Last week scientists provided the starkest report yet warning of a man-made extinction level event.
Also known as Anthropogenic or Holocene extinction, the findings give evidence that we are going to see the eradication of 1m species which will have catastrophic effects on food chains and on levels of biodiversity needed to sustain our environment.
From the images we see on our television screens and social media news feeds of animals suffocated by plastic to the air pollution monitoring systems accessible online, we can see almost in real-time the devastating impact that we are having on the planet.
We are not only polluting the atmosphere through the overuse of fossil-fuel-rich sources but we are reducing ground level carbon sinks such as peat bogs and rainforests as cut down trees for commercial purposes, to build roads and for property development. Our effects on the planet are not slight, but monumental in their brevity as reported by Camilla Cavendish in The Financial Times: “Three quarters of the land, two thirds of our oceans and 85% of wetlands have already been altered or lost.”
Despite this information there is not enough being done to combat climate change. In certain areas of society climate change is ignored or described as a “hoax.” Donald Trump has time and again shooed the idea of climate change as a threat by claiming that there is evidence on both sides of the argument or else citing jobs as a reason to ignore climate change action.
The same was recently reiterated by Nigel Farage during an interview with Andrew Marr in which Nigel Farage claimed that he would not pursue climate action because of the loss of “hundreds of thousands” of jobs. This statement either highlights the lack of information that Nigel Farage is privy to regarding the vast scale of employment levels that would be achieved through a green energy market, Nigel’s willingness to overlook the signs of looming devastation in a bid to appeal to fossil-fuel companies like his friend Donald Trump, or perhaps just trying to appeal to the older voters of the U.K who remember with fondness the days of coal mining and oil extraction.
We don’t have the time to entertain regressive energy politics when we are seeing the destruction of 1/8th of the species that inhabit and contribute to our planet’s ecosystem.
Labour have recently announced that (if they were in power) they would D-list companies that do not follow strict environmental procedures. This at least provides incentive to work in a cleaner and more environmental way were Labour not facing embarrassing losses through both local elections and through the upcoming European elections.
Another worrying piece of information was put forward yesterday by television icon and environmentalist, David Attenborough: plastic pollution kills up to 1m people a year in developing countries. The awareness of environmental issues has skyrocketed, especially in the last year, but there is still little being done about it, predominantly by corporations whose products are found floating in waters the world over. While people recycle and do their best to limit water usage and take part in local clean-up operations, there needs to be a movement by corporations to become plastic free.
There are over 5 trillion pieces of plastic currently littering the oceans, as mentioned by the The Ocean Cleanup, an Dutch organisation currently leading the world’s largest ocean plastic removal scheme. Corporations and citizens need to work together to come up with innovative new ways to distribute products whilst eliminating plastics. At present, immediate convenience seems to trump full-scale catastrophe.
blurred-lines 