The COP10 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Summit wraps up tomorrow in Nagoya, Japan, where participating nations have gathered to attempt to work out a treaty to deal with biodiversity loss. As with last year’s COP15 climate change summit in Copenhagen, what began with soaring rhetoric and exhortations to save the world’s biological diversity, is winding down to a divide between rich and poor nations, the developing and developed world. Perhaps we should understand that such divisions carry little weight or meaning in a world bereft of its biological underpinnings. Without biodiversity, we are all poor.
As 2010 comes to a close, 20 percent of all vertebrates on earth face extinction, while human population continues to soar, now to nearly 7 billion people.
The following video, produced by the Zoological Society of London, is a poignant look at what is at stake:
Evolution Lost – Vanishing BiodiversityÂ
Featured image credit: Worldslandinfo.com, courtesy flickr
Beautiful video – I’m going to post it on my own blog as well.
Talking about the Dodo, an Aussie journalist, Andrew Bolt, had an article about how pointless he thought the species was – getting almost every fact wrong. This is what annoys me most. He is in the Herald Sun and my correction to his piece only on a blog read by perhaps 100 people. That is the problem with public awareness in the modern era.
When it gets to human, I find that interesting. I wrote a post on that last week. Basically, if the emergence of humanity, 20,000 years ago was 1km from where we are today, the Age of Enlightenment – the birth of modern science – would be a barely over metre away. It is such a new and precious tool that has transformed our species, but we need to take on the bad news it provides as much as we take on the rewards.
Interesting story about the \”dodo and the ignorant journalist.\” Yes, the level of public awareness and discussion on many of these issue (particularly climate change) can be very frustrating. You just need to keep at it and do your best.
It\’s also interesting to me to see how arrogant humans can be – ignorance and arrogance is a dangerous combination. Some say the \”God gave us Earth\’s resources to exploit\” as if there are no limits or consequences.
My most recent comic”Scientific Certainty” posed the question, “Which would you pick” with the last comparison, “Holy word of a world of endless bounty or obvious signs of increasing desertification and extinction?”
You’re right, though; ignorance and arrogance are a dangerous combination and Andrew Bolt is an excellent example. We do need to persist, as you say, regardless of the frustration. Hopefully most people are clever enough to see through the mast of “scepticism” (Gleeson in Lifeboat Cities, defines this form of scepticism as, “as aggressive distaste for new thinking, especially anything that challenges the market statue”)