Back in March this year before much of the world morphed into the weirdness that now dictates all facets of life, I wrote an update for the Is This How You Feel project led by Joe Duggan.
It was an exercise in emotional expression not necessarily grounded in empiricism. But in that particular piece, I had written the following line:
Few scientists in my field are still seriously considering avoidance of environmental collapse; instead, the dominant discourse is centred on damage control.
But is this correct? Is this how most scientists in conservation feel today? In a way, this post serves both as a rationale for my expectation, and as a question for the wider community.
My rationale for that contention is that it is undeniable that biodiversity is going down the toilet faster than even some of the most pessimistic of us could have predicted. We are without doubt within the sixth mass extinction event every experienced on the Earth for at least the last 600 million years.
Yet, there have never been more conservation biologists and practitioners. There have never been more international treaties and accords that expressly aim to protect biodiversity.
To assert that we have failed is unhelpful fatalism, yet it cannot be ignored that biodiversity’s predicament and those charged with turning around its fate are not exactly replete with successes. Read the rest of this entry »
ConservationBytes.com 