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We pose these questions.
On a scale of one to ten how important is biodiversity to you?
Which is more important to you: how much money you make or how much biodiversity
you preserve?
Can you personally preserve biodiversity?
If decreasing biodiversity affected your ability to hold a job or threatened the
world's food supply, would you think more about it?
How much time do you spend each day thinking about biodiversity?
How often do you discuss biodiversity with family? Friends? Strangers?
Would you rather the whales die of harpoons, toxic pollutants, or lack of food?
While the temperature of the earth has risen just under a degree Celsius, the temperature
of the Antarctic has risen almost five degrees. Due to increases in UV at the poles,
there has been a 90% reduction of krill.
Do you agree that the earth is not fragile and that the goodness of a tree is the
things which can be made from them after they are cut down?
When a tree grows, does it take a lot of carbon out of the air?
How much carbon is added to the atmospherewhen a forest is denuded?
Do trees have a nurturing effect on other plants, animals, and microorganisms
around them?
Do trees stop soil erosion and denuding of the earth?
Do we feel less guilty after planting a tree?
If everyone planted a tree would that increase the earth's biodiversity
significantly ?
When we add four billion more people, if they all buy a car and a picture perfect
American home and each plant a hundred trees, what net effect would that have on
biodiversity?
How many decades would be required to see any effect, however slight, from
planting some trees?
How important is it to you that in the last two hundred years an absurdly large
number of kinds of life forms have become extinct?
How important is it to you that this rate of extinction is increasing?
How important is it to you that while over fifty per cent of the earth's species had lived between the Tropic of Capricorn and the
Tropic of Cancer, mainly in the rain forests, 88% percent of the Asian rain forests, 60%
of the African rain forests and 30% of central and south American rain forests are
gone? Another 2% of central and south American rain forests have been burned so
far this year(2000), which is equal to the annual rate of loss for these forest habitats.
And the rate of this destruction is increasing not decreasing.
Whats's the problem?
Do you hope that the rain forests won't disappear because you feel sad for cute
furry little animals, some of which look just like humans and can even show us their
intelligence by learning tricks?
Do you hope that the rain forests won't disappear because the plants may yet give
us a new facial lotion or a new drug for cancer?
How can extinct life forms benefit from our planting a large number of trees?
Japanese school children are taught that kenafe grows faster than trees; what if we
planted lots of kenafe as well as trees?
Is the overall effect of destroying forests and planting trees the lowering of
the earth's biodiversity?
Do you try not to think about how far the people in the poor countries will push
human overpopulation?
Do you believe it is ok for developed countries to maintain high populations as
long as they are at or near zero population growth, not including immigration?
Do you think America has a high population? Are you on a waiting list to visit
any of the national parks? Were you alive and looking around you in say, 1955? Have you
ever talked to your grandfather or grandmother about the animals and plants that existed
when they were children back in 1896?
In the movie Apocalypse Now, Martin Sheen made the following
comment after his soldiers had just killed a boatful of Vietnamese men, women, and
children, "We cut them in half with an M-16 and then give them a Band aid." Humans
have just such a band-aid approach to biodiversity. Non-human organisms pay neither taxes
nor tithe. Animal rights? The right to habitat? Nope. The right to life? Nope. They have
no rights. Unless they are cute, edible, or their presence contributes to the illusion
that the world isn't overpopulated by humans.
No other vertebrate land organism has attained a population of ten
billion. Can you give one reason why Homo sapiens should attempt to be the
first?
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