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SOME HAVE
BABIES; OTHERS, REGRETS!
(Part 7)
-
Philip P. Eapen |
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Author's webpage:
http://philip.eapen.googlepages.com
In this series, Philip P.
Eapen examines the claim
that the world is over-populated in the
light of biblical, historical, and scientific
data
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2.2.3. Extinction of Species and other
Ecological Damage
Arguments to support population control keep changing.
Latest in the line of evolving arguments is the
ecological one. This argument is different from all the
previous arguments in that its appeal is not based just
on human welfare or prosperity but also on the welfare
of other creatures.
“We must halt human population growth not just to ensure
 the well-being of humanity but to restore the
interdependent biotic community in which we human beings
must learn to see ourselves as members not masters.”
(Frances Moore Lappé and Rachel Schurman, Taking
Population Seriously (London: Earthscan Publications,
1989), 14-15.)
Humans are thus seen as pollutants on earth—pests that
devour resources, destroy habitats, and drive various
species to extermination. Human beings are also
described as as a cancer on planet earth. (Lappé and
Schurman cite the The Gaia Peace Atlas (ed. Frank
Barnaby Pan, 1988) and The Gaia Atlas of Planet
Management (ed. Norman Myers Pan, 1985).) At best,
humans share the worth of attributed to the rest of
creatures.
In 1979, The Sinking Ark (by Norman Myers (New York:
Pergammon Press, 1979), highlighted species loss as a
major adverse effect of the human encroachment into
wildlife habitats. In it, Myers claimed that we were
losing 40,000 species every year, over a 100 species
every day. These claims found a place in the report
Global 2000 prepared for the President of the USA and
thus was widely circulated and accepted as the truth.
(Gerald O. Barney, ed., The Global 2000 Report to the
President of the U.S.:Entering the Twenty-first Century,
vol. I-III (New York: Pergamon Press, 1980).) Alan
Lovejoy’s predictions on an ecological disaster caused
great alarm.
The report said, “What then is a reasonable estimate of
global extinctions by 2000? In the low deforestation
case, approximately 15 percent of the planet’s species
can be expected to be lost. In the high deforestation
case, perhaps as much as 20 percent will be lost. This
means that of the 3-10 million species now present on
the earth, at least 500,000-600,000 will be extinguished
during the next two decades.” (p.133).
US vice-president Al Gore, Harvard biologist E. O.
Wilson, and professor Paul Ehrlich quoted these and
larger figures to get their message of conservation
across. (Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist, 249.
According to Wilson, we are losing 27,000 to 100,000
species a year. Ehrlich raised the figure to 250,000 a
year and predicted that all of Earth’s species would
vanish by 2010-’25. [Nigel E. Stork, “Measuring Global
Biodiversity and its Decline,” in Biodiversity II ed.
Marjorie Reaka-Kudla and Don E. Wilson (Washington DC:
Joseph Henry Press, 1997), 41-68.])
Simon asserts that the data on species loss projected by
these biologists have nothing to do with reality. (Myers
and Simon, Scarcity or Abundance, 36).. Lomborg’s
research too reveals the same thing. (Lomborg, The
Skeptical Environmentalist, 248ff.) The only published
work that is cited is Myers’ Sinking Ark in which Myers
bases his argument on guesses and suppositions—that the
extinction rate might have reached a 100 species a year.
Myers then makes a further leap in conjecture and
arrives at a conclusion that the earth would loose a 100
species a day, during the latter part of twentieth
century, due to "man-hand-ling of natural environments.”
(p.5) Myers arrived at this figure by assuming that the
final 25 years of the 20th century would witness the
extinction of a million species. Thus, his argument is
entirely circular—”if you assume 40,000, then you get
40,000,” as Lomborg states it.” (p. 252). Myers’ figure
is “40,000 times greater than his own data, [and] 10,000
times the latest observed rate.” (Lomborg, p.252).
Scientists aver that there is no precise way of
determining the exact number of species on earth let
alone determining the rate of species extinction. Myers
admits that there is “no way of knowing the actual
extinction rate in the tropical forests, let alone an
approximate guess.”(p.43) Yet, this does not stop Myers
or other research biologists from making wild guesses.
Lomborg cites examples of scientists who were worried
about lack of sound data but did not dare to question
the unscientific claims of senior scientists. He then
concludes that these scientists are driven not by
scientific temper but by desire to salvage their career
through research grants. (Lomborg, p.254)
The World Conservation Union’s (International Union for
the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources)
findings are sufficient to bring about a change in the
minds of those biologists who claim that we are losing
species at a high rate. IUCN found that only a “very
small” number of mammals and birds have become extinct.V.
