What’s life going to be like in 100 years? If present trends continue, the result will be irreversible impoverishment of species. At the current rate, we will lose half the plant and animal species on Earth by the end of the century. If we lose half, we’ll still have millions left, won’t we? But the loss is forever, and these species are hundreds of thousands of years old, in many cases millions of years old, and exquisitely well adapted to their environment. Each species is a masterpiece of evolution that humanity could not possibly duplicate even if we somehow accomplish the creation of new organisms by genetic engineering. Massive loss of species would decrease the stability of the world environment. Beyond that, we will lose living libraries of genetic information that could be enormously useful to humanity in the future. Finally, there is the moral argument: that there is something dreadfully wrong about destroying the creation. What’s the impact on human beings? The best estimate on human population has us leveling off at 9 or 10 billion people by the end of the century, and that’s just about the absolute limit, without some radical new way of producing food or generating energy. The pressures on the remaining natural resources—the coral reefs, the rain forests and the arctic tundra—may become totally devastating. What about the economic impact? Consider that, according to a study based on data for the year 1997, the natural world and all those millions of species contributed an estimated $30 trillion worth of services completely free that year. That’s roughly comparable to the GNP of all the countries of the world combined. And experts believe that we would require four more planet Earths to sustain everyone in the world at current American consumption levels. We have to improve the quality of life, but not with the wasteful and inefficient modes of production that now dominate the developed world. (02/14/03)
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