earth could survive expansion of the sun after all
TRANSCRIPT
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WHY bother saving species from extinction?
To committed conservationists the question
may seem almost sacrilegious, but it is one
to which we urgently need answers that will
convince a wider audience. Unless the
conservation movement can come up with
some, it will fail in its goal of protecting the
planet’s biodiversity.
The signs are not good. The World
Conservation Union’s latest Red List of
threatened species reveals that more than
16,000 are heading for extinction (see page 6).
Some, such as the Yangtze river dolphin, may
be beyond recall (see page 50). What is clear
is that the traditional approach of appealing
to the inherent moral or aesthetic value of
preserving ecosystems is not working.
Conservation hardly gets a look-in when it
comes to economic and political decision-
making, and it is ignored by the majority
of people occupied with the day-to-day
struggle for economic survival.
What can be done to persuade people to
take biodiversity more seriously? For a start,
conservationists need to speak with one voice.
Many organisations are striving to save the
same species, with no clear sense of priorities.
In any sphere, it is usually those movements
that put up a unified front which achieve the
most significant change.
Conservationists need to be able to show
that saving species and habitats is in
everybody’s interests. With a majority of the
world’s population now living in cities, the
idea that we are all part of nature is becoming
alien to ever more people. In the rich world,
most of us are too worried about the impact
of the current debt crisis on our mortgages to
give much thought to the economic impact
of the loss of a wetland.
Yet there is a connection. Take, for example,
the importance of forests in preventing soil
erosion and recycling carbon, or the role of
insects in pollinating crops. Making these
links tangible could persuade more people to
act in the interests of conservation. This is the
logic behind the growing “ecosystem services”
approach: first calculate the cash value of the
services an ecosystem provides, such as flood
control or ecotourism, then set up incentives
to ensure those services are maintained.
Some conservationists are alarmed by
this utilitarian idea, arguing there is little
evidence that it works. They have a point.
Indeed, conservationists have a poor record
of establishing which of their strategies do
work. Gathering such evidence is essential,
particularly when trying something new.
Ecosystem services schemes are springing
up across the world, but too few of them
include adequate provision for monitoring.
More thinking also needs to go into
developing the financial instruments
required to make the approach work. We
need to do more than just put a price on
nature’s head and hope for the best. ●
ONE day, 5 billion years hence, our world will
come to an end. By then, astrophysicists tell
us, the sun will have exhausted the supply of
hydrogen in its core and expanded to become
a red giant, engulfing Earth. Our planet will
simply evaporate away.
Or perhaps not. We might share the fate of
a planet that has just been found orbiting a
star already past its red-giant phase (Nature,
vol 449, p 189). It has survived encroachment
by its parent star, V 391 Pegasi, yet it is not
much further out than Earth is from the sun.
Is this any comfort? Maybe not. Even
before the sun becomes a red giant it will heat
up enough to boil away our seas and leave
Earth’s surface lifeless. Microbes buried deep in
the crust might go on nibbling away at iron and
sulphur and other geochemical goodies for a
while, but when the crust eventually melts
under a giant sun filling half the sky, there will
be nowhere for even these bugs to hide.
Even when the sun shrinks back again to
become a white dwarf, things will remain
pretty bleak. For a few million years the tiny
super-hot sun will be brighter than it is today,
illuminating our blasted landscape with a
blue-white light and a heavy dose of
ultraviolet and X-rays. Then it will cool, and
Earth will freeze. The small white dot in the
sky will cast stark shadows but give little
warmth. The world may go on, but you
wouldn’t want to live there. ●
Not quite the end of the world
Pandas are just the startConservation is about much more than saving species for their own sake
www.newscientist.com 15 September 2007 | NewScientist | 3
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