Climate Change and the sixth mass extinction

Written by Adda Stevenson 10/06/2024

Imagine a world where wildlife is gone, where superstorms and droughts tear apart our communities every day, where health crises and famine take over the world and all life on Earth is facing extinction. And imagine this is your life. What if I told you this will be your life? 

Climate change is not just about the rising sea levels and melting glaciers. For decades, the climate crisis has been seen as a threat to the planet and the environment. This is arguably one of the biggest reasons for inaction. But regardless of what we all hear, climate change is not about saving the planet - it’s about saving ourselves. The planet has survived five previous mass extinctions, four of which were caused by climate change. “The planet” can survive extreme temperatures. Its species, however, can not. We often look past the dangers of something as simple as rising temperatures, but in reality, this climate and ecological crisis will affect much more than everyday weather. It threatens food, water, and air, our most basic needs. It threatens the economy, health, and communities. It overall threatens human civilization. 

Time will run out in exactly 4 years, 9 months, 1 week, and 6 days.

Climate scientists say the risk that global warming could lead to human extinction is “dangerously under-explored”. To quote Stephen Hawking, “We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet.” Though this may seem unlikely, climate change is a threat to everyone’s life—whether it is now or later this century.  In fact, it is already causing many deaths globally. According to the World Health Organization, as of 2023, approximately 550,000 people die a year as a result of climate change. It is estimated this number will drastically increase millions or even billions later this century - though new research has brought to light the global effects of climate change, including heat deaths, drowning, flooding, plagues, a climate migration crisis, starvation, dehydration, unbreathable air, homelessness, collapse of the economy, and climate conflicts, just to name a few.

Did you know that we are in the middle of a mass extinction right now, with about two-hundred species going extinct per day? Many scientists say this is, or potentially is, the sixth mass extinction. Given our dependence on nature's intricate and delicate balance of plants and animals, this mass extinction impacts all of us. It has the potential to trigger the food chain to collapse across various habitats, creating catastrophe for all organisms within those ecosystems.

Nature provides us with all our basic necessities, such as food, water, breathable air, and so on. Destroying nature is like destroying our life support system. We can’t expect to survive. Just like we can’t expect to survive a mass extinction, a climate and ecological crisis, especially given that our current systems and technology can only partially address it, merely delaying the inevitable.

Instead, we need to stop burning fossil fuels, mass killings of millions of species, and our unsustainable lifestyles. Then, we need to commit to restoring everything we’ve destroyed for hundreds of years. It’s near impossible to imagine doing that. This means that as many people as possible need to pressure governments, world leaders, and people who have the power as well as responsibility to enforce the needed change to secure a safe future. This is a matter of life or death (not to be dramitic). For everyone, for all life on Earth. This is what everyone needs to know, yet what most people don't know the full extent of.

In order to have any hope of slowing down climate change, we need to keep the average temperature from rising 1.5 degrees celsius from pre-industrial ages. Humans have already caused the temperature to rise 1.4 degrees celsius. It is estimated that the temperature will rise above 1.5 degrees, as a 10 year average, around 2030.

 And we have surpassed the 1.5 degree mark every month for the past 14 months. Month after month of record breaking heat and lost time. But this, however, doesn’t mean we have surpassed our 1.5 degree goal. The 1.5 degree mark is measured over a 10 year period, meaning that when the average temperature within the past 10 years reaches 1.5 degrees more than pre-industrial ages, then we will be out of time. And we’ll be out of time sooner than we originally thought. Previously, scientists predicted that we have until 2030 to reach this goal. But, as of July 22nd, 2024, the climate clock ticked down to four years. We have an exact date. On July 21st, 2029, we will reach a climate tipping point, where it will be too late to prevent or undo the climate crisis, and its effects will become drastically more dangerous.

Wwe have only four years before it’s too late to undo our actions. 