H. Heywood and S. N. Stuart, “Species Extinctions in
Tropical Forests,” in Tropical Deforestation and Species
Extinction ed. T. C. Whitmore and J. A. Sayer (London:
Chapman and Hall, 1992), 93.) These researchers have
also found that there is “no clear-cut evidence” to
prove that loss of 20 percent of the world’s rainforests
since 1830s have resulted in the extinction of large
number of species.
In spite of these and other findings, doomsday
predictors have not been discouraged. Myers continued to
stick to his figure of “50-150” extinctions per day even
in 1999. (Norman Myers and Frans Lanting, “What we must
do to counter the biotic holocaust,” International
Wildlife 29/2 (1999) 30-9 ) Worse still, these
biologists feel that they “don’t need to know how many
species there are, how they are related to one another,
or how many disappear annually to recognise that Earth’s
biota is entering a gigantic spasm of extinction.”
Ironically, this statement that rejects the importance
of facts and figures appears in a book titled Betrayal
of Science and Reason! (Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H.
Ehrlich Betrayal of Science and Reason: How
Anti-Environmental Rhetoric Threatens Our Future
(Washington, DC: Island Press, 1996), 112-13.)
Biologists can indeed do a lot better with a little help
from observed facts and reason.
Another facet of the world’s conservation movement is
that the animals or plants that are highlighted as those
in need for protection are very often those that enjoy
human appeal. These could be the Asian elephant, the
blue whale, or the Bengal tiger. We do not hear much
about the need to conserve the majority of species in
rainforests—beetles, insects, fungi, or bacteria.
Conservationists might claim that the large mammals act
as flagship species, and that their protection ensures
the protection of other smaller, inconspicuous species.
Interestingly, the highlighting of these large and
appealing animals reveals the predominance of human
interests over other species though we may be quick to
disown any anthropocentric tendencies.
One of the arguments raised against human multiplication
and expansion is that humans destroy wilderness and
forest areas. The tropical rainforests are rich in
biodiversity. Conservationists have therefore lobbied
for the protection of rainforests. The theory that
linked habitat area with the number of species was
authored by biologist E. O. Wilson. According to this
theory, if a habitat is reduced by 90 percent, the
number of species will be cut down to 50 percent. This
theory was first formulated for islands but was
indiscriminately used for other ecosystems as well. The
largest study of tropical biodiversity conducted in
Puerto Rico by the US Department of Agriculture reveals
how Wilson’s theory cannot be applied in every
ecosystem. Ninety nine percent of the primary forest in
Puerto Rico had been destroyed over a period of 400
years; yet, contrary to Wilson’s theory, only seven out
of 60 bird species became extinct. In the case of
Brazilian Atlantic rainforest, we are left with just
twelve percent of what was in place two centuries ago.
Wilson’s theory would predict the loss of fifty percent
of all species. Yet, not a single plant or animal
species became extinct as a result of this habitat loss.
(K. S. Brown and G. G. Brown, “Habitat alteration and
species loss in Brazilian forests,” in Tropical
Deforestation and Species Extinction ed. T. C. Whitmore
and J. A. Sayer (London: Chapman and Hall, 1992), 127.
119-42.)
Despite the conservationists propaganda to the contrary,
there is mounting evidence to prove that the world’s
forest cover is improving. FAO’s Production Yearbookis
the only work to have calculated the area of forest
cover from 1949 to 1994. According to the FAO, the
global forest cover had increased from 40.24 million
square kilometres in 1950 to 43.04 million square
kilometres in 1994. Eighty percent of Brazilian Amazon
rainforest is well preserved.
These facts should make us question the wisdom of
allocating the world’s scarce resources for costly
conservation projects when more urgent human development
projects are delayed due to lack of funds. Large tracts
of forests are declared as reserves. As a result, tribal
societies and villagers who lived in forests and off
forest resources for centuries are denied access to
forests. In the name of biodiversity, people are
portrayed as pests; without adequate facts to support
claims of species extinction, human multiplication and
expansion are condemned.
Documented Extinctions from the year AD
1600
| Taxa of
Species |
Approx. No
since 1600 |
Total
Extinctions |
| Vertebrates |
47,000 |
321 |
| Mammals |
4,500 |
110 |
| Birds |
9,500 |
103 |
| Reptiles |
6,300 |
21 |
| Amphibians |
4,200 |
5 |
| Fish |
24,000 |
82 |
| Molluscs |
100,000 |
235 |
| Crustaceans |
4,000 |
9 |
| Insects |
1,000,000 |
98 |
| Vascular
Plants |
250,000 |
396 |
| Total |
1,600,000 |
1,033 |
(Source: Lomborg, The Skeptical
Environmentalist, 250. Table 6.)
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This page
is updated on Nov 14, 2009 |
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PRAISE THE ALMIGHTY
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