David Attenborough’s Extinction: The Facts – worth a watch??

If you’re not really into animal documentaries, that isn’t what this is.  It’s not like Blue Planet, with scenes of baby whales suffocating on plastic and other heart wrenching scenes.  It’s a factual roundup of the state of the Earth.  It lists the impact that we as a species have had on our planet.  And if you are someone who is not upset by the thought of distant species you will never see (and that therefore has no effect on you) going extinct then you REALLY need to watch this (or at least carry on reading).  I get it, we all have other issues in our own lives that seem far more pressing and immediate! 

Now, we’ve reached the next stage.  We’ve destroyed so many of the natural ecosystems of the planet, that we’re starting to affect our own ability to continue to survive in the way we do now as a species. 

That’s right.  Thinking that the natural world does not affect us because we live in a city miles away from the rainforests is no longer valid.  It’s where our food is grown, where diseases like Covid start, where our air and water is cleaned, it’s important for controlling the climate and where a lot of our resources come from.  Everything is linked.

Here’s the thing: these viruses come from animals.  Animals have a whole load of viruses and diseases that we don’t normally come into contact with.  Fact.  The ones that end up transmitting it or carrying the virus are usually the small ones like bats, rodents etc.  Normally these animals are kept under control by predators.  But we’re increasingly killing off the larger mammals and birds so they proliferate.  We are also moving further into natural lands, causing more and more contact with these animals.  So there are more opportunities to ‘jump’ species. 

Yes, extinction is natural, and yes, there have been massive mass extinction events before.  But we should remember that these were the result of earth’s natural processes (except the meteorite!), and that the world after these events was a pretty horrific place.  Yes, nature will always recover once that extinction force has gone, but it takes time on a scale we can hardly imagine, and the extinction pressure is not likely to lift if we as a species do not change. 

It’s also important to realise that often, these extinction events, whilst massively destructive in the amount of species removed (sometimes 75-90% of species!), usually affect a certain area.  For example, when the ice caps formed, locking up the water and lowering sea levels, massively huge amounts of marine life went extinct.  BUT on land, there were tremendous opportunities for new life to proliferate.  That opportunity does not exist with the current situation.

ALL groups in the natural world are in decline.  Let’s look at some of the stats from the documentary:

We’ve cleared almost 95% of the common trawler fish from around the UK oceans, and 84% of the fish in the China seas.  Other oceans are not faring much better.  With few large adult fish to breed, populations cannot maintain this level of culling.  Fish will no longer be on the menu…  bye bye cod and chips at the seaside…

Yes this one’s an old story. But if they melt, the extra water in our seas will cause catastrophic change. It’ll cause a natural mass extinction in the oceans as the water salinity, temperatures and flows change, and the rise in sea levels will remove our access to much of our coastal land. That includes many of our major cities…

Ok, so most of us are not fans of insects (or microbes and other small life). I expect if I say insect, you immediately think of a fly or a spider (which is not actually an insect by the way). If I say microbe you probably think of a disease causing bacteria or ‘germ’.

An estimated 10% of insects are at risk of extinction. Think back to 20 years ago, when if you drove anywhere at night your car windscreen got covered in bugs. I remember driving through France on family holidays and the front of the car was black with them! That simply doesn’t happen any more. So there are clearly less insects around.

Unfortunately, many of us don’t realise the essential roles that insects play in our world. Which is not surprising really as it’s not something widely told. Think of this though:
– 75% of the world’s food crops need to be pollinated by insects.
– Insects help break down the waste of the world. Without them the organic matter from leaf drop, or the stalks from crops, cannot be broken down to make plant food and keep our soils fertile.
– Microbes are even more vital to this process of breaking down matter and maintaining healthy soils.

This means one of two things, we need to eat massively more fruits and vegetables to get the vitamins and minerals our bodies need to function properly, or we don’t get the vitamins and minerals we need and our bodies start to function poorly, resulting in more disease, fatigue, poor weight balance etc. We’ve definitely gone with option 2 at the moment judging by the increasing rates of non infectious disease…

Ok, this is getting depressing, and I’m sorry if I’m putting you in a sad mood for the rest of the day. It’s so tempting to just ignore this as it really is a miserable situation. Many times I have turned away as I didn’t want to think about it. But we can’t any more. We have to understand this and move on to the good stuff – doing something about it (trust me – it feels good). Keep reading, it does get more hopeful I promise!

Are you reading this with a sinking heart still? My initial thoughts around all this are always ‘there’s no point, as most of this is out of my control’. But when I read it again with my optimistic, problem solving hat, there ARE areas I can impact. I may be one person out of millions, but I can do some small things to help out.

For the rest of the article come to www.eatthinkexplore.com/extinction-facts-review and learn what we can do to prevent this!