20 February 2007Tony Russomanno
While global warming continues to gain widespread public awareness, a potentially more devastating environmental threat is only beginning to get noticed.The threat is mass extinction, and scientists are taking it very seriously.There is widespread belief among scientists that current species of life are becoming extinct at a rate more than 1,000 times higher than normal."We are at the precipice of the end of the world," said Chera Van Burg of Species Alliance.An asteroid caused the last mass extinction when it wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.Some believe that if a meteor were to strike the Earth again today, the effect on life would be little different that what may already be underway."According to a consensus of the world's biologists, a mass extinction is unfolding or about to unfold on planet Earth," said David Ulansey of Massextinction.net.The Yangtze River dolphin was only the latest example when it disappeared just last month.While doomsayers are at the extreme end of scientific opinion, some biologists believe a worst-case mass-extinction scenario would wipe out 50 percent of existing species.Humans, and species associated with humans, are not threatened with extinction, but if it occurs, mass extinction would break the interconnected web of life and lead to a substantial decrease in human populations.And some scientists believe humans are to blame for mass extinction."If our influence on Earth continues to expand, we're likely to lose half or more of the species on Earth," said Stanford University ecologist Peter Vitousek.The theories on mass extinction are laid out in the documentary "Call of Life," to be released later this year.Some have already heard the call."If we continue at the present rate, virtually all the species of fish in the ocean will be extinct in the next 50 years," said former Vice President Al Gore in a recent visit to Silicon Valley.And that's something that professional fishermen say worries them every day."Only now are people starting to acknowledge that, whoa, all these greenhouse gases that we've been putting in the atmosphere are having an impact that could basically threaten life on this planet," said Zeke Grader, president of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen.Biologists say climate change is only one of the causes of extinction. The problem goes much deeper."It's not like global warming," said Ulansey. "The problem cannot be defined as CO2. You can't put it in a box. The problem is the way we live. It is every aspect of our lifestyle."And every aspect of our lifestyle has consequences. For example, there are billions and billions of cell phones in the world, and every single one of them uses a metal called coltan. Of the very few places on Earth where coltan is mined, almost all of it comes from the Republic of Congo -- right square in the middle of the habitat of the Mountain gorilla.A United Nations agency said the gorilla population has declined 90 percent over just the past five years, partly as the result of land being cleared for coltan mining.And that's only one species. Experts estimate more than 15,000 species today are threatened. And those are only the ones they know about from surveys.Biologists believe the six major causes of the present mass extinction are habitat destruction, invasive species, pollution, human overpopulation, human overconsumption, and climate change.The good news is that there is still time to turn it around. The bad news -- some believe -- time is short, perhaps only five to 10 years to make significant changes in how we live our lives.
