| JohnnyV13 |
03-04-2005 04:56 PM |
Nyghtfire,
That statistic IS somewhat distorting in that its driven mostly by loss of insect species from chopping down rainforest in South America.
The underlying premise of your stat is that "the world is dying b/c we are losing species". Yet, sheer number of species is not necessarily a measure of a productive ecosystem. For example, take pre-industrial europe vs. South America. South America would had vast numbers more species.....but the LACK of species in europe did not mean it was an "unhealthy" ecosystem.
However, our rainforest policy has been a disaster that we have been well aware of for over 20 years. The problem isn't so much that you are simply destroying species, because extinction is a fact of biology. As conditions change, species go extinct. The problem with the rainforest is that after you chop it down and farm it...in not too many generations, you lose the water in the system and you've created non-productive desert land (see North Africa).
Humans changing ecosystems IS not necessarily a problem, its simply an accelerated selection pressure on the system. What is the problem is when you reshape the environment into something less productive in the long term.
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