Tuesday, August 23, 2005

The ocean's tipping point

Interesting article in today's Washington Post linked above about extinction of fish and marine animals. I learned some things I didn't know, so check it out, you might too.

Like this:

In the past 300 years, researchers have documented the global extinction of just 21 marine species -- and 16 have occurred since 1972.

Since the 1700s, another 112 species have died out in particular regions, and that trend, too, has accelerated since the mid-1960s: Nearly two dozen shark species are close to disappearing, according to the World Conservation Union, an international coalition of government and advocacy groups.

3 comments:

historymike said...

Unfortunately, the dominant ideologies subscribe to a "there's-no-problem-here" mentalité that precludes intelligent discourse on environmental changes.

Conservatives shrug off such concerns as the province of whackos, while liberals pay only lip service to the environment.

Hooda Thunkit (Dave Zawodny) said...

As a conservative, I used to subscribe to the “It’s a normal evolutionary thing.”

Now, I wonder…

If the “cause” was evolutionary, shouldn’t these species have then evolved, instead of disappearing?


It now seems more likely to me that our failed stewardship of the planet is killing us (all living things) off slowly, with the most fragile of us going first.


Now, as a conservative, I see our purpose as conserving all living things on this planet, for our own good, if for nothing else.

Call me screwy if you wish, but I believe that we will all live longer and better lives if we make the changes required to keeping the most fragile amongst us alive and healthy too.


Most of all, I miss the unicorns ;-)

The pterodactyls, not so much.
But that probably wasn’t man’s fault anyway…

Unknown said...

One of my favorite books is The Last Unicorn,

:-)