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New Book Warns of Global Warming Dangers
Thomas Lovejoy recalls talking to a senior U.N. official about
biodiversity and global warming. "If you can't do something
about global warming, you can forget about biodiversity," he
warned at that time.
At a well-received book signing of Lovejoy's new Climate Change
and Biodiversity at the Carriage House, an event hosted and
promoted by NNYN, the environmentalist continued to warn about
global warming and the steps needed to slow its impact. For
NNYN, with whom Lovejoy has been associated since the very beginning,
it was an important part of creating awareness of some of the
critical issues facing New York and the global community.
In Climate Change and Biodiversity (New Haven: Yale University
Press), a new book that Lovejoy has co-authored with Lee Hannah,
Lovejoy warns that global warming is already having an impact
on our planet and how we live. "There is statistically sound
evidence that climate has already altered flowering and nesting
times, and the distribution of birds, butterflies and marine
organisms. More disturbing is the first extinction associated
with climate change - in conservation conscious Costa Rica -
and the widespread and massive bleaching of coral reefs from
warmer seas added to other stresses," the authors say.
Lovejoy says that the most recent global analyses indicate that
the majority of the earth's surface is now dominated by human
activities and that habitats are dangerously fragmented. These
trends are having an impact not only on biodiversity but on
an entire range of ecosystem services, such as clean water that
have tremendous implications for the quality of human life,
particularly of the poor. Indeed, the synergy between climate
change and habitat fragmentation is the most threatening aspect
of climate change for biodiversity and is a central challenge
facing conservation.
One clear solution, says Lovejoy, is the control of greenhouse
gases. But even that is hampered by a lack of consensus on what
is considered safe and what is dangerous. "Limiting climate
change requires stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations. This
requires major changes beyond signing on to the Kyoto Accord,"
says Lovejoy, adding "It implies the evolution of a society
that becomes carbon-neutral on a global scale in this century.
This would mean phasing out all fossil fuel-burning vehicles,
aircraft, and electricity generating facilities or implementing
permanent carbon sequestration -- probably underground --on
a massive scale. While this may sound like science fiction scenarios
to biologists who are not energy experts, if the alternative
is the inexorable and unmanageable loss of biodiversity, biologists
have a strong reason to advocate exactly these changes."
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