Why is 2-degree Warming Worrying? The Reason Lies in Mass Extinction | ZHOU Talks about Ecological Civilization (Lecture 249)

Scientists' genetic research shows that all the people on Earth who have done genetic testing are descendants of East African black people. We are not descendants of Peking Man, Lantian Man, or Yuanmou Man, as these ancient human populations have all been extinct.

The tribe that survived in nature was a small one in East Africa about 200,000 years ago. They gradually developed and evolved into Homo sapiens and went global with the changes of the living environment, finally forming the current global human beings including yellow, white, and black. So, the saying that we are all brothers and sisters has its biological basis.

From the changes in human development, we can broaden our horizons to the 4.6-billion-year history of the Earth. In addition to the contradictions among humans, there is another a superimposed factor that needs to be taken seriously today ----the 5 mass extinctions that have occurred in the 4.6-billion-year history of the Earth.

Dinosaurs died out in the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago, marking the fifth mass extinction, before which, there were 4 others. During each of the mass extinction, vast majority of life that once existed on Earth disappeared, and so far, no extinct species have ever appeared again.

Today, scientists have formed a consensus that the Earth has entered the sixth Mass Extinction, with a faster rate and a wider range of extinction than the previous five. This great change has been presented violently and vividly on Earth and in the face of humanity in the past 100 years. The climate crisis is a major threat.

Why is the world worried about a temperature rise over 2 degrees? This is because scientists have discovered that the previous five mass extinctions were all related to climate and environment. The adaptability of organisms cannot keep up with this drastic climate change. For example, if the sea temperature rises by 2 degrees, most of the corals in the ocean may die, and once corals die, the marine organisms that rely on them to survive will also die. This is a domino effect, and species closely related to the biological chain will eventually be endangered.

When it comes to the fifth mass extinction, the explanation given by Nobel Prize winning scientists is that the large amount of dust in the air prevented sunlight from reaching the ground, which prevented photosynthesis from occurring. As a result, a large number of plants died, and then the herbivores follow. Dinosaurs were the dominant species on Earth at that time, but as their food chain broke, they eventually died out quickly. Climate change can lead to the loss of biodiversity.

What are the decisions made by global politicians and scientists regarding the loss of biodiversity and the sixth mass extinction? One important initiative was the signing of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). How to achieve the goals of CBD and protect biodiversity is a major issue that we need to address and solve urgently today.

(This article is compiled from the speech by Dr. ZHOU Jinfeng, the Secretary General of the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF), at the "Symposium on Ecological Environment Damage Assessment and High-Quality Development Theory and Technology in Northeast China". This is the first article of the speech series.)

Translator: Sara

Checked by: Daisy

Editor: Sara     

Contact: v10@cbcgdf.org; +8617319454776

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