Environmental Debate Essay

In an article by //, she states that humans are the driving force that leads to animals and plant becoming extinct at a very fast rate as compared to how new species are evolving. This is one of the major concerns that world experts have warned on biodiversity. In a meeting conducted at St John’s College hosting the Annual Megafauna Conference, which involved experts, zoologists, scientists and archeologists, they signaled that the world is in the brink of the “sixth great extinction” of species, with the cause being the destruction of natural habitats, climate change, hunting, the spread of alien predators and diseases. Prior to the revelation by the meeting of experts, it was believed that the rate at which new species were evolving cold keep up with the pace at which the loss of diversity of life.

According to a British writer and an environmentalist George Monbiot, humans are the main cause and the sole reason for the mass extinction of animals and plants in the world. In another study by archeologists Mathew Boulanger and Lee Lyman of the University of Missouri, Columbia, used carbon dating from samples of megafaunal fossils in which they found that humans and megafauna species lived harmoniously for almost 1000 years before they started going extinct, and the number gradually continued to increase by time. However, in other instances, they found that some of the megafaunas especially in the northeastern had started going extinct even before humans arrived there. In such situations, the researchers found no evidence in the bones that the creatures were haunted by humans. For example in Europe, with the large size of the continent, researchers were able to find an elevated rise in the number of extinction levels in the 20,000 years that the human race has existed.

After that find, the researchers were also able to find a spike in the extinction levels caused by climate. Most of the sea creature of today are facing extinction due to water pollution, and little action is being undertaken to reverse the situation. This is because, the water pollution in the lakes, rivers, and the oceans lead to alteration of the water body’s plants, that are a source of food for the sea creature, leading them to suffer and adapt to the environment, and in some instances even death. The question of whether human activity primarily is responsible for global climate change is one that might appear to be a straightforward yes, but there is more to it than what many people might presume. The climate change debate has been one of the most controversial debates in the last decade.

This is especially after significant climate changes were observed, across the world, calling for rapid attention from the major stakeholders and countries. On the con side, they argue that the greenhouse gas emissions which are human-generated are irrelevant and too small to actually change the earth’s climate. The con side also argues that planet earth is well capable of absorbing the increases of the greenhouse gases. They argue that global warming and the climate change experienced over the 20th century has been contributed primarily from natural causes such as changes in the sun’s heat and oceans current. According to experts from this side, the theory that human is the cause of global climate change is purely on questionable measurements, misleading science, as well as, faulty climate models. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a simple correlation can be done that can prove that increased temperatures in the planet are directly caused by the presence of greenhouse gases.