Halt destruction of nature or suffer even worse pandemics, say world’s top scientists

The coronavirus pandemic is likely to be followed by even more deadly and destructive disease outbreaks unless their root cause – the rampant destruction of the natural world – is rapidly halted, the world’s leading biodiversity experts have warned.

A poultry butcher at a wet market in Kuala Lumpur.

“There is a single species responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic – us,” they said. “Recent pandemics are a direct consequence of human activity, particularly our global financial and economic systems that prize economic growth at any cost. We have a small window of opportunity, in overcoming the challenges of the current crisis, to avoid sowing the seeds of future ones.”

Professors Josef Settele, Sandra Díaz and Eduardo Brondizio led the most comprehensive planetary health check ever undertaken, which was published in 2019 by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). It concluded that human society was in jeopardy from the accelerating decline of the Earth’s natural life-support systems.

Read the story from The Guardian by Damian Carrington - “Halt destruction of nature or suffer even worse pandemics, say world’s top scientists.” 

Climate Change: Avoiding the Pit of Despair

A little while ago, it struck me that this pattern of thinking probably wasn’t doing wonders for my own mental wellbeing. This hadn’t occurred to me before. It seemed silly, even selfish, to spare a thought for one’s own mental health when there was a looming global catastrophe to think about. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Staring into the abyss.

I think about the state of the world a lot. From the moment I wake up the changing climate is on my mind; by the time I’m in the shower it’s the impending global water crisis; once I’m munching on muesli (with soy milk, I hasten to add), I’m mulling over the rampant destruction of biodiversity. This might sound like an exaggeration. It’s not.

There’s a general consensus, especially among my generation, that the world is going down the chute. And this is being realistic, not pessimistic. The overwhelming majority of scientific models that predict the world’s future throw up some pretty sobering results. This is not a good feeling.

Read the story from Medium by Jacob Ashton - “Climate Change: Avoiding the Pit of Despair.”