I have a challenge for you, but before that, a bit of background and context.
In the history of our planet, we have already had five mass extinctions. What’s a mass extinction event? The following description is from the article Humans on Verge of Causing 6th Great Mass Extinction published by LiveScience.
“Mass extinctions include events in which 75 percent of the species on Earth disappear within a geologically short time period, usually on the order of a few hundred thousand to a couple million years. It’s happened only five times before in the past 540 million years of multicellular life on Earth. (The last great extinction occurred 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs were wiped out.) At current rates of extinction, the study found, Earth will enter its sixth mass extinction within the next 300 to 2,000 years.”
The article actually starts off thus.
“Are humans causing a mass extinction on the magnitude of the one that killed the dinosaurs?
The answer is yes, according to a new analysis — but we still have some time to stop it.”
Another article Are We In The Sixth Mass Extinction?, published in Earth.org starts off thus:
“A ‘mass extinction’ or ‘extinction event’ can be defined as a rapid and widespread loss in biodiversity (Gingerich, 2020). With the IUCN predicting that 99.9% of critically endangered species and 67% of endangered species may be lost within the next 100 years (IUCN, 2019), there are strong indicators for the presence of a 6th mass extinction event.”
Later, it reports:
“The 2019 ISPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services suggests that human activity has directly resulted in 1 million plant and animal species facing extinction (ISPBES, 2019).”
(The article also sheds light on the importance of biodiversity, if you are interested.)
The Guardian in Half of world’s bird species in decline as destruction of avian life intensifies reports,
“State of the World’s Birds report warns human actions and climate crisis putting 49% in decline, with one in eight bird species under threat of extinction[.]”
If you would like to know even more, read What is the sixth mass extinction and what can we do about it? And, if you are a middle school (grades 6-8) teacher, National Geographic has three activities on the sixth mass extinction.
National Geographic, in this 2014 article — quoting a publication in the journal Science, also published that same year — states, “current extinction rates are up to a thousand times higher than they would be if people weren’t in the picture.”
That should do for the context. Here’s the challenge.
You have been chosen to attend the first ever convention of the species…the convention of all conventions. Representatives from all the species on the planet are to gather there to discuss climate change, rights of species, fates of different species, among other topics, and, most importantly, to make a case for the continued survival of, the preservation of the current species on this planet.
What argument will you put forward in front of representatives from all the species to convince them to vote “Yes” to homo sapiens’ continued survival in support of the argument that our survival is crucial for other species as well as for the planet.
Remember, we have been responsible for the current 1000x faster extinction rate of other species, AND assume that a vast majority of other species are aware of this.
Go!
(I shared the question for the first time in a tweet on Feb. 19, 2019 and the challenge itself on Oct. 7, 2020 as both an Instagram post and a Twitter thread.)
