We’re basically in the days of the dinosaurs, according to Stanford scientists.
Scientists warn humanity is running low on the resources that sustain it, leading to the destruction of our way of life within decades.
This is considered the sixth mass extinction event in Earth’s history, but it isn’t the first caused by a natural disaster.
Fossil record research says today’s rate of extinction is 100 times faster than typical history.
In case you haven’t heard, we’re currently in the midst of Earth’s sixth mass extinction event, and it’s only accelerating. On a recent episode of CBS’s 60 Minutes, Stanford scientists dropped by to ring the warning bells again.
“Oh, humanity is not sustainable,” Paul Ehrlich, the Stanford-based author of The Population Bomb, told CBS’s Scott Pelley. “To maintain our lifestyle—yours and mine, basically—for the entire planet, you’d need five more Earths. Not clear where they’re gonna come from.”
Ehrlich, who earned a bit of a reputation as an alarmist following the 1968 release of The Population Bomb, says our current crisis basically boils down to this: the population growth in humans is stripping the resources that support our lives, including the biodiversity that helps sustain it. “Humanity is very busily sitting on a limb that we’re sawing off,” he said.
Another Stanford scientist, fossil researcher Tony Barnosky, also joined 60 Minutes to say that today’s rate of extinction is up to 100 times faster than typical. In fact, in the history of the world, the only other times the mass extinction levels have reached where they are now are following massive global natural disasters. At least three quarters of the known species are disappearing from Earth, Barnosky said.
This mass extinction starts with species loss, includes habitat loss, and leads to the breakdown in the natural order of things such as the food chain and soil fertility. To put it bluntly, the current way of Earth will kill off human’s way of life, according to Barnosky.
He continued:
With a worldwide population of roughly 8.5 billion people, CBS says we now consume 175 percent of what Earth can regenerate. And things aren’t improving. “The rate of extinction is extraordinarily high now,” Ehrlich said, “and getting higher all the time.”
