extinction – 350orbust

It’s a snowy and cold Earth Day morning in northwestern Ontario. On this Earth Day, Joe Romm over at Think Progress muses about renaming Earth Day – after all, it’s really humans and our civilization that is in peril at this point by our feckless, reckless and cavalier treatment of the ecosystem that gives us life.

Gaia, this amazing planet, has survived mass extinction events before – five other ones before this sixth one, that humans are on the verge of causing:

The culprits for the biodiversity loss include climate change, habitat loss, pollution and overfishing, the researchers wrote.

“Most of the mechanisms that are occurring today, most of them are caused by us,” Ferrer said.

So can we fix it? Yes, there’s time to cut dependence on fossil fuels, alleviate climate change and commit to conservation of habitat, the study scientists say. The more pressing question is, will we?

Barnosky and Ferrer both say they’re optimistic that people will pull together to solve the problem once they understand the magnitude of the looming disaster. Jablonski puts himself into the “guardedly optimistic category.”

“I think a lot of the problems probably have a lot more to do with politics than with science,” Jablonski said. (Read the full article on LiveScience.com)

Wondering where we’re at with climate change on Earth Day 2013? 350.org has just released “Do The Math – the Movie”, and that’s how my family and I spent 45 minutes of our Earth Night yesterday. It was as inspiring to watch the movie as it was to see Bill McKibben live in Seattle when the Do The Math tour launched last November. If you’re wondering whether or not we can still make a difference at this late stage of the game, when we’re already feeling the effects of a destabilized climate, please take the time to watch it. If you’re feeling confused about the whole climate debate, and are wondering how to make sense of the science, as well as the accusations that the scientists raising the warning about climate change are “in it for the money”, please take the time to watch this movie. If you have children and/or grandchildren, or nieces and nephews that you care about, please take the time to watch this movie. If you are alive on planet earth at this moment in history, please take the time to watch this movie!

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Get outside and spend some time with Mother Earth on this Earth Day!

The evidence continues to pile up: humanity’s uncontrolled appetite for slashing, burning, and polluting is rapidly pushing the earth’s ecosystem to a tipping point that will have disastrous consequences for our children and grandchildren:

A prestigious group of scientists from around the world is warning that population growth, widespread destruction of natural ecosystems, and climate change may be driving Earth toward an irreversible change in the biosphere, a planet-wide tipping point that would have destructive consequences absent adequate preparation and mitigation.

“It really will be a new world, biologically, at that point,” warns Anthony Barnosky, professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of a review paper appearing in the June 7 issue of the journal Nature. “The data suggests that there will be a reduction in biodiversity and severe impacts on much of what we depend on to sustain our quality of life, including, for example, fisheries, agriculture, forest products and clean water. This could happen within just a few generations.”

…Co-author Elizabeth Hadly from Stanford University said “we may already be past these tipping points in particular regions of the world. I just returned from a trip to the high Himalayas in Nepal, where I witnessed families fighting each other with machetes for wood – wood that they would burn to cook their food in one evening. In places where governments are lacking basic infrastructure, people fend for themselves, and biodiversity suffers. We desperately need global leadership for planet Earth.”

The authors note that studies of small-scale ecosystems show that once 50-90 percent of an area has been altered, the entire ecosystem tips irreversibly into a state far different from the original, in terms of the mix of plant and animal species and their interactions. This situation typically is accompanied by species extinctions and a loss of biodiversity.Read the full story at UC Berkeley’s website.

Now, take a big breath into your heart space, and think about what you love, and what you would defend fiercely. Now is the time to do all three of those at the same time – breathing/loving/protecting – in and out, over and over. It’s the “great turning”; humanity has the chance to grow up; we are alive in an extraordinary time. We – you, and me, and each one of the people alive today – have the opportunity to take a huge evolutionary step towards living cooperatively with each other, and realizing the sacredness of each life on earth, of “all our relations” as the Anishinaabe say, and of the earth herself. “Hope isn’t something you have, it’s something you do,” says eco-philosopher Joanna Macy. Go to JoannaMacy.net for more information on, and tools for, on The Great Turning.

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More links:

JoannaMacy.net

Spring of Sustainability.com

Derrick Jensen: Beyond Hope

This Earth Day, Let’s Focus On Saving Humans

Scientists: Catastrophic Tipping Point Looming