After Paris: Half the World's Animals

After the COP21 conference in Paris, the good news is that climate change is now being taken seriously by so many of the World's nations. Perhaps now all debate around whether it is happening will fade and we can get down to work.

However, while there is some good news here, my own concern is less about climate change, very real though I am sure it is, and probably worse than we now anticipate.

I am more concerned about this late 2014 report (and others) about the condition of the World's animals: we have killed off more than 50% of the vertebrates on Earth since 1970. We're talking about individual animals here, not species.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/30/weve-killed-off-half-the-worlds-animals-since-1970/

Based upon this discovery, I feel confident in my subsequent analysis of the numbers, which goes like this:

If we have killed more than half of the vertebrates on Earth since 1970 - 46 years ago, when there were fewer than 4 billion, mostly pre-industrialized people - then it will surely take fewer than 46 years for our 7 billion(++) industrializing people now to kill off all of the remaining animals.

Maybe 25 years?

I am also confident that the Earth will not be quite so habitable a place for humans when that mark is reached - when we have killed off all the animals we are not specifically raising for food - because Earth's ecosystems cannot support global life once all the natural animals are gone. (The reasons are complex and many, but also obvious.)

At that point, climate change may be forgotten. The greater concern will be survival.

We need to save Earth's animals and preserve their habitats.

May all beings be well.