The Catastrophe No One Talks About
Hi hi!
This month I dedicated my time to understanding the sixth mass extinction. A looming catastrophe that often gets sidelined by the climate crisis. Below you can find my newest video on biodiversity collapse as well as three links and three quotes I found useful along the way. Hope you find them illuminating.
Three Quotes:
“In terrestrial ecosystems, 3 to 14% of species assessed will likely face very high risk of extinction34 at global warming levels of 1.5°C, increasing up to 3 to 18% at 2°C, 3 to 29% at 3°C, 3 to 39% at 4°C, and 3 to 48% at 5°C.”
— Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
“Habitat conversion, fragmentation and overexploitation/overharvesting are the greatest direct drivers of loss of biodiversity, loss of ecosystem functions and decrease of nature’s contributions to people from local to regional scales in all biomes.”
— Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
“Industrial capitalism created the means by which humanity could initially liberate itself from nature. But by doing so on a finite planet, this could only be achieved through the displacement of biodiversity. The total percentage of the biosphere commanded wholly for human consumption rose from 10 percent in 1750, to roughly 60 percent by the end of the 20th century. By this time 50 percent of the biosphere had been diverted towards capitalist agriculture (croplands and rangelands).”
— Ian Rappel
Three Links:
Regional assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services for the Americas (IPBES)
A Marxist Theory of Extinction (Salvage)
Capitalism and species extinction (Ian Rappel)
Hope you have a wonderful weekend,
Charlie