The Sixth Mass Extinction
This is a time of crisis. Our world is out of balance.
We have unleashed the sixth mass extinction of species. Deforestation, overhunting, the overfishing of the oceans, the acidification of the oceans, global warming, pesticides, pollution, urbanization and industrial farming, overuse of groundwater aquifers and overuse of river water for irrigation all shove our animal and plant sisters and brothers aside until there is no more space left for them.
Have a look at this amazing film
History of the human population
The American Museum of Natural History shows this amazing film on the history of the human population through time:
We, the people of this planet, have grown out of proportion (at least measured by the dwindling groundwater ressources). Acording to current estimates we will continue to grow even further. New predictions estimate that the world population will grow to 11 billion by 2100 – with no sign of levelling off. Sophisticated statistics have predicted that if we continue as we have been doing, population will continue to grow and grow. For population forecast see: » www.washington.edu/news/2014/09/18/world-population-to-keep-growing-this-century-hit-11-billion-by-2100/.
Not only do we have all these needs and wants,
we all create waste too:
wastewater, sewage, waste plastics, waste metal, waste electronics, waste food and waste paper,
waste carbon dioxide and pollutants like batteries and antibiotics.
There is no real way “out”.
There is only a way “through”.
Our current economic system’s
built-in drive for continual growth is sending us headlong past critical natural boundaries. If we do not change our ways we will eat up the planet like locusts.
The only way forward is to lighten the load – especially within the so-called developed part of the world, which accounts for the largest “footprints” - until we have called a halt to the increase in global population and are back on our way to sustainable numbers, whatever those may be. And to pray that we do not hit a positive feedback loop in climate change on our way up.
» www.worldwatch.org/node/825
» www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft
The only way forward now is to make clear to politicians, CEOs and religious leaders around the globe that the destruction has to stop. That we respect and love something they pretend not to see. That we put value on something they think is expendable. And that we want accessible and non-accessible parts of it protected and safe, despite our growing numbers.
Thousands of species are dead already and thousands will still die out forever. We mourn their loss. Some, like Prof. Maver Hillman, believe that we will even destroy the human race itself.
» www.nabu.de/news/2016/01/20033.html
Still – we as human beings are
an important “invention” of evolution, of Mother Earth.
Because all life on earth is finally bound to vanish naturally. Astrophysicists believe that at 4.6 billion years old, the sun is now in the middle of its life cycle. Within the next 5.4 billion years it will become a so-called red giant and will swallow the two inner planets and possibly Earth [1].
The increase in solar radiation will eventually be such that in about another billion years from now the Earth's water will evaporate and escape into space [2], rendering the planet inhospitable to all known life.
So far, we are evolution’s best try to colonize space and hopefully take the rest of creation with us. We need both to survive and at the same time radically change our behaviour with respect to how we treat the planet. So there is something to take with us when we make `the leap´ into space.
- » en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_and_
evolution_of_the_Solar_System - » en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun
see chapter “After core hydrogen exhaustion”
