Lost in the Brexit headlines of the last 6 months...

Ok she is now 90 and doesn't let hubby shoot Tigers anymore....But it got your attention....There is a point to this that I would like to come back to in part two.

The Brexit media hype obscured a far more important news story which has not  been given the media coverage it deserves.

Giving legal status and rights to entire ecosystems and the biodiversity they support (including humans) is not just a moral imperative it is a mission critical event....The mission being the survival of life on Earth with humanity being part of the picture.

In order to appreciate whats at stake here one must understand and accept a fundamental fact...A basic unshakable truth which mankind has denied for the last two hundred years.

Man is not a "god species". We are not above the laws of nature and can not control or disregard nature.

This fact may surprise many people, but the science is clear and the rapidly deteriorating state of the global environment is reaching many tipping points.

Human survival is totally dependent on the survival of healthy ecosystems. The Earths "natural capital" and ecosystem services are not unlimited resources.

From fresh water & clean air, crop pollination & carbon dioxide regulation, stable weather patterns and oceanic salinity / acidity to disease prevention & invasive species control...We all just take these for granted and assume there will always be more...More fish in the sea or trees to fell....

For the last 50 to 100 years (depending on species / geography) we have been "harvesting" the Earths natural resources at an massively unsustainable rate...That is common knowledge, sadly ignored but widely understood and accepted as just what humans do.

What is not widely understood is the speed and scale of this mass extinction event or its repercussions for humanity.

We are exterminating species faster than they can be documented...

We are exterminating species between 100 and 1,000 faster than any previous mass extinction event in geological time....This fact alone is terrifying! 

We are now dredging the global water tables, desimating fish stocks & marine life and clear cutting ecosystems hitting the end of road

We have exceeded the Earths carrying capacity for humans by a factor of 5 to 10 depending on lavish or modest the minimal acceptable "average" lifestyle is.

In the "God Species" by Royal Society award winning science & nature writer Mark Lynus details 7 of the Earths "Red Line" boundaries which man can not cross if we wish to maintain an habitat which can support human life.

As of 2016, we have crossed three of these boundaries, one has yet to be researched in detail and we are close to crossing three.

I stress this is not some Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth prediction or white paper (with all due respect to these fine organisations?

This is an in depth examination of the Earths chemistry, biology, atmospheric physics and climatology, peer reviewed and approved by over 23 Universities, government associations and NGO's and global authorities....The culmination of 10 years research and a vast data base of talented contributors and references.

In my next post (when I return from two weeks holiday!) I will put some meat on the above bones, I will quote some astounding facts and reference them....Brexit is not the story of 2016.

The story of of 2016 and each year thereafter is will the real story ever be given the media coverage it deserves and requires in order to  generate the public support for the  drastic actions which must be taken to avert the impending crisis....???

Thanks for reading part one.