What Use is Biodiversity?

This blog post by BBC News writer Richard Black returns to our attention the perennial dilemma amongst environmental activists (and anyone trying to change the world for the better by asking others to make an effort): why bother? As this is now the International Year of Biodiversity, the question is why bother saving all those species out there? What use is biodiversity? (What has it done for me lately?) Here are a few things it does for you, all summed up neatly as "ecological services." (You want service, you got it.) * The nitrogen cycle; * The carbon cycle; * The water cycle; * Some additional aspects of the weather (e.g., microorganisms seed clouds, which end up making rain); * Filtering of waste water by bivalves (e.g., clams), plants, and other millions of organisms in streams, marshes, and estuaries; * Decomposition of dead plants and animals (by the very big all the way down to the microscopic); * Pollination by bees, bats, and butterflies of most of the crops billions of people depend on for their daily diet. Consider that the rest of the life on this planet - with the exception of millions of penned-up domesticates, race horses, and most pets - would do quite fine with no more humans, we would last only a few weeks if all the insects died off at once. If all the bacteria died, we wouldn't live even that long. So many people live in their little bubbles of processed air, food, and water that they forget how everything they need to live ultimately comes from a living being. What use is biodiversity? More than you are or I am. Maybe more than the whole lot of us.

2010: UN Year of International Biodiversity

This week, we begin the UN Year of International Biodiversity. The true wealth of our planet - life, in its varied, mysterious, awesome, and miraculous forms - is under a much bigger threat than ever in the geological record. There have been five great extinctions in the Earth's past, including the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T for short) one 65 m years ago, which wiped out most of the dinosaurs (most, if you believe that some became birds). Scientists now believe that we could be heading for the sixth great extinction. The rate at which species are vanishing is far greater than in any precious time. (See this article in the Guardian today for an overview of the current crisis, and why this Year is important.) It is particularly sad to see the reaction of so-called educated people (who supposedly should know better) when confronted with the knowledge that species are disappearing right before our eyes, in some cases, or quite invisibly - long before anyone could give them a name and status. The utilitarians say, "What do I care if some beetle goes extinct, unless it's a cure for something?" The fatalists say, "There have been extinctions before, and life came back, eventually." (Yes, but you'd have to wait a few million years!) While others say that extinction is a normal part of speciation, the process by which genetic changes in one species lead to the creation of a new, distinct life form. The species comes into being and, sooner or later, it goes away. (That is why we no longer see cave bears or pterodactyls.) Jared Diamond, physiologist turned paleontologist and anthropologist, and author of such must-reads as Guns, Germs and Steel, and Collapse, says in an earlier book, The Third Chimpanzee:

Dismissing the exinction crisis on the grounds that exinction is natural would be like dismissing genocide on the grounds that death is the natural fate of all humans.

It is a crisis. And while some of the losses may indeed be "natural" (I will not hazard a proper definition of that here), most are the direct consequence of the actions of most adaptable and single-minded species on the planet, Homo sapiens. Our need to simplify the environment before we can inhabit it has led to deforestation, drained swamps, irrigated deserts, cleared mountains, introduced species of plants (e.g., crops or gardens) and animals (livestock, pets), and urbanization. If our numbers had remained small - the total human population didn't reach one billion until around the year 1800! - these "adjustments" would hardly show. But we have grown to an unsustainable size, and spread into almost every nook and cranny, changing as we go. The rest of the millions of species with which we share this finite space, and on which we depend, have to accommodate us. Adapt or perish. When are enough people going to wake up and see the connections?