The Big Die Off: Rate of Extinction Now a Thousand Times Faster

Image by Sirtjo via Flickr

Somethin’s happenin round here and what it is–is all too clear.

The greed consciousness from which humanity is functioning is destroying life. The focus on huge profits for the elite few without regard for life and future survivability is bringing about a clear catastrophe in the form of a massive die off.

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We have only to look at the recent report from the President’s Cancer Panel that said environmental toxins are responsible for creating the unbearable cancer burden on the human population.

We have only to look at the BP oil gusher that is killing life on the Gulf to see what happens when governments put corporate greed above the health of the people and their planet.

So as we play let’s pretend and eat our contaminated, genetically modified fruits and vegetables to try to protect ourselves, the world is dying around us.

We need to understand immediately that we can’t protect ourselves as we destroy the rest of life.

We need to understand immediately that the interests of the people and the planet have to take precedence over the interests of the oligarchical elite few that presently run the planet.

We need to take drastic and immediate action to save ourselves and our planet from the greed consciousness that is currently destroying life.

Or we can continue to play let’s pretend until the game is over.

Grant

Third of all plants and animals face extinction

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

Posted at Grant Lawrence–Bodhi Thunder

ANIMAL and plant species are being killed off faster than ever before as human populations surge and people consume more, a United Nations report is expected to say this week.

It will warn that the expansion of countries such as China, India and Brazil is adding hugely to the environmental threats already generated by developed western nations, and that a third of species could face extinction this century.

The report is one of the starkest issued by the UN and the decision to draw an explicit link between extinction rates and economic growth makes it politically sensitive.

It will point out that the extinction threat extends across all main ecosystems, affecting living things as diverse as tree frogs, coral reefs and river dolphins.

// “It’s a problem if we continue this unsustainable pattern of production and consumption,” said Ahmed Djoghlaf, the UN’s leading figure on biological diversity. “If the 9 billion people predicted to be with us by 2050 were to have the same lifestyle as Americans, we would need five planets.”

Djoghlaf said humans would suffer too because many threatened species were important for food and raw materials.

Some green groups fear the relentless rise of China and India risks undoing years of conservation work in the West.

“The magnitude of the damage [to ecosystems] is much bigger than previously thought,” said Djoghlaf. “The rate of extinction is currently running at 1,000 times the natural historical background rate of extinction.”

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