The World's Sixth Mass Extinction: Who Cares?

[Livewire]

I took AP Environmental Sci in high school and I found it very bias, and even more so compared to the intro environ sci and atmospheric sci classes i took in college last year. maybe it was just my teacher or something but excluding the hard science we learned, everything was one sided.

with that said, i've heard this argument about the 6th mass extinction be made before. but the fact that UC Berkeley used mammals to gauge the entire world's biodiversity is awkward to me. mammals reproduce slowly, mature slowly, and live longer, so just because there are less mammals species doesn't mean the earth is less diverse. the biggest threat to biodiversity are around all the major forests in the world, deforestation is running rampant in countries that have no policy on that. hopefully they come to their sense before its too late

. That's not nessecaraly true. Many species of mammals don't live that long at all, and most breed like vermin (mice and rats can have thousands of babies in a year, but only live for 2-3 years) the Galapogas tortoise, a reptile, can live for centuries. Some breeds of parrot can live to be 80 or 90, but both the tortoise and the parrot breed less than their mammalian friends.

 

[Rainy Day]

If we have the resources to help the environment without too much detriment to humanity, do it. But humanity comes first.

 

[twocows]

Doesn't bother me too much. There are more pressing issues. If environmentalists want to worry about it, I don't mind, it's not a bad thing to prevent. I just think there are more pressing issues.

 

[XtinaIsMeLuvinWWE]

That's horrible, I hate hearing about things like this :( An entire species being wiped out just doesn't bear thinking about :(

 

[Blaze The Hedgehog]

If god wills it, so be it.

If people want to try and stop it, I'm not saying it's futile, but you wouldn't see me doing anything about it.

 

[Misheard Whisper]

If we have the resources to help the environment without too much detriment to humanity, do it. But humanity comes first.

^ This. It'd be nice to save these animals that are becoming extinct, for sure, but if it means we all have to go back to living in caves or something . . . sorry, gorillas.

 

[OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire]

When I hear news like this I wish the world was more like Pokemon where we could live with Animals in peace...
Sigh I should try harder to save these little creature :)

^ This. It'd be nice to save these animals that are becoming extinct, for sure, but if it means we all have to go back to living in caves or something . . . sorry, gorillas.

Uh not all humans lived in Caves in the past...they lived in the forest in small shelters or traveled around from place to place like most animals do :)

 

[chaos11011]

We humans are to selfish, as the OP states "Well, she and her friend started talking about the Polar Bear decoration, then her friend said "Why should I care? What has the Polar Bear done for me lately?"" really grinds my gears. When an animal is on the verge to extinction, most don't find courage to show they care. Now what if we, the humans, were on the verge to be extinct? I bet everyone of us would be trying to help another to save our race.

What I'm trying to say here is that, humans in general, are careless and the most selfish creature on Earth. We only exist to care about our race and not even glance on how our world will be in the future. If our greed keeps up, humans will be the only race that exist, and eventually we would be in mass chaos, one trying to kill another for food, shelter, or wealth.

You don't have to agree to what I just said, but this is how I think the future will be in a couple centuries.

 

[Dawn]

What I'm trying to say here is that, humans in general, are careless and the most selfish creature on Earth. We only exist to care about our race and not even glance on how our world will be in the future. If our greed keeps up, humans will be the only race that exist, and eventually we would be in mass chaos, one trying to kill another for food, shelter, or wealth.

Well, it grinds my gears when people try to demonize our behavior because "Ooooh the world should be more perfect in my personal view of things!"

Weeeell, time for a wakeup call. A lot of us do not consider animals our equals and a lot of us have logic that we believe justifies it. If an animal going extinct when we don't necessarily have evidence that nature won't survive is our biggest concern, we're doing freakin' good. I mean do you /know/ some of the bigger problems we're facing today and in the near future that we can't fix? /Our/ problems?

Hey, if you really want to change people's views, go provide some evidence that a species going extinct isn't natural and the damage will eventually destroy "nature". I'm not even trying to be funny.. That is exactly what you need to do if you want more support from people.

 

[Spinor]

...Oh dear, here's the subject called Environmental Science AP and the word BIAS written all over it and its teachers.

I have a better plan: Let's keep the environmental preservation people. HOWEVER, once we develop the technology to regenerate food and energy from our natural resources and ensure no energy is leaked from our high-tech nature system by absorbing the sun's energy as well. Once we don't even need the natural cycles of nature, we can do with the environment as we please, because we won't need it.

After that, our only worry will be to make sure our machines don't turn against us.

After all, our technology will develop much faster than ever, so it's only logical that someday we be able to recreate all natural cycles artificially in some method. That's the only way we can get this environment worry out of the way.

 

[Livewire]

Hey, if you really want to change people's views, go provide some evidence that a species going extinct isn't natural and the damage will eventually destroy "nature". I'm not even trying to be funny.. That is exactly what you need to do if you want more support from people.

If you want specific examples of that, just look around. There are plenty of occurrences where either A. Unnatural extinctions, or B. The ecological side effects resulted in a negative effect on the enviroment. We introduced Kudzu in the south to tackle erosion, and now it takes over entire ecosystems and kills trees. We cut down forests and pollinating plants, which kills the bee population, which means plants don't get pollinated as easily. Every single reaction in the environment results in a reaction, that's a fundamental law of the universe.

 

[blue]

It would be better if more people cared, because like it says, we are the cause of this and it's pretty darn selfish if people are just ignoring it when the world is collapsing around them, right now it's only the animals that are dieing off, but soon enough it will be the economy, then resources such as food then inevitably humans, and hardly anyone seems to take a blind bit of notice to it, it's good that we're looking to conolizing space or "Terraforming", but still, if more people could control this, we'd have alot more time and could possibly divert this crisis.
It's not something that should just be looked at then ignored, it's a serious issue putting literally all the humans, animals, plants at risk of death.
Also, there are ways to make planets habitable, done manually of course by injecting Greenhouse gases which would affect Martian temperature and melt water ice and carbon dioxide ice at the poles.