How long can the global economy keep on growing if the 6th Great Extinction Event is upon us?
The Real News Network interviewed 2 scientists about a new study on current extinction rates. The scientists interviewed are Dr. Terry Root & Dr. Stuart L. Pimm. The study shows that extinctions are occurring much faster than previously thought and that within 100 years, one third to one half of all species could be extinct.
What is the cause of the extinction? … Humans and their economic activity.
What are we doing about it? … Further monetary easing by all advanced countries who watch output and unemployment rates. We simply cannot slow down, can we?
What is the real solution? … Economies must be more locally oriented, where production and consumption occur where the species are going extinct. The local people will have more awareness of what they are doing to their life own support systems.
Think about what we buy. How much of it is produced in far away places? Almost all of it. It comes to us looking pretty and nice. We get an image that the world is fine. Yet the world is not fine.
Most people with whom I talk about this do not care. One of them, a man who loves his children greatly, flatly told me that he doesn’t care what kind of world his grandchildren (at the time he had none) live in and didn’t consider it his problem. I see two main possibilities:
1) Humanity will make another contribution to the Fermi Paradox.
2) Some new technology (e.g., fusion reactors) will save us from ourselves.
JimV,
Could explain further about the Fermi Paradox?
And the key to any new technology would have to be cleaning up the environment. I remember years ago when that power outage happened in the East and Canada. The air visibility cleaned up fairly fast.