Mainstream political and…

Mainstream political and policy debates have failed to recognize that human impacts on the environment have reached a critical stage, potentially eroding the conditions upon which socioeconomic stability is possible. Human-induced environmental change is occurring at an unprecedented scale and pace and the window of opportunity to avoid catastrophic outcomes in societies around the world is rapidly closing. These outcomes include economic instability, large-scale involuntary migration, conflict, famine and the potential collapse of social and economic systems. The historical disregard of environmental considerations in most areas of policy has been a catastrophic mistake.

Global natural systems are undergoing destabilisation at an unprecedented scale.
• The 20 warmest years since records began in 1850 have been in the past 22 years, with the past four years the warmest ever recorded.
• Vertebrate populations have fallen by an average of 60 per cent since the 1970s.
• More than 75 per cent of the Earth’s land is substantially degraded.

Destabilisation of natural systems is occurring at unprecedented speed.

• Since 1950, the number of floods across the world has increased by 15 times, extreme temperature events by 20 times, and wildfires sevenfold.
• Extinction rates have increased to between 100–1,000 times the ‘background rate’ of extinction.
• Topsoil is now being lost 10 to 40 times faster than it is being replenished by natural processes, and, since the mid-20th century, 30 per cent of the world’s arable land has become unproductive due to erosion; 95 per cent of the Earth’s land areas could become degraded by 2050.

Human activity has altered the functioning of key natural systems that regulate the Earth’s life support systems and many Earth system scientists argue that humans are now the dominant driver of the overall environmental state of the planet. This disruption risks triggering abrupt and irreversible environmental change, which could undermine the viability of human society.

Natural systems are highly interdependent. For example, habitat loss – including land use changes such as deforestation and desertification resulting from farming – is the primary cause of species extinctions. As such, too much damage in one area can disrupt other systems, potentially triggering large-scale environmental change at a regional or global level which is unpredictable, abrupt, greater than the sum of individual hazards and not easily reversed. Pushing one natural system into an unsafe space can do the same to others.

Human activity is directly killing an increasing number of plants and animals and accelerating the extinction rate of species. This loss of biodiversity has reached critical levels, threatening the collapse of entire ecosystems. Current extinction rates are unseen since the extinction of the dinosaurs; the Earth is undergoing the sixth mass extinction in its history. Up to 58,000 species are believed to be lost each year and vertebrate populations declined by 60 per cent between 1970–2014. Loss of vertebrate populations in some countries exceeds 85 per cent, while freshwater vertebrate populations have declined by 83 per cent across the world.

More than 40 per cent of insect species are declining and a third of species are endangered; the total mass of insects is being lost at 2.5 per cent per year. Overall, it is estimated that population declines since the emergence of human civilisation constitute 83 per cent of wild mammals, 80 per cent of marine mammals, 50 per cent of plants, and 15 per cent of fish.

Phosphorus and nitrogen are fundamental to life and are essential to functioning of the food system. Agricultural inefficiencies mean that high levels of phosphorous and nitrogen run off into rivers, lakes and seas, leading to over-enrichment of the water with minerals and nutrients. This induces excessive growth of plants and algae, resulting in oxygen depletion and ‘dead zones’, where other marine life dies due to lack of oxygen. It is estimated that marine dead zones span 245,000 km2 of oceans
globally.

Both air pollution from vehicles and industrial processes, and smoke and dust from land use, can influence the climate system and have adverse effects on human health. Human use of other chemicals, radioactive materials and pollutants can also negatively impact the environment. The use of pesticides is thought to be a major driver of the 75 per cent decrease in flying insects observed in Germany since 1989. The scale of non-biodegradable plastic waste, found almost everywhere on Earth, is likely to have wide-reaching health implications for people and marine life.

Laybourn-Langton L, Rankin L and Baxter D (2019) This is a crisis: Facing up to the age of environmental breakdown, IPPR. http://www.ippr.org/research/publications/age-of-environmental-breakdown

CONCLUSION:

The Proposal to amend the Endangered Species Act is a very small finger in a very large and fundamentally flawed dyke. Endangered species cannot possibly be protected unless human impact on the environment is radically diminished. Without changes to land use policies, farming practices, waste treatment, energy production, water treatment, transportation and industrialization policies all endangered species are facing an environmental Armageddon, and Mankind should be added to the List.