By the time we surpass this temperature, not only will it be too late to undo our actions, but over half of the Amazon Rainforest may be completely gone. Millions of species will become extinct, and for half of the year, the arctic will have no ice. This will lead to an increase in rising sea levels and the extinction of arctic species.

By 2050, coral reefs could vanish entirely, leading to a collapse in sea creature populations. This will lead to scarcity in food in many areas around the world where people depend on seafood. Hundreds of cities will be underwater, putting millions of people at risk as well as resulting in a huge climate migration crisis. This is also the time when most ocean life will die due to overfishing, acidification, pollution, destructive fishing methods, and illigal whaling. Phytoplankton, the most important plant to absorb carbon dioxide, will go extinct. And though we’ve already passed the tipping point in this scenario, the climate will quickly worsen with nothing to absorb carbon dioxide.

By 2080, food productions could fail, leading to starvation everywhere in the world. All soil will become dirt, and pollinating insects will be extinct, meaning most or all plants will die. The number of ocean plants will have already significantly decreased, which are accountable for over half of the oxygen we breathe. However, since, in this scenario, the ocean populations have collapsed around 2050, it’s highly unlikely we as a civilization will be alive 30 years later to witness everything happening in 2080. A more likely scenario is that all of this will happen sooner than 2080.

What does this mean? Firstly, with the number of plants dropping this much, we will have even less to eat, such as fruit, vegetables, and grain. The animals humans eat will also starve without the soil and pollinating insects that keep the plants that they rely on alive. With food so scarce, huge conflicts could arise. In addition, the air we breathe will be extremely dangerous due to pollution and the lack of plants to produce clean air. With dwindling amounts of air, plants, animals, soil, and food, we are well on our way to an uninhabitable Earth.

It’s important to remember that everything stated above isn’t known for sure. These are just educated guesses from scientists. With the climate being so unpredictable, and with no one looking this far ahead, we don’t know when exactly the oceans will die, or food productions will fail, or air will become unsafe. Even after we reach 1.5, there are still better or worse futures to have. These disastrous effects of climate change may happen sooner than expected, or we may be able to delay them for years to come. But right now, we have time to stop them from happening at all and we need to do everything we can in the next four years.

Climate change is not just an environmental crisis. We rely on the environment. As it is destroyed, so are we. We can’t live without it. As every second, fossil fuels are burned, trees are cut down, species are killed, we face more unbreathable air, food disruptions, diseases, extreme weather, and famine. And all of these things are happening already—all around the world.

Even if it seems like this world is many years, decades, or centuries away, it’s not. Climate change isn’t just happening in the arctic, or in the Amazon, or in the oceans and forests. It’s happening globally, in every country and city, though to different extents.

However, it’s only a matter of time before everywhere on earth is torn apart by extreme weather, food is scarce, air is unbreathable, and plants and animals are disappearing at an alarmingly rapid pace. It will be a world engulfed in smoke and fire, where remaining life will either starve, suffocate, drown, dehydrate, die due to diseases from food disruptions, or simply will not be able to survive the extreme heat.

This will be our world, in our lifetime, if we don’t stop it now.

Still, an alarming number of people don’t help. Some are oblivious to the full extent of the threat posed by climate change, while others deny its existence despite decades of scientific evidence. Some feel no need to protect the environment. After all, humans have been distancing themselves from the environment more and more for thousands of years. Think of how many people could help take action if only everyone knew the full danger of this crisis. The fact that so many people choose to do nothing is half the problem. As many people as possible need to hear the full story.

Four years to undo centuries of destruction. And every day, every hour, every second we lose more time we need, and we get closer to an uninhabitable Earth.

What exactly everyone needs to do:

First, we need to recognize this is a crisis and treat it as such.

