January 26th, 2020 | Written by - Bridget O'Shea '20
If current extinction rates continue to grow, the Earth will enter the 6th mass extinction within the next 300 to 2,000 years, a period during which 75% of species on Earth will be wiped out. Mass extinctions occur when the rate at which species go extinct far outpaces the rate at which they are formed. While the previous mass extinctions - the most recent being 65 million years ago, with the disappearance of the dinosaurs - occurred due to relatively natural causes, this next mass extinction will occur as a result of human interference. Currently, the extinction rate is estimated to be between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the background extinction rate, the rate at which species naturally go extinct (assuming no human existence). Some of the largest causes of this rapid extinction of species are human activities, such as deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels, causing a loss of habitat, as well as other activities which have contributed to global warming. This means that, assuming that there are 2 million species in the world (the current estimation is between 2 million and 10 million), 1.5 million species will go extinct if we don’t all work together to confront our destructive human behavior. Species such as the Giant Panda and the Snow Leopard will disappear and it will all be because we didn’t do enough. To quote teen activist Greta Thunberg, “I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is.”
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