A 6th Mass Extinction Isn’t on the Horizon. It’s Here.
Last Saturday, my dad was reading from Science, one of the world’s top academic journals, when he stumbled on an article claiming that it was “widely accepted that we are in the midst of a sixth mass extinction.” Now this was news to him, but after even a quick glance at the evidence, it becomes apparent, that yes, we are in the middle of a 6th mass extinction, and humans are without a doubt the cause.
While climate change is undeniable (this is the best link in the whole article), as are its roots in the industrial revolution, airplanes, and cars, claiming there’s a 6th mass extinction seems a bit extreme. But the evidence is overwhelming. A 2014 study asserts that extinction rates are 1,000 times higher than what they would be without humans. While that is certainly in the high end of the range, it is widely agreed upon that the rate is at least 100 times. Current extinction rates are possibly even higher than ever compared to Earth’s fossil history, expect for the dinosaur-asteroid time.
For example, insects are dying at a rate of 2.5% per year, which means that within 10 years there will only be 75% of the insects there are today. In 50 years, there will be half the amount, and in 100 there will be none. While bugs don’t seem to be that devastating a loss to the environment, ecosystems, as you learned/will learn in 7th grade, are very delicate puzzles that require all pieces to prevent catastrophic collapse. As you know, pollinators are crucial to the development of fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Without them, 30% of the world’s crops will disappear.
While insects are going extinct eight times faster than mammals, reptiles, and birds, that doesn’t mean they aren’t going extinct. Mammals are going extinct 80,000 times more than they should be, according to a study published in Nature, a highly prolific science publication. The natural extinction rate, or how quickly they would go extinct from the natural forces of evolution, for mammals is 1 per 500,000 years, but over 80 have gone extinct in the past 500 years. Birds, too, are going extinct at least 300 times more than they should be.
A mass extinction is categorized as over 75% of species dying in a geologically short amount of time. It is predicted that this mass extinction, dubbed the Holocene Extinction, will completely fulfill those requirements in 300 years.
The environment doesn’t seem to be the only thing that’s doomed. In late 2017, The Nation published this speculative piece predicting that in 2025 we, the US, will be at war with 15 countries, some former, and the temperature will be 112 degrees in San Francisco in September. It’s not very optimistic, but the war in Afghanistan has been going on for a little less than 18 years, so what’s 6 more?
All this, taken together with the state of climate change, has led to my very pessimistic outlook for the future. On a good day, I don’t think I’ll save for retirement and I would tell Millenials not to have children. On a bad day, I wonder if I’ll graduate from college and I would tell Millenials not to save for retirement. We are the children whose future everyone’s supposed to be saving. Do better. Right now, we don’t seem to have a future.