http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8449506.stm
There is a really good story on the BBC about the lost biodiversity over the past decade.
Did you know that there was a conference on it in 2002 where goals were set to protect undeveloped land and thusly the habitat needed to support greater biodiversity. In the article from the BBC it is clear that the goals, which were set for the year 2010, will not be met.
The issue of biodiversity effects us all and in many ways effects us all to a greater extent then global warming. Here is a short compare and contrast on the issues of global warming vs. lost biodiversity.
Global warming is still consider as a controversial science in the main stream, at least in America.
The losses of biodiversity is well established and measurable.
There are many people that do not believe humans are a direct contributor to global warming.
It is an accepted fact that the massive increase in the rate of species extinction has as a cause the massive losses of natural habitat due to land development projects. (The loss of coral reefs due to bleaching and increased water temperatures caused by global warming is also a factor.)
The threats of global warming have a direct and dire set of consequences to humanity. I.E. rising ocean levels, sever droughts, sever floods, sever storms, and lost supplies of drinking water.
The threats of lost biodiversity are harder to understand and less scary to contemplate. I.E. If some species you never heard of goes extinct will you notice?
In some ways you could argue that the solutions to both global warming and protecting our planet's biodiversity are interlinked. After all, both the global warming camp and the biodiversity camp argue for protecting the world's rainforest's, swamps, and other natural habitats.
The one part of the biodiversity picture recently in the news, although not in the US national news that I have seen. Is the current back and forth legal preceding over shutting down some section of locks in Chicago. The fear is that the locks are the only block between some invasive species of fish and the natural fish species of Lake Michigan. Every state in the United States that touches on one of the great lakes, except Illinois, is in support of closing the waterway that links the infected rivers to the great lakes. In many similar cases the trouble of invasive species is as much a problem as the human action of deforestation. Invasive species being very difficult to clear out, makes it a very dangerous problem.
Invasive species are foreign species not common to an area that typically crowd out the indigenous species of that area. The invasive species thrives on an area where it's common predators are absent making its population explode. (Like that episode of the Simpson's where Bart goes to Australia to be kicked in the ass and sets his pet frog lose, then at the end of that episode all the frogs are eating all the crops in that country.)
Given the serious nature of both global warming and biodiversity I would think linking these too global problems together and tackling both of them at once would be a much better way to solve the problem. Both groups want to prevent the destruction of natural habitat and find a more sustainable way of life, it would be a marriage made in heaven for both groups.
One thing I personally think the United States should do on this issue is to get serious about fighting the urban sprawl epidemic. So many of our great metropolitan areas are letting their cores rot while the wealthy and businesses keep building up all the outlying land. A strong reinvestment in the decaying infrastructure of America's great cities would bring business and people back to a city center making each city stronger. It would also make public transportation more effective getting more cars off the roads and saving more on emissions. It would save on energy, large amounts to electricity never make it because efficiency problems cause large amounts of energy to be lost just getting somewhere, a more compact city would have a smaller electrical gird that would be more efficient if designed correctly. It would make our country stronger.
So lets bind the issues of global warming and protecting Earth's biodiversity, and lets get serious about sustainable living.
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