If This New Report Doesn’t Wake People Up to the Catastrophic Impact Humans Are Having on Earth, What Will?

A UN-backed group of researchers found that around one million plant and animal species face extinction.

Kisada Muanta/Getty

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Scientists just delivered what may be the direst warning yet on behalf of Earth’s plants and animals. According to a new report compiled by more than 450 experts over the course of three years, nature is declining at an “unprecedented” rate, with approximately one million species at risk of extinction—more than ever before in human history. And many species, according to the report, face extinction “within decades.”

A 39-page summary of the report was released Monday by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, an independent intergovernmental body focused on policy and conservation, and backed by the UN. The report is the most comprehensive assessment to-date on the status of global biodiversity. It finds that since 1500, humans have already caused the extinction of an estimated 680 vertebrate species alone—and without action, “there will be a further acceleration in the global rate of species extinction, which is already at least tens to hundreds of times higher than it has averaged over the past 10 million years.” Part of the reason for the projected acceleration, the authors say, is climate change. 

“The overwhelming evidence of the IPBES Global Assessment, from a wide range of different fields of knowledge, presents an ominous picture,” IPBES chair Sir Robert Watson said in a press release. “The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide.”

A) Percentage of species threatened with extinction by taxonomic groups

IUCN/IPBES

Overall, about 25 percent of assessed plant and animal species are threatened. Of all species groups studied, more than 40 percent of amphibians, more than a third of marine mammals, and approximately a third of reef-forming corals are on the precipice. Alarmingly, the authors suggest a “tentative estimate” of 10 percent of insects—which make up 75 percent of the world’s estimated 8 million species—face extinction. The findings reinforce previous conclusions that the Earth has entered a sixth mass extinction event.

The report’s findings, according to IPBES, are based on a review of about 15,000 scientific and government sources.

B) Extinctions since 1500 for vertebrate groups. C) Declines in species survival since 1980. A value of 1 means all species are categorized as ‘Least Concern’; a value of zero means all species are classified as ‘Extinct.’

IUCN/IPBES

It isn’t all bad news (though, yes, it’s mostly bad). According to the report’s authors, nature can be saved, but only through “urgent and concerted efforts” leading to “transformative change” on the part of governments and businesses.

“[I]t is not too late to make a difference, but only if we start now at every level from local to global,” Watson said. “Through ‘transformative change’, nature can still be conserved, restored and used sustainably… By transformative change, we mean a fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals, and values.” 

Of course, that would require the world’s biggest greenhouse gas producers—including the US—to actually take this seriously.

The final report is expected to be more than 1,500 pages, and individual chapters will be released later this year.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate