Mass Extinction #2: How Serious Is It?

A couple of weeks ago, we dipped our toe into the waters of species extinction. We were alarmed to find serious research indicating that the earth has likely entered a new mass extinction event, the sixth such event known to science. The most recent of these occurred some 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs disappeared from earth.

Of course, we could not escape the nervy implication that our mass extinction could logically be called – perhaps by some researchers in the distant future – the event that ended the Age of Humanity. Or if that’s constitutionally or theologically beyond what we’re willing to consider, we still grapple with the possibility that it could signal the end for billions of our fellow humans. And by definition, it is the end of countless species of enormous value to their Creator.

So if it’s so, or even remotely possible, it’s certainly worth looking into. In this post, we take a closer look at some of the findings of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Specifically, we will address the following questions:

• How many species are threatened with extinction?
• What direction is the extinction threat trending?
• What does it mean to be “threatened?”
• How complete is our knowledge at present?
• Why does it matter to humans?

How many species are threatened?

The IUCN maintains the “Red List of Threatened Species.” The Red List gives us two potentially different answers to the question: (1) Without a doubt, lots of species are likely to go extinct; but (2) We don’t know enough yet to confidently predict just how many. First, we’ll consider the “lots” response. Later on, we’ll take a look at the limitations on our current knowledge.

Roughly one in five vertebrates – mammals, birds, fishes and the like – are "threatened," according to the Red List. In fact, of the 64,283 known species of vertebrates, more than 56% have been assessed by the IUCN. Exactly 20% of these are threatened with extinction. That’s 7,250 species of animals in danger of disappearing forever. And that’s before any effects of climate change and ocean acidification in coming decades.

Here’s the summary data. I think you’ll agree it’s alarming:

If you look beyond the vertebrates, there are another 1.7 million known (or “described”) species – invertebrates, plants and the like. The picture here looks arguably even more alarming. Consider plants, for instance: almost 60% of the more than 15,000 assessed species are threatened with extinction. That’s more than all the vertebrates combined.

For invertebrates – insects, shellfish, corals, etc. – we see much more of the same. More than 13,000 invertebrate species have been assessed. And more than one in four of them are threatened with extinction.

Overall, the Red List has assessed 65,518 species, and 30.9% of them – almost one in three – are listed as threatened with extinction. If the data is at all credible, this should be setting off alarms in every corner.

What are the trends?

Since the year 1500, 869 species are known to have become extinct. In a world where we casually speak of millions and billions, perhaps we might take comfort that 869 doesn’t sound so bad.  But even if this were so, the trends are not favorable at all: The pace of extinction is picking up, and most have occurred very recently; extinctions are under-reported due to the difficulty of final confirmation; and species whose threat status is deteriorating far outnumber those that are recovering.

Leatherback turtles: Ancient species critically endangered

The plight of amphibians sheds some light on these findings. 38 species of frogs, salamanders and the like have gone extinct in the last 500 years. But 11 of these 38 extinctions have occurred in the last three decades. And while that sounds alarming, it doesn’t come close to telling the whole story. That’s because another 120 amphibian species have disappeared since 1980, and can no longer be found. Researchers are understandably cautious about declaring them extinct, but they’re missing. If they should indeed be extinct, then the pace of dying begins to look like a runaway train, with 27 species dying out over about five centuries, and about five times that number vanishing in the last thirty years.

If we look at surviving – but threatened – species of all kinds, we see a similar story. Between 2004 and 2008, 32 threatened species of mammals actually became less threatened – success stories for conservation advocates. But for every success, there were more than four failures: the threat status of 143 mammal species deteriorated during the same period.  For birds and amphibians, similar trends prevailed: 2 species of birds improved, while 30 deteriorated; only one amphibian species improved, while seven slipped closer to extinction.

What does it mean to be “threatened?”

The Red List contains three categories for species that are aggregated as Threatened: Critically Endangered; Endangered, and Vulnerable.  In assigning species to any of these three categories, researchers consider the following:

• How much has the population declined?
• Are the causes of decline reversible, ongoing or ceased?
• What’s the absolute size of remaining population?
• How rapidly is the species’ habitat being destroyed or altered?

To get a sense of how serious it is to be “Threatened,” let’s consider what it would take for humankind to make it onto the list. To begin with, the global human population would have to decline in amount as though everyone in the United States, China and the European Union instantly perished, assuming that the cause of our deaths had not been remediated. If whatever was killing us had been solved, then humanity couldn’t make it onto the list unless that death toll was increased to add India’s 1.3 billion plus all of South America, plus Indonesia.  And that only would get us into the least-threatened category – “Vulnerable."

If we were hoping that these categories were an exercise in alarmism, we are going to be disappointed.

What don’t we know?

Optimists and pessimists can both run a long way with the answer to this question. There is a lot that we don’t yet know.  In the last four years, the IUCN has added almost 21,000 new species to the Red List, an amazing feat in such a short time. While more than half of all known vertebrates have been assessed, the information is much spottier when we consider all living things: less than 4% of all known species have been evaluated. Invertebrates – particularly insects – figure prominently in this: Of the roughly one million known insect species, only 0.4% have been assessed. For spiders (arachnids), it’s even worse, with only 0.03% having been assessed.

Given the extensive work that's already been done on vertebrates, we can extrapolate current knowledge to the entire set with some confidence. About one in five species is seriously threatened. But when we add the vast masses of plants and invertebrates, extrapolation gets more dicey. About 31% of all assessed living species are threatened. But what about the remaining 96% that haven’t yet been assessed? Until researchers whittle that figure down, none will confidently make projections for the entire range of living things. But this much we do know: The familiar animals we know – excluding creatures like insects, spiders, corals, anemones and mollusks – are in serious decline under our stewardship.

Why should we care?

The IUCN goes on at some length about the numbers of threatened species which are used by people for food and medicine. Surprisingly, we learn that humans use almost 300 species of amphibians for these purposes, plus 22% of all mammals, and 14% of all birds. They tell us that a much greater proportion of human-used species are threatened than other species.

Golden toad: 1st climate change extinction?

I – for one – am left wondering if this approach does much to answer the question.  The utility of species can hardly be considered in isolation, as though some contribute to human interests and some don’t.  Rather, species are always part of ecosystems, complex symbiotic webs which we upset at our peril. As an example, 39% of the world’s hundreds of coral species are threatened. If they become extinct, we may perhaps regret the disappearance of beautiful coral reefs; we may tally the loss of tourism income at tropical resorts; and in the longer term, we may fret about the exposure of coasts no longer protected by barrier reefs. But surely, this approach fails to capture the vital role corals play in maintaining ecosystems teeming with plants, shellfish, anemones, plankton, herbivores and predatory fishes – often called the nurseries of the oceans. If corals die, as seems increasingly likely, I doubt any of us can confidently measure the consequences for the world’s oceans, and for humanity.

Perhaps Holy Scripture gives us a clearer way of thinking.  Genesis tells us that God created “every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.’”

We see in this account the pleasure God finds in each of his creatures, the sense that they are good, and that they should fill the seas, the land and the air. It’s unlikely that the ancient Hebrew writers fully understood the complexities of natural ecosystems. But they knew that God intended for his creatures to flourish. And they would recognize today's threatened state of many of his species as fundamentally out of synch with God’s creative purposes. 

Yes, living species provide us with food, medicine, and countless other benefits. But they also play unseen roles in balancing ecosystems upon which we rely. And in the final analysis, their Creator – and ours – demands that we commit ourselves to the kind of world in which they can flourish for his pleasure.

Thanks for reading, and may God bless you.

J. Elwood

Follow @John_Elwood

An Apology to the Mayor

Two days ago, I asked this question: Was Hurricane Sandy an isolated weather event or an indicator of climate change? I was surprised to report that New Yorkers from all walks of life had reached the conclusion that the climate is fundamentally changing. This included scientists (as usual), insurance companies, waitresses, business owners – and, yes, Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

I acknowledged the Mayor for stating that the weather events are “much more severe than before.” But the compliment was definitely back-handed. The Mayor’s apparent agnosticism about the causes of our new severe weather drew this comment from me: “Trust the savvy mayor to call it straight while ducking the politically-sensitive issue of climate change!”

Bloomberg tours wreckage at Breezy Point, Queens, NY

So you can imagine my surprise in finding that the Mayor Thursday endorsed President Obama for one reason above all: that he’s demonstrated leadership in fighting the threat of global climate change, a threat that the Mayor blames for much of the hurricane devastation in New York City. By contrast, the Mayor said that Governor Romney has abandoned the beliefs he once professed to hold regarding our “temporary stewardship of this Earth.”

To be clear, the notable thing to us is not that the Mayor endorsed one candidate or another, but that in doing so, he clearly outlined the very present, practical threat of climate change to the people of New York and their children. Caution to the wind, the Mayor said it straight: “The climate is changing.”

Here are a few excerpts from the Mayor’s announcement of support for the President:

• The floods and fires that swept through our city left a path of destruction that will require years of recovery and rebuilding work…. In just 14 months, two hurricanes have forced us to evacuate neighborhoods – something our city government had never done before. If this is a trend, it is simply not sustainable.
• Our climate is changing. And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it might be – given this week's devastation – should compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.
• Here in New York, our comprehensive sustainability plan – PlaNYC – has helped allow us to cut our carbon footprint by 16 percent in just five years.... Local governments are taking action where national governments are not.
• But we can't do it alone. We need leadership from the White House – and over the past four years, President Barack Obama has taken major steps to reduce our carbon consumption, including setting higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks. His administration also has adopted tighter controls on mercury emissions, which will help to close the dirtiest coal power plants … which are estimated to kill 13,000 Americans a year.
• Mitt Romney, too, has a history of tackling climate change. As governor of Massachusetts, he signed on to a regional cap-and-trade plan designed to reduce carbon emissions 10 percent below 1990 levels. "The benefits (of that plan) will be long-lasting and enormous – benefits to our health, our economy, our quality of life, our very landscape. These are actions we can and must take now, if we are to have `no regrets' when we transfer our temporary stewardship of this Earth to the next generation," he wrote at the time. He couldn't have been more right. But since then, he has reversed course ….

So Mr. Mayor, I owe you an apology. You did not – as I said – duck the issue of climate change. You called it straight based on what you’re seeing in New York. And whatever your politics, you explained your decision clearly based on the issues most important to you. 

Thank you – and perhaps you alone – for responsibly dealing with the threat of climate change in this political season soaked with unlimited oil money.

For readers of the Clothesline Report, perhaps we’ve believed that only Miami and New Orleans are in the climate cross hairs. Now we know better. New York is facing some of the greatest losses to sea level rise in the country. This great city has $2.1 TRILLION of assets exposed to projected sea level rise, the third most exposed city in the world. (Miami, unfortunately, is number one.) The entire Eastern seaboard is highly vulnerable, from the Outer Banks, Hampton Roads, Washington DC, Philadelphia’s fresh water supply, and Connecticut’s vulnerable infrastructure.

What the Mayor sees today for New York, mayors across the country will soon be seeing. From cities awash on the Eastern Seaboard and the Gulf Coast, from river towns flooding like clockwork in spring, from Southern cities devastated by record-setting tornadoes, from parched Texas and Midwest cities gasping for water, or Rocky Mountain cities scorched by wildfires, mayors will surely begin to make the connections between a climate on steroids and human fossil fuel emissions. It’s time to talk straight, and Mayor Bloomberg is leading the way.

Thank you Mr. Mayor for speaking out.

Thanks to you all for reading, and may God bless you.

J. Elwood

Follow @John_Elwood

Hurricane Sandy: Isolated Weather, or Climate Change?

“It didn’t used to be this way.”

Around New York, it seems everyone’s saying it. Something basic has changed, and it’s not good. Drivers searching in vain for an open gas station say it. Hotel guests shivering in blacked-out guestrooms say it. So do grandmothers camping out in their children’s apartments for a hot shower and a warm place to sleep. And so do professionals locked out of their darkened New York City offices.

It seems Hurricane Sandy has convinced the average New Yorker that something weird is going on. With the last few years’ tornadoes, freak snow storms, spring droughts and three consecutive years of once-in-a-lifetime flooding events, most everyone’s begun to notice. Something’s changed around here.

But at the same time, I hear cautions about jumping to conclusions. A leading Christian conservationist advised me last evening: “Take due care not to confuse isolated weather events, however appalling, with wider trends” – like climate change.

Good advice, of course. But how then should we think about Hurricane Sandy, the “Frankenstorm?”  Is it an isolated event, or another milestone of an unfolding trend – a harbinger of a dark, permanent, carbon-fueled reality?

As I look around this city, most people agree that these extreme events are here to stay – whatever they know about global climate change.  The hotel waitress said it at breakfast: “I’ve been working here for fifteen years. We’ve never seen anything like these last four or five. My home is dark and cold. And with no gas now, how are we going to get home?”

The hotel manager agreed: “We might as well accept it,” he said, with his children – more storm refugees – at his side. “This is the way things are now.”

Flooded cars in the Financial District

The hotel’s owner was sure he knew about local weather trends five years ago when he made his investment. But “freak weather events” have struck every year since – floods and severe storms driving away guests from the hotel and businesses from the neighborhood.

His partners are sympathetic, but they have their own problems: homes damaged by fallen trees, neighborhoods swamped by unprecedented storm surges, power outages leaving them in the dark, and shut-down transit systems preventing them from getting back to work.

The city’s mayor also sees the new climate trends: “What is clear is that the storms that we’ve experienced in the last year or so around this country and around the world are much more severe than before,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “Whether that’s global warming or what, I don’t know. But we’ll have to address those issues.” (Trust the savvy mayor to call it straight while ducking the politically-sensitive issue of climate change!)

The governor is less cautious: “Climate change is reality,” said Governor Cuomo. “Extreme weather is a reality. It is a reality that we are vulnerable…. There’s only so long you can say, ‘well this is a once-in-a-lifetime and it will never happen again. I believe it’s going to happen again. I pray that it’s not; I believe that it is.”

“We have a 100-year flood every two years now,” continued Cuomo. “We have a new reality when it comes to these weather patterns. We have an old infrastructure and we have old systems, and that is not a good combination.”

So far, only the Fox News anchor dismisses the apparent new popular consensus. On the TV screen above the hotel bar last night, Bill O’Reilly had dug up a meteorologist armed with stories of mega storms from about a century ago, when greenhouse gas concentrations were much lower.  The message was clear: Storms happen all the time; don’t believe the alarmists who tell you that it’s a global warming milestone.

Storm surge hit the Jersey Shore with a vengeance

So who’s to be believed? Are these changes here to stay, evidence of human-caused climate change? Or are we dealing with isolated weather events?

Well, there are people whose sole business is to assess risk associated with future hazards. For the insurance industry, our question is no theoretical exercise. In their business, it’s a matter of life and death. If storms like Sandy are “isolated events,” some smart players will grab market share while their more timid competitors reduce their exposure. If it’s “the new reality,” then that same strategy will land them in bankruptcy court.

So it’s interesting to note that insurance giant Munich Re issued a report two weeks before Hurricane Sandy hit, stating that weather-related loss events have nearly quintupled in North America over the last 30 years – even after adjusting for population growth, development and inflation.

“Anthropogenic climate change is believed to contribute to this trend,” said Munich Re in a press release, “though it influences various perils in different ways. Climate change particularly affects formation of heat-waves, droughts, intense precipitation events, and in the long run most probably also tropical cyclone intensity.”

Munich Re thinks North American weather has been hit hard in these last 30 years, and climate change is a notable part of the problem -- the only one they mention. But maybe the trends are different elsewhere on earth?  Sadly, no. Over the last 30 years in Asia, severe weather events are up by a factor of 4.0. In Africa, 2.5. In Europe, 2.0. And even South America has seen a 50% increase in severe weather during the same period.

Subway to nowhere: Public transit under water

The whole world is getting stormier, but North America is getting the worst of it.

"In all likelihood, we have to regard this finding as an initial climate-change footprint in our US loss data from the last four decades,” said Peter Höppe, Head of Munich Re’s Geo Risks Research unit. “Previously, there had not been such a strong chain of evidence. If the first effects of climate change are already perceptible, all alerts and measures against it have become even more pressing.”

And Munich Re Board Member Peter Röder had a special warning for Americans: “We should prepare for the weather risk changes that lie ahead, and nowhere more so than in North America.”

So what’s the verdict? Is climate change causing big storms like Hurricane Sandy?  Scientific American Senior Editor Mark Fischetti offers a blunt assessment:  “No doubt here: It is.”

“If you don’t believe scientists,” writes Fischetti, “then believe insurance giant Munich Re.”

And if you don’t believe either scientists or insurers, then wait till you get your next property insurance renewal – if it’s renewed at all.

Thanks for reading, and may God bless you.

J. Elwood

Follow @John_Elwood

The Hope of the Earth

Last week, the two men vying to become our president for the next four years held their last debate. In the final moments, they summed up their appeal like this.

• Obama: “I will fight for your families and I will work every single day to make sure that America continues to be the greatest nation on earth.”
• Romney:  “I'd like to be the next president of the United States to support and help this great nation and to make sure that we all together remain America as the hope of the earth.”

Of all the things you remember from that debate, I bet you missed these. You’ve heard them so often that you’re mostly inoculated – the constant drumbeat that America is the greatest nation that’s ever existed, the light of the world, a city on a hill, the hope of the earth.

Maybe it takes a fresh set of eyes to see through these declarations and call them what they really are.

“Hogwash!”

That’s the assessment of Heidi Lutjens, a friend of mine fresh off the plane from South Sudan and Uganda, where she has served some of the poorest people on earth for five years as a Christian medical missionary. 

“What arrogance!” said Heidi. “We as Americans often feel as if the world revolves around us, as if everyone on earth should look to us for the answers.  As if the world would be a better place if only everyone would be more like us.”

I think my friend has it just about right. American voters demand from their leaders “constant reassurance that their country, their achievements and their values are extraordinary,” as Scott Shane wrote in the New York Times last week. The last time one of them told us the truth (remember President Carter’s “Malaise Speech?”) we turned him out on his ear.

Do we want leaders, or cheerleaders?

And so they tell us that we’re unique, superior to all other countries – deserving of the best living standards on earth, the lowest taxes, and most imposing military.  Yes, even that we’re the light of the world and the hope of the earth – biblical titles usually reserved for Christ and the kingdom of God.

Setting aside the theological delicacies, these assertions persist despite some inconvenient facts:

• We rank 34^th out of 35 economically advanced countries in child poverty.
• Among the same 35, we rank 28^th in preschool enrollment.
• We’re only 14^th in the percentage of 25-34 year-olds with higher education.
• Our infant mortality rates are worse than 48 other countries in the world.

