'Our Broken Planet : How We Got Here and Ways To Fix It'

By Honey Dennis

I’ll admit, I only went to the Natural History Museum this October to see my favourite exhibition - the dinosaurs - but while I was there, I was intrigued to find the ‘Our Broken Planet’ Exhibition. The display highlights the damage that we, as humans, have done to our home, and it is not all about climate change.

The struggle between humans and nonhuman animals has always been present in the fight for existence, but the last couple of hundred years has proved to be the most devastating for the creatures we share our world with.

Less than one hundred years ago, in 1936, the Tasmanian Tiger became extinct due to the presumed threat that it posed to livestock, such as sheep, of British settlers in Australia. This led to a government campaign that offered rewards for the death of this dog-like marsupial that would have carried it’s young in pouches, much like a kangaroo. It might be too late to save the Tasmanian Tiger, but there are many other animals on the brink of extinction that we can all play our part in saving, such as gorillas, elephants and rhinos.

One example of humans helping a species is the case of booming jellyfish numbers throughout our planet’s oceans. While this may seem like wonderful news at first glance, these rising numbers of cnidarians is simply a by-product of overfishing and rising sea temperatures. With a lack of regulation on the amounts of fish taken from our waters, there are less predators feasting on the plankton that are also a fantastic meal for our jellyfish. These floating invertebrates also thrive in the warmer seas where there is an abundance of food, making climate change ideal for them to take over our seas. So, with these new ideal conditions, jellyfish are being seen much more frequently, with sightings of the Giant Nomura increasing from every thirty years, to almost every single year.

While rising temperatures are preferred by jellyfish, long periods of hot weather, brought on by climate change, are ‘bleaching’ our coral reefs. This ‘bleaching’ can damage and kill entire reefs and seabeds, destroying the habitats of the hundreds of species of fish and sea living mammals that live in these isolated havens. But it’s not all doom and gloom! Corals that live in cloudy, fast flowing waters are kept sheltered from the sun c and are cooled down as the current flows around them. If, through a combined global effort, we can prevent the Earth’s temperature from rising too much, these corals can help repopulate our reefs and bring back the lives we are close to losing.

Moving away from climate change, I want to highlight the impact human waste has on the environment and the wildlife that lives alongside us. The picture below shows a blackbird nest found in the UK that is primarily composed of human rubbish. This nest was alongside four other ‘rubbish nests’ of other small bird species regularly found in gardens across Britain. The plaque beneath them reads ‘There is nothing new about birds building nests in or from our rubbish, but what we now throw away is often dangerous to wildlife’.

The materials we use in our everyday life can serve the same purpose for birds, such as strong metal wires providing strength to our structures, but many can also cause injuries and deaths to some of our most loved garden visitors. You have probably seen many cigarette butts thrown on the ground when out and about and so have the birds. Finches have discovered that our unwanted cigarettes are useful insect and termite deterrents, but, unfortunately, just as they are toxic to humans in large quantities, they are also deadly to the chicks that should be securing the future of their species. So next time you are feeling lazy and don’t want to walk to the nearest bin, take a minute to think about how you would feel if you had to make a home from your litter.

The exhibition also deals with the important issues of the impact of human land usage, fast fashion and the pros and cons of different energy sources. 10% of all Carbon Dioxide emissions and 35% of all micro plastic worldwide are produced by the fast fashion industry and 27% of all land is used for farmland (that is more than land occupied by forests!). It may also come as a surprise to learn that renewable energy can also be harmful to the environment, with dams for hydroelectric power, which provides 70% of all renewable energy, causing the extinction of the Chinese Paddlefish. This is, however, no reason to believe that there is no option. There are plenty of other renewable energy sources that will prove to be extremely useful in the fight to save our planet.

But you may be asking what you can do to help. If everyone across the world was willing to take action, it would only take small actions to give our planet a helping hand. You could choose to shop more sustainably to reduce the impact of the fashion industry, or eat plant based food at least once a week to reduce the land needed for livestock production. Reducing energy consumption and reducing waste while increasing recyclable and reusable materials can help us fight against the vast amounts of CO2, which has increased by 43.5ppm, and other pollutants that poison our atmosphere.

The exhibition explores more about the issues talked about in this article as well as many other problems that should be addressed within society, so if you really want to do your part and help save the planet, I would advise you to visit the ‘Our Broken Planet’ exhibition in the Natural History Museum. Even if you only want to see the dinosaurs, you might learn something very important about the world around you.

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