The Climate Emergency and Biodiversity Loss—Meaningful Actions in the Face of Ecological Despair
An Environment Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM Animals & Society Institute
August 2021

Like the frog in boiling water, many have become desensitized, inured to this new “normal” that is upon us as a means of coping with the stress it provokes. Environmental and animal advocates are doing their best to remind us that none of this is at all normal, and something needs to be done.

The statistics are sobering and the associations, undeniable. The interconnections between various aspects of the environmental destruction we are witnessing—and living—are complex, intensifying, and undeniably anthropogenic.

The climate crisis has fueled record-breaking average high temperatures worldwide, with the fallout of drought, major fires, increased tropical storm activity, sea level rise, and flooding—all coming more frequently and intensely than previously seen. In addition to and linked with these climate emergency-caused outcomes, we and other animals face the impacts of the loss of biological diversity, a Sixth Extinction which is undoubtably the result of human actions, including climate change. Coupled with a deepening global pandemic both caused and affected by the climate crisis and biodiversity loss, that’s a lot to deal with on a daily basis.

Like the frog in boiling water, many have become desensitized, inured to this new “normal” that is upon us as a means of coping with the stress it provokes. Environmental and animal advocates are doing their best to remind us that none of this is at all normal, and something needs to be done.

In what follows, I take biodiversity loss as a starting point and hub for these interconnected issues. Biodiversity loss refers to a decrease in biological diversity within a species, an ecosystem, a given geographic area, or the Earth as a whole. This loss in the variety of life can lead to a breakdown in the functioning of the ecosystem where decline has occurred. A 2018 report published in PNAS assessing the biomass distribution on Earth concluded that wild animal populations declined by 58 percent between 1970 and 2012, and losses were expected to reach 67 percent by 2020.

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