Paris’s Shortcomings: We Need Conservation, Not Conversation says David de Rothschild

Deforestation (Photo: Public Domain)

An excellent article entitled Paris’s Shortcomings: We Need Conservation, Not Conversation by author and explorer David de Rothschild, has been published by National Geographic, in which he talks about the serious shortcomings of the recent Paris conference on Climate Change. He points out the truly alarming rate at which our forests are being destroyed and species of plant and animal are becoming extinct daily. Nowhere near enough is being done to halt the ongoing destruction and nowhere near enough binding agreements have been made. It has been a lot more talk but not a lot of action!

David says: "...most experts agree that we are losing upwards of 80,000 acres of tropical rain forest every day. Factor in a statistic that says conservatively we’re loosing anywhere between 135-200 plant, animal, and insect species every day, and you realize that between now and 2020, we stand to lose 1,460,000,000 acres of tropical forest and 273,750 species!"

Beekeeper (Photo: Public Domain)

I hear what he is saying loud and clear!  It really saddens me to know how many species we are losing all the time.  You do not have to know much about nature to see that once common birds and butterflies are vanishing, as are honeybees, which we are told is due to Colony Collapse Disorder.

In the UK, most butterfly species are in rapid decline, as are formerly common birds like the House Sparrow.

House Sparrow (Photo: Public Domain)

Every time I talk to my elderly father, who lives in Cardiff, he complains about how he no longer sees birds like blackbirds, starlings, great tits, robins, green finches, wrens and hedge sparrows, all of which used to be regular visitors to his back garden.  When I have visited him I have seen for myself that these birds have gone.  So too have the swifts. These birds used to nest on houses in the street my father lives in. In May you would hear and see them all the way along the road but no longer is this the case.

I have recently blogged about the shocking decline in hedgehogs in the UK. They are now down to less than one million.  These animals used to be a common sight in our gardens at night.

So I know what David de Rothschild is talking about is true. We are losing species daily and we cannot bring them back.  Extinction cannot be undone.  Extinct means gone for good!

I thoroughly recommend De Rothschild's book The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook: 77 Essential Skills to Stop Climate Change, and his Plastiki Across the Pacific on Plastic: An Adventure to Save Our Oceans.  This second book is about the voyage De Rothschild made across the ocean. He saw for himself that the fishes and marine life have vanished. Pollution by plastic and overfishing are destroying marine life daily and little is being done to stop this.  Too little too late is being done to stop the environmental destruction happening worldwide!