biodiversity

Did you know ‘biodiversity’ means gay marriage?

Over at The New Republic, Brad Plumer has a nice rundown on the whole green evangelical “creation care” thing. Most of it is probably familiar to readers of this site, but some bits are worth pulling out. First of all, there’s … this: “I’ve learned the hard way that, for instance, you can’t use the […]

Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity answers questions

Kassie Siegel. What’s your job title? I work for the Center for Biological Diversity as director of the Climate, Air, and Energy Program. What does your organization do? The Center for Biological Diversity works to protect imperiled plants and animals, the wild places they depend on, and, by extension, our own well-being. We are probably […]

They don’t ignore it

In order to further elucidate the role of animal welfare issues in environmentalism, let us examine mission statements from some of the top environmental organizations in the world.

Let's start with the first line of the mission statement from the World Wildlife Fund:

"Protecting natural areas and wild populations of plants and animals, including endangered species."

Notice that WWF talks about protecting wild animals independently of whether they are endangered (only later do they go on to discuss the sustainability of resources).

Here's the first sentence from the mission statement for the Defenders of Wildlife:

David Quammen chats about evolution, science, religion, and his new book

Though we do not, alas, live in the kind of world where science writers become celebrities, David Quammen has developed an unusually devoted fan base. As a young man he aspired to write fiction, and that sensibility remains evident in science writing that reads like literature — humane, absorbing, occasionally thrilling. His “Natural Acts” column […]

Carbon offsets that go to developing world forests rule

Here's an uplifting article by Rhett Butler over at Mongabay. It enables my personal eco-fantasy. It's titled, Avoided deforestation could help fight third world poverty under global warming pact. $43 billion could flow into developing countries:

When trees are cut greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere -- roughly 20 percent of annual emissions of such heat-trapping gases result from deforestation and forest degradation. Avoided deforestation is the concept where countries are paid to prevent deforestation that would otherwise occur. Funds come from industrialized countries seeking to meet emissions commitments under international agreements like the Kyoto Protocol. Policymakers and environmentalists alike find the idea attractive because it could help fight climate change at a low cost while improving living standards for some of the world's poorest people, safeguarding biodiversity, and preserving other ecosystem services. A number of prominent conservation biologists and development agencies including the World Bank and the U.N. have already endorsed the idea. [Even the United States government has voiced support for the plan.]

The article also arrived just in time to support my argument presented here. Don't you just love it when you find people who share your point of view?

No environmentalism is complete without consideration of animal welfare

Under a previous post on whaling, a commenter pointed out the hypocrisy of those in the environmental movement who oppose whaling while tacitly supporting other forms of animal slaughter no less morally offensive. The commenter made the point that as long as an animal species is being managed sustainably, there is nothing inherently wrong with using that animal, no matter how sentient, in whatever ways we desire.

This contention gets at a key weakness in the environmental movement, which deserves significantly more discussion and debate. According to this ethic of sustainability, all that matters is the quantity of the environment, not the quality, in terms of how non-human animals are treated.

This environmental ethic is almost by definition amoral; it provides space for such practices as:

Humans spur worst extinctions since dinosaurs

Humans are responsible for the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs and must make unprecedented extra efforts to reach a goal of slowing losses by 2010, a U.N. report said on Monday.

Habitats ranging from coral reefs to tropical rainforests face mounting threats, the Secretariat of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity said in the report, issued at the start of a March 20-31 U.N. meeting in Curitiba, Brazil.

"In effect, we are currently responsible for the sixth major extinction event in the history of earth, and the greatest since the dinosaurs disappeared, 65 million years ago," said the 92-page Global Biodiversity Outlook 2 report.

Keep reading (if you can). Or go straight to the report.

Young biodiversivists

I just spent six days in a tent with my family. This was part of an annual event where we gather at a lake resort on the dry side of the mountains with several other families for a week of communing with nature (bullshitting and lounging around).

An unusual amount of rain has created an explosion of flowers, quail, and voles. The voles are feeding a lot of other creatures, like owls, coyotes, and snakes. I videotaped four snake species (rubber boa, garter, racer, bull), two of which were in the process of eating voles.

On Bjorn Lomborg and species diversity

Bjorn Lomborg opens his chapter on biodiversity by citing my 1979 estimate of 40,000 species lost per year. He gets a lot of mileage out of that estimate throughout the chapter, although he does not cite any of my subsequent writings except for a single mention of a 1983 paper and a 1999 paper, neither of which deals much with extinction rates. Why doesn't he refer to the 80-plus papers I have published on biodiversity and mass extinction during the 20-year interim?