The hardier and more footloose creatures will likely survive the onslaught for some time. A planetary driving force - climate change - is intensifying these proximate causes, making their effects increasingly severe.
Deforestation and forest fragmentation are wiping out the habitats of many tropical species. Ocean acidification is endangering corals and other calcifiers. An invasive fungus is decimating frog populations in Central America. Kolbert describes many proximate causes for the unfolding tragedy.
No place on the planet is safe from this die-off: “The losses are occurring all over: in the South Pacific and in the North Atlantic, in the Arctic and the Sahel, in lakes and on islands, on mountaintops and in valleys.” As conditions now stand - and they could certainly get worse - “one-third of all reef-building corals, a third of all freshwater mollusks, a third of sharks and rays, a quarter of all mammals, a fifth of all reptiles, and a sixth of all birds” could face extinction. As Elizabeth Kolbert reports in The Sixth Extinction, humanity verges on generating a loss of species not seen since the mass extinction 66 million years ago that killed off the dinosaurs. Although contemporary society is not the first to destroy the natural environment on which it relies for its survival and well-being, it is doing so to an extent never before imaginable.
0 kommentar(er)
