The Fossil Fuel Blues: Sixth Extinction Angle

We face a biodiversity crisis, when more than forty-six thousand, three hundred species face the possibility of extinction, including forty-four percent reef-building corals, forty-one percent of amphibians, thirty-eight percent of trees, thirty-seven percent sharks and rays, thirty-four percent of conifers, twenty-six percent of mammals, and twelve percent of birds.

We face a biodiversity crisis, when more than 86 percent of wetlands show traces of alteration, when 97 percent of Earth's land undergoes habitat and species extinction, when 87 percent of the ocean area have become degraded, when close to 90 percent of the world’s marine stocks shows overexploitation.

We face a biodiversity crisis when studies indicate a potential 7.1 percent yield decline in the cultivation of maize, a potential 5.6 percent decrease in the production of rice, a 10.6 percent fall in the yield of soybean, and a 2.9 percent reduction in the cultivation of wheat.

Climate deniers may claim that the present biodiversity crisis is natural and has always occurred, but when a situation comes as a result of human activities, it becomes difficult to see today’s situation as natural.

Human activities fuelled the loss of one-third of the planet’s forests since the last ice age, with two billion hectares of forests - a space as twice as large as the United States - cleared for agricultural activities, while half of global forest loss happened between 8000 BCE and 1900, the rest taking place in the 20th century.

Human activities accelerated the loss of 35 percent of the world’s wetlands between 1970 and 2015, with the rate of decline rising every single year since 2000, while the shrinking wetlands made more than 25 percent of all plants and animals indigenous to them to be at the risk of extinction.

Human activities fuelled the fall in crop yields through over-reliance on pesticides for agricultural purposes, an activity that hit 3.9 million metric tons in 2022, through over-irrigation, which is responsible for 70 percent of all freshwater withdrawals on the globe, and through the increasing rate of climate change via the frightening rate of carbon dioxide emissions.

The clearing of one-third of the world’s forests for agricultural activities does not come as natural, nor the altering of the world's wetlands, nor using pesticides on a global basis for the growing of food to appease the consumption mania of the present civilization.

Four hundred species of birds could become endangered within the next 50 years, the same fate for 25 percent of all mammal species, as well as two in every five amphibians, plus 90 percent of reef-building corals by 2050, and a large percentage in the population of sharks and rays.

Between nine and 18.2 percent of coastal wetlands could disappear between now and 2050 through the biodiversity crisis, with 90 percent of the planet's entire land degraded, while fish could be extinct completely

A quarter of 55 conifer species native to islands could go extinct by 2070, with more than half of tree species in general facing the possibility of disappearing by 2050, while up to a third of the world's rivers could potentially run dry at certain periods of the year in the next 25 years.

With climate deniers spearheading the current unsustainable level of greenhouse gas emissions, the next few years could be critical indeed, especially with the disappearance of mammals, wetlands, and features of life as we know it.

The biodiversity crisis could be slowed through a decrease in the use of fossil fuel, and transition to renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, hydroelectricity, to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

What to Eat

Vegan food from Nigeria, Credit, Best of Vegan