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The American Museum of Natural History explained that over the last century, humans have come to dominate the planet, causing rapid ecosystem change and massive loss of biodiversity across the planet. This has led some people to refer to the time we now live in as the “anthropocene.” While the Earth has always experienced changes and extinctions, today they are occurring at an unprecedented rate.
The Biggest Threats: Human activity has disrupted every part of our planet and poses a serious threat to biodiversity. We’ve altered our planet’s critical cycles but more specifically we’re threatening biodiversity in the following ways:
Overexploitation: overhunting, overfishing, and over-harvesting contribute greatly to the loss of biodiversity, killing off numerous species over the past several hundred years.
Invasive species: The introduction of non-native species into an ecosystem can threaten endemic wildlife (either as predators or competing for resources), affect human health and upset economies.
Pollution: while all forms of pollution pose a serious threat, nutrient loading, in particular, is a major and increasing cause of biodiversity loss and ecosystem dysfunction.
Why This Matters: Consider this stat from the Guardian for a second:
While we’re beginning to have policy conversations about how to transform our economic, social and political systems–like the Green New Deal–we can’t underestimate the urgency that exists to drastically limit our impact on our planet. Our own lives are depending on it, without a vibrant Earth our chances of adequately feeding and sustaining 9.8 billion people by 2050 become slim.
by Amy Lupica, ODP Staff Writer While working to pass a COVID relief package through both houses of Congress, the Biden administration is simultaneously working on its next priority legislative package: a much-awaited $2T infrastructure bill. One of the anticipated winners of this bill could be passenger rail, as President Biden has said he wants […]
This week, we marked the grim milestone of 500,000 Americans who have died from COVID-19. We know that many among them cared deeply about the environment and climate change, and many were public servants. In their honor, we want to tell the story of one — Jennifer “Jen” Pizza, who died suddenly last Sunday of […]
A 21-year old woman from the U.K., Jasmine Harrison, became the youngest female to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean — she did it in just over 70 days — surviving capsizing twice and a near collision with a giant tanker ship. Why did she do it, you ask? She said on her website, “I […]
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