Not to bum you out on a Monday, but for people who care about biodiversity – the incredible array of life that exists on the planet – the last few weeks have brought several reasons for concern.
First, there was a report in the journal “Science” that said world governments have yet to meet targets for preserving biodiversity around the world. More recently, a United Nations report suggested that this dwindling diversity of life will start to hurt the world’s economies.
It’s pretty simple. Nature, as you can read in everything from the Bible to modern-day environmental science, gives humans a lot of benefits. That includes the sort of beauty the Romantics wrote about, but it also includes more science-y stuff. As the BBC notes in its article:
[Ecosystem] services include purifying water and air, protecting coasts from storms and maintaining wildlife for ecotourism.
Since we’re focused on climate change here at Team Earth, we’ll also mention that our tropical forests are some of our best allies in that fight.
The thing is, when species disappear, all those ecosystem services start to disappear, too. Replacing them subsequently falls to government coffers.
In other words, wave goodbye to your friend Mr. Benjamin.
We don’t want to say that nature isn’t inherently worth protecting. But it’s also vital to recognize that without nature, man will struggle.
It would be easy to feel overwhelmed by all of this. Take heart. You might never be able to get Lady Gaga to pick up her telephone, but you can definitely take action in the fight against biodiversity loss.
One of the best ways to protect biodiversity is to preserve the world’s tropical forests. They lead the fight against climate change, as we’ve already seen, and they also contain an estimated 50 percent of the world’s species.
As it just so happens, we make it easy for you to fight both climate change and biodiversity loss with one fell swoop. Take action today to protect an acre of tropical forest.
