by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
BONN, Germany – The world faces a Herculean task to safeguard animal and plant life from climate change and pollution, German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said at the opening of a U.N. biodiversity conference on Monday, May 19, 2008.
U.N. experts say human activities including greenhouse gas emissions mean the planet is facing the most serious spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago. One species disappears roughly every 20 minutes, they say.
"In my view, climate change and the loss of biodiversity are the most alarming challenges on the global agenda," Gabriel said in a speech opening the conference, held once every two years.
He vowed to do all he could to reach accord, saying countries had to answer inconvenient questions and take action rather than produce "huge amounts of paper with little content".
"It will be a Herculean task to get the world community and each individual country on the right path to sustainability," Gabriel said, noting that extinction rates were 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural rates.
"The truth today is that we are still on the wrong track. If we follow this path we can foresee that we will fail to meet the target," said Gabriel.
Biodiversity has jumped up the political agenda due partly to a recent surge in food prices, which has been linked to booming demand in fast-growing economies, including China, and, more importantly, I should say, the growing use of crops to provide fuel, and it is this madness of trying to created bio-fuel from food crops that is causing us such problem.
Experts say agricultural crops will suffer if wild stocks die out. Without a change in human consumption habits, feeding 9 billion people would be impossible, they warn.
Business as usual is no more an option if humanity is going to survive. Losing biodiversity is not just losing trees and species, it is an economic and security loss. However, how do we go about it. Growing food crops to make into fuel is not the answer, that is one thing for sure.
"This summit is a unprecedented opportunity for governments to stop talking and start acting," said Greenpeace International campaigner, Martin Kaiser. But then again we have the likes of Greenpeace campaign against power generating plants that use the incinerating of waste for this purpose and this always, time and again, with the excuse that we MUST recycle more. But there is only that much that can be recycled and composted and that which cannot, as it is done in other countries – countries such as Sweden, for instance – is being burned to generate heat and electricity. But in the UK this is always being met with NIMBY-ism, led mainly by the likes of Friend of the Earth and Greenpeace.
"Herculean task" to safeguard biodiversity