Then, we need to stop the 3.8 billion gallons of fossil fuels and 100 million barrels of oil used a day. Significantly decreasing it isn’t enough at this point. We need to get as close as possible to net zero emissions. This is something that governments need to focus on more. Though a lot of countries have net zero goals, they are simply not soon enough. For example, Toronto has a plan in place to reach net zero by 2040. This is 10 years earlier than initially planned - which is great, but regardless, not soon enough. Even if we reach net zero in 2040 instead of 2050, we will have passed the tipping point over a decade ago, so there is arguably no point. 

Even after reaching net zero - in only four years -  we also need to stop or find a more sustainable and ethical way of raising livestock, the leading cause of deforestation, habitat loss, and extinction. Farm animals produce methane, a greenhouse gas 86 times more destructive than carbon dioxide, and is responsible for more greenhouse gasses than all the vehicles on Earth combined. Even if we gave up fossil fuels and the entire world switched to renewable energy, we would still need to stop raising livestock unsustainably. And, even after all that, we would need to restore centuries worth of destruction. Replant the 15 billion trees cut down each year. Clean the 33 billion pounds of plastic disposed of in the oceans annually. We need to replant, restore, and rewild the planet.

All of this must be done in four years if we actually want to survive.

It seems very impossible. Can we do it? Yes! But we need everyone, every country, and especially every world leader to get on board with taking significant action and to start as soon as possible in order to have any tiny hope of success in the next four years.

Our biggest hope to stop the climate crisis is plants. Plants are the best way to take the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. But us humans have cut down over 3 trillion trees, and continue to kill 15 billion every year. And every second, a football field's worth of trees are cut down in the Amazon alone. That’s 1.32 acres, every second. And to replant trees, we need soil. But climate change is making soil turn to dirt—making it all turn into a desert. By 2080—or sooner—there could be no soil left.

But don’t think we’re out of time, or that it’s impossible to reach these goals in such little time. It’s important to know that it’s never too late to save and prevent as much as we possibly can, even far after a 1.5 degrees warmer world. Not doing anything about it, either before or after 2029, because you think it’s too late to fix is not the right mindset to have. We can always save more plants, animals, habitats, and people; we can still slow it down as much as possible, even after it’s too late to fully undo our actions. That doesn't imply we shouldn't take action now, though. There are still years to stop the climate crisis that we should be using; however, if we fail to do so, we could and should still do the best we can even after reaching the tipping point.

The choice of whether you’ll do something about it or not is entirely up to you as an individual. However, as an entire species, we have no choice. We must do something now in order to have an actual future for all life on Earth. This is the biggest crisis we have ever faced, and what everyone needs to know.

It’s not just about saving our planet. It’s about saving ourselves. The planet has survived 5 previous mass extinctions, asteroid strikes, ice ages, and so on. It can rebuild on its own, but its species can not. And if one small species out of the millions on this planet could alter the climate and put all life at risk, everyone would talk about it. Everyone would worry about it. Everyone would do something about it.

Though we all contribute in different ways, not everyone is a big cause of climate change. Among those who contribute the most are world leaders and those in power that do not use their influence to help prevent and inform people of the crisis. This is why protesting and pressuring governments all around the world helps prevent climate change more than simple behavioural actions do. Though eating less meat and switching to sustainable energy can help a lot, protesting in order to pressure governments and people who can change entire communities and, ultimately the whole world, is even better.

You also might think climate change isn’t a big deal; that it doesn't affect us humans, or that doesn’t affect us yet. But every day, every second in fact, it gets worse. 

And every day, regardless of how much is done, no serious progress is happening. And when it finally does happen, it could be too late if we don’t start making meaningful change as soon as possible. Many species will become extinct, the air will be dangerous to breathe, so many homes and habitats will be underwater, and food disruptions and dangerous diseases will take over the world. Just do something small. Many people think they don’t need to do anything; someone else will. That someone else needs to be everyone who understands this problem. The best way to solve climate change is to get as many people as possible demanding changes from people who have the power to really do something big. We need to hold accountable those responsible in order to fix this, and everyone must be part of it. 

References

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