What would ever make us think that people all over the world are longing for the privilege of being just like us? Of course, Shane points out that we are indeed Number One in a number of notable categories. Here are a few:

• In obesity, we’re way ahead of ^#2 Mexico.
• We’re tops at locking our people up, with incarceration rates far ahead of Russia, Cuba, Iran and China.
• Our world-leading energy use per person is more than double that of the German industrial juggernaut.
• All by ourselves, the U.S. accounts for 41% of all military spending on earth, far ahead of the 8% spent by China, and 4% by Russia. In fact, we spend $2,141 on the military for each of our citizens; the Chinese spend $74. Imagine it! Every year, we saddle every single American with an extra $2,000 burden to feed our war machine, as compared with the Chinese.

Do we really think all these people are longing to be just like us? Let’s not talk hogwash.

“I love the USA,” writes my friend Heidi. “But I am so thankful that God made our world diverse, that we have a worldwide community to share with and, more importantly, to learn from.”

And what does she think we might learn from them, you wonder? It happens that she’s come back home to deal with a personal emergency.  When they learned of it, every single person in her Sudanese church came to reassure her personally: “Rabona fi” (the Lord is here); "Rabona kabir" (the Lord is great); “Anina bi seli” (we will pray). The women selling produce in the market, young men of the village – all have come together to remind her of the hope they share in God.

And where does this wellspring of hope come from? Her answer: “Unimaginable pain and suffering in and around their own lives.  These brothers and sisters know sickness and death like no one else I've ever met.  They hate it, they grieve, they wail, they're amazingly empathetic, but they're not surprised by it.

“And, I would argue that our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world are greater and more hopeful in the ways they face the realities of a fallen world and take their longings for something different to the feet of their Lord.”

I’m so glad for the fresh vision that my friend brings back from East Africa to the political discussion back home. We do indeed think that we’re special and deserving. But we’re not the first at this. John the Baptist told it straight to the Pharisees, who had made the same mistake: “And do not think you can say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.”

The prophet John wouldn’t have many followers in today's America, would he? But may God give us the grace to see that we’re part of a global community, a rich and inter-dependent tapestry that God is weaving from cultures in every corner of the earth.

Whatever you may hear from the candidates, we’re not the hope of the earth. That name belongs to its Creator and Redeemer.

Thanks for reading, and may God bless you.

J. Elwood

Follow @John_Elwood

Are We In the Sixth Mass Extinction?

A few months ago, we read about the passing of Lonesome George. No one knew for sure, but he was thought to be around 100 years old. This much is certain: There will never be another one like him.

That’s because Lonesome George was the last of his species, the Pinta giant tortoise. They are now extinct, gone forever. Tens of thousands of George’s forbears used to roam on tiny Pinta Island in the Galapagos chain. But generations of sailors and hunters decimated them for meat on sea voyages, and ship-borne goats ravaged their feeding grounds. In the end, there was only Lonesome George, tended by researchers who clung to the hope that he would mate with females from other giant tortoise species. 

No such luck. George is gone, and with him, his race. We can cross off another of God’s species from the list.

Lonesome George: The last of his kind

A pity, no doubt. But this can’t be that big a deal, right? After all, can you even name more than a few species to have died off in the modern era? The dodo, a flightless bird eaten by hungry sailors on Mauritius.  And the once-ubiquitous passenger pigeon, consumed in mass quantities by Americans in the 19^th century. Any others? Wasn’t there an obscure golden toad a few years ago?

If you’re like me, you’ve had a hard time ginning up much concern, given the minimal exposure we’ve had to extinction. So this will probably come as a shock to you, as it did to me: Many highly-respected scientific associations tell us that we are now in the midst of a global mass extinction, like the one that ended the reign of the dinosaurs. 

Scientists tell us that there have been five mass extinction events in earth’s history. The first occurred more than 400 million years ago, and brought to an end the Ordivician Period, with its ten-foot-long predatory mollusks, ancestors to today’s nautilus. We’re told that sixty percent of all species worldwide were exterminated.  And the most recent extinction brought down the curtain on the Cretaceous Period – dooming the dinosaurs and virtually all large land animals – some 65 million years ago.  In between, the earth lost 80-95% of all marine creatures at the end of the Permian Period, a time so lethal to living creatures that it’s called “the Great Dying.”

