The sky opens up, the ground shakes, waves hundreds of feet high form, and fireballs are hailing with huge meteoroids crashing down to the ground. This sounds like one of those fiction movies about the world coming to an end. Unfortunately, this was the reality billions of years ago when the fifth mass extinction wiped out thousands of species on earth.
The truth is that the sixth mass extinction is among us. It is happening today, but rather than being caused by a huge asteroid or comet like in the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction, this is human-based. Habitat loss, the spread of invasive species, and global warming are all huge contributors to the endangerment of thousands of species, and the human race, the most invasive species on planet Earth, is to blame.
To be considered a “mass extinction,” three quarters of all the species on earth have to vanish forever, and this has only taken place five times in all of history. The majority population focuses on the rainforest deforestation in Africa or the coral bleaching in the Caribbean as the only areas of concern, but in fact even the woods behind your house are at risk as well.
Currently this is the worst species die off since the loss of the dinosaurs: 1,000 species are going extinct every year, which is 20 to 100 times the rate of the past. The coral reefs, once vibrant blues and reds with an abundance of fish, crab, and turtle species, acting a home to so much life, are now white and gray, an empty void of life with no existence, due to the warming and increasingly acidic waters. The rainforests, once full of ancient, looming trees, water lilies, and flowering orchids, with dancing spiders and monkeys, are now millions of acres of nothing more than brown stumps.
“Every living organism is a link in a chain (all interdependent). Every loss is a break in that chain,” NHS Greenery teacher George Bachman said. “There may be medicines we have not even discovered yet that were present in these organisms that will be lost to us with their extinction.”
The species that are gone and the damage that has been done cannot be reversed, but there are dire steps that can be taken to significantly help this situation. The burning of fossil fuels and the clearing of rainforests are heating up our surface temperature, in both land masses and in the ocean waters. The fossil fuels begins the positive feedback loop of the greenhouse effect; the more fossil fuels that are burned, the more greenhouse gases released (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxides, etc), the more infrared radiation trapped and radiated back to the Earth, the higher the Earth’s temperature. The Earth’s temperature cannot exceed two degrees Celsius so it has to be humans effort to stop this cycle to stop the warming and stop the species die off.
“As humans, we are very selfish in the fact that we ignore a problem until it is severe enough that it has to be addressed. Amphibians are an indicator of this considering their population has declined drastically, yet we still choose to ignore these warning signs,” NHS AP Environmental student Makenna Cerney said.
Although humans indirectly are affecting the extinction rate with the burning of fossil fuels, many other factors contribute to the dying off of thousands of species, all of such trace back to the increasing human population. The need for human development is causing deforestation and the building-up of land that was previously reserved for wilderness or vegetation, clearing habitats and ecosystems that are crucial to species nesting and mating.
“Compost, recycle, work with and not against the laws of Nature. Adopt an environmentally responsible lifestyle so that it becomes second nature to you without even having to think about it,” Bachman said. “So far we only have this one place to call home (Earth).”
Is this extinction inevitable, or are there ways to stop it? As a lot of the damage cannot be undone, there are ways to slow down the current rate and prevent further damage. The average person can contribute to this cause by reducing their carbon footprint. A carbon footprint is the amount of carbon dioxide, methane, or carbon monoxide emitted due to the consumption of fossil fuels by a person. Ways to reduce your carbon footprint are finding alternative to driving cars, being more conservative with energy and water usage, resisting to buy leather or animal skin products, buying local, organic, vegetarian or vegan foods, and minimizing the purchasing of new products.
“To prevent further damage we should educate everyone on the effects of certain things we do. For example people should understand the usage of pesticides and how detrimental and damaging they are to an ecosystem,” Cerney said. “You cannot fix something you don't understand.”
Every little effort can help, but the main solution can be to spread awareness. The earth has had five previous mass extinctions, all ending millions of lives in chaos and destruction, but nothing will compare to the sixth, as this time it may be our own.
Image Courtesy of Business Insider