 years?
I’m not saying people and animals can’t adapt. I’m saying at some point finite resources *will* run out.
It’s not enough to look at the U.S., or even European, example. Vast stretches of land and ocean outside both are being laid waste, and emerging nations like India and China aspire to our level of consumption of resources.
My best source of optimism is that to date is that all predictions of the demise of humanity have proved premature. But it sure seems to me, on a gut level, that we’re on an unsustainable course.