The first thing that comes to mind in such times is the death of land creatures, but the effect on marine life was catastrophic in each instance. Oceans warmed or cooled, sea levels rose or fell, CO₂ concentrations increased in the atmosphere, and ocean acidity rose to levels beyond the tolerance of marine life. And always, coral reefs died en masse, and did not recover for millions of years. 

But with such events coming along only every fifty million years or so, what’s the worry? Getting struck by lightning is no fun either, but given the odds, we don’t fret too much. In this instance, that would be a mistake. The next Great Dying has already begun, and human fingerprints are all over it. 

It’s a shame that so few have paid attention, but researchers are following the Great Dying as it unfolds. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) publishes an extinction score card called the “Red List” every four years.  The Red List (or Red List of Threatened Species) analyzes the status of 44,838 animal and plant species worldwide. The statistics are alarming. Actual extinctions to date are – perhaps – not so bad: 869 species are known to have vanished in our era. But there are another 16,928 species that are threatened with extinction, and another 3,796 species on the bubble. Together, they comprise more than 46 percent of all plant and animal species assessed by the IUCN, and they outnumber by far the species that the IUCN deems to be healthy, or “least concern.”

IUCN 2008 Red List

More ominously, the Red List has only scratched the surface of the earth’s living species. For every one of the species evaluated in the Red List, there are another 44 known species waiting to be assessed. And the approximately two million known species on earth are widely thought to be outnumbered around 4-to-1 by species yet to be discovered and described. Bottom line? For each Red List assessed species, there are likely another 150 species whose threat status is known today to no one.

The Red List trends give us an idea of where we’re headed, if humans don’t act decisively, and soon. In the most recent report, the threat status of 187 species of mammals had deteriorated from four years earlier; only 37 saw improvements. For birds, 30 species were more threatened than before; only two improved. For amphibians, the ratio was 7-to-1.

With almost half of all assessed living species threatened with extinction, how could things possibly get worse? Well, it turns out that things could get a lot worse – and they are. That’s because we’re adding climate change and its “evil twin” – ocean acidification – into the mix.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that approximately 20-30% of plant and animal species will be at high risk of extinction as global mean temperatures exceed warming of 2-3^oC above preindustrial levels.  Another synthesis study predicts 15-37% “commitment to extinction” (passing the point of no return) by 2050. And if we fail to act on climate change during the next fifty years, then as many as 70% of living species could well vanish.

It’s important to note that the projected climate contribution to extinction is, in many cases, above and beyond the ongoing pace of dying identified by the Red List.

There is, of course, a term for all this: Mass Extinction Event.

Against this backdrop, two biblical narratives stand out which may direct God’s people. First, in Genesis 2, we read that God placed the man he had created in his perfect garden “to work it and take care of it.” From the beginning of the Bible, man’s purpose was to care for all the things God had made.  And over time, as the earth filled with violence and corruption, we read in Genesis 6 that God instructed another man to build an ark to protect the lives of “every kind of bird, every kind of animal and every kind of creature that moves along the ground,” in the face of looming catastrophe. Christians can hardly take the Bible seriously – however we interpret these texts – without also seeing our God-given responsibility for all creatures, and his care for each of them.

And for those of other faiths, or none at all, it is worthwhile noting something else. In each of the prior five mass extinction events, vast numbers of species of plants and animals perished. But in each case, the dominant species at the top of the food chain was not spared either. They perished along with the smallest things. In our day, that would be you and I, or our children and grandchildren.

In the coming posts, we will be taking a closer look at extinction threats and conservation efforts, including the following:

• Detailed stories from the Red List: Who’s most at risk, and why? How threatened are they?
• How does climate change contribute to the risk that species will vanish forever?
• A close-up look at climate-driven species decline on a tiny island off the coast of Washington.
• Dying reefs: Why corals died then; why now; and why it matters.
• How much longer for the Great Barrier Reef? And what happened to the Caribbean?
• How bad is ocean acidification? What does it harm? What can we do to stop it?
• What caused prior mass extinctions? Any parallels for us?
• Species conservation: How can you and I “take care of the garden?”

