Human destroying the biosphere at shocking pace; tipping point death spiral to arrive in mere decades

Sunday, January 17, 2016 by: L.J. Devon, Staff Writer
Tags: planetary extinction, biosphere, environmental destruction

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(NaturalNews) Has man's relationship with Earth and all her natural resources fallen out of balance? There are sustainable paths toward abundance on Earth, but has modern man sabotaged this quest by reaching for more power, by falling under the spell of greed?

In a society where attaining more physical stuff and gaining more power is sought after, there will never be enough, and there will always be suffering. In a society where love is a sign of weakness and war machines are a sign of power, there will always be grief, strife and hatred.

Destroying species' biodiversity and habitats may start with something as simple as pesticides

Harvard University Professor Ed Wilson is deeply concerned that the world's rich biodiversity is depleting faster than it can be recovered, as modern man turns the earth into a commercial playground. In his studies, he sees that, in mere decades, the world may enter into a time of mass species extinction. He has already documented that the current extinction rate is occurring at least 100 times faster than pre-human times. He believes that more than half of all animals and plants will disappear into oblivion by the end of the century, leading humans down a perpetual spiral of limited resources and massive die-off. One of the ways this is occurring is from corporate monoculture that uses pesticides as a massive band-aid to deal with pest takeover of crops that's actually caused by ignored nutrient deficiencies in crops. The more the pesticides are applied year after year, the more the ecosystem suffers. For examples, look at recent years' honey bee colony collapse disorder and the decline in monarch butterfly populations. Both pollinators are needed to ensure the survival of biodiversity of wildflowers and vegetable crops. When these insect decline, so do the plants which they pollinate, and so do the herbivores that depend on the plants for survival.

Professor constructing observatory in commemoration of the 460 most recent species gone extinct

In a recent trip to Britain, professor Wilson said, "We're making a lonely planet. More than that, if we continue to destroy the biosphere it becomes a very dangerous planet."

"If you wiped out enough species, all of those say in South America, then that may be a tipping point where you get enough changes globally to begin a downward spiral," he warned.

He cautions that "A tipping point will come," pointing to massive loss of habitat for species around the world. "You can rehabilitate a damaged habitat to some extent, but you can't do that if you have gotten rid of species. We would lose them forever, and I think that would be a tipping point in human existence," he cautioned.

The 85-year-old Professor Wilson recently broke ground in England, constructing a large Mass Extinction Monitoring Observatory for the 460 species of plants and animals that have gone extinct in the past 500 years. These include the dodo and the Tasmanian devil. The commemoration project is being built on the Isle of Portland, England, to foster awareness for a mass "transcendent moral decision to stop species extinction," as Wilson put it.

Dependence on oil in general is destroying the biosphere, while polluting the quality of Earth's air, soil and water

What are the most unsustainable practices human engage in today? How can we preserve the dissipating biodiversity on Earth while also thriving as a population going forward into the future?

Should humans be solely focused on advancing economies, or should they look further into how some industries affect the soil, microbes, insects, aquatic life, habitats and entire ecosystems? Ultimately, what we do to the earth, we do to ourselves. Driving fracking chemicals into the ground to extract oil more efficiently may produce harmful effects later. Running hundreds of miles of pipe across the US that leaks oil on a daily basis may have more harmful effects on water and plant life than one would suspect.

From heavy metal pollution of water ways to degradation of soil by pesticides to deforestation, humans may very well be heading toward the tipping point of survival as the biosphere is gutted.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.independent.co.uk