I woke up yesterday morning and half the animals were gone.
No, it wasn’t a spinoff of The Leftovers, but the conclusion of a report from the World Wildlife Fund.
Since 1970, 52 per cent of the world’s population of fish, birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles — every living creature except people — have vanished. There are still lots of people, you’ll be pleased to learn. During the same period, 1970-2010, the world’s human population nearly doubled, from 4 billion to over 7 billion.
Wonder if the two are somehow related?
Simply put, we’re taking over the neighbourhood and pushing everyone else out: cutting down too many trees, using too much freshwater, adding too much carbon dioxide to the air and polluting everything with nitrogen and phosphorus.
Really folks, this is astonishing. I half expect someone to declare a global state of emergency, with everyone told to stay indoors and breathe only four times a minute to cut down on the CO2 level.
But that’s not happening. In fact, nothing’s happening, except maybe another species going extinct — 150 to 200 disappear every day, according to the UN Environment Program. Species are going extinct before we even discover them.
I’m not sure why we seem to care more about George Clooney’s wedding than the disappearance of half the world’s animals, but there you go.
Maybe we should blame the global warming debate. Despite an unprecedented global scientific consensus that global warming is real, nine eccentric professors tell us not to worry, and we go, “OK.” Or maybe we’ve reached the Bad News Threshold. The world is such a mess, what with the bloodthirsty enthusiasms of the jihadists, etc., who wants to hear that half the animals have disappeared in 40 years?
If denial works for global warming, why can’t it work for animals? Maybe we’ll just wait another 40 years and they’ll all be gone and we won’t have to worry anymore. (We won’t have to wait that long for the freshwater flat line — freshwater species have declined by 76 per cent.)
If we’re feeling lonely we can always watch cute cat videos.
I know, I know, I sound like a shrill environmentalist, even to myself. No doubt someone will point out that two years ago, the WWF announced that “only” 28 per cent of the animals had disappeared. So how did they get to 52 per cent only two years later? It’s either a green conspiracy to prompt donations or an utter catastrophe.
It won’t be long before we find out.
The cockeyed optimists at the WWF believe it’s not all over, that people can “live and prosper in harmony with nature”. But something will have to change. A typical American, for example, will have to stop consuming at the rate of four planets, never mind just one.
But first we have to believe this is really happening. And then we actually have to do something. Good luck with that.