I hope you benefit from these coming posts. It’s taken most of my life for me to hear the call to seriously care for God’s other creatures. Maybe this exercise will help motivate us to take seriously this most basic element of our created purpose as humans.

Thanks for reading, and may God bless you.

J. Elwood

Follow @John_Elwood

The Climate Crisis: It's Beyond Debate

You’d think that our problems were really pretty minor.

Watching the debate last night, you got an earful about who would have done a better job handling the Benghazi Consulate attack. You heard who would support more student loans, and who would be tougher on China.

But you didn’t hear a word from either candidate about what is arguably the greatest peril that humanity has ever faced.  And that’s despite the presence at the debate of a strong contingent of young evangelical Christians led by activist Ben Lowe, who were there to “bear witness to the lack of climate science” in the debate and the campaign.

"One of my biggest disappointments of the election so far is that neither candidate has shown the leadership that we're hoping for on the climate crisis," Lowe said. "For us, it's not just an energy issue, it's not an economic issue; it's a moral issue and it's a spiritual issue. And honestly, it's a pro-life issue."

Spirited exchange, but silence on climate

Sure, you did hear an exchange or two about energy, with the President attacking Romney for his opposition to clean energy and efficiency, and the Governor going after Obama as an insincere supporter of oil, gas and coal. But the climate crisis? Not a word.

Here’s a sampling of climate-change matters deemed too insignificant for our presidential contenders to debate openly:

• The worst U.S. drought in 56 years, resulting in the smallest corn crop in nine years – and the third consecutive annual decline in production, costing Americans tens of billions of dollars.
• A persistent global farm drought also gripping the major grain-producing giants of Russia and Kazakhstan, with wheat production falling for the second consecutive year – and world output falling 5% from last year.
• Drought-related food price increases equaling a “$30 billion tax on U.S. consumers,” according to the Morningstar rating agency.
• Projections by hunger advocacy agency Oxfam of a sharp increase in global hunger in 2013 due to the current drought – causing unspeakable suffering and potentially triggering food riots like those in 2009, which destabilized many countries and undermined global peace and prosperity.
• A wildfire season that burned more than 8.8 million acres in the U.S. – an area the size of New Jersey and Delaware combined.
• A record ice-melt season for the Arctic, with 98% of Greenland losing ice this summer and sea-ice cover at its lowest level on record – an outcome far worse than the “worst-case scenario” of the UN’s climate science panel.
• New warnings from the world’s leading marine biology association that ocean reefs – the nurseries of our oceans – are facing catastrophic decline, largely due to ocean acidification from high levels of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere.
• Warnings from the UN that between one-fifth and 70% of all living species on earth will now become extinct because of human-caused climate change.
• Rising sea levels projected by the Organization for Economic Development  & Cooperation to wreak $7.2 TRILLION in losses in only four U.S. cities – an amount equal to half the U.S. national debt, on only a tiny fraction of the U.S. coastline.

Withered corn in Indiana

Surely, you’d think, we could squeeze in maybe one question – between the de-funding of Big Bird and restrictions on assault weapons – on whether we will leave our children a world which could sustain our race and God’s millions of other species?

When I reached young evangelical leader Ben Lowe by phone today, he admitted to disappointment with the debate.  “Neither candidate has broken silence on the climate crisis,” he said.

But his disappointment was offset by the passion and commitment of young Christians who traveled to the debate from schools across the country. “God has given us so much hope and vision for his creation. We’re excited to see how he’ll lead us next.”

So are we, young man. God give us the grace to be there standing with you.

Thanks for reading, and may God bless you.

J. Elwood

Follow @John_Elwood