Date published: 2008/10/06
The BBC says:
At least 25% of the world's mammal species are at risk of extinction, according to the first assessment of their status for a decade.
The Red List of Threatened Species says populations of more than half of mammalian species are falling, with Asian primates particularly at risk.
The biggest threat to mammals is loss of habitat, including deforestation.
...
The report's authors said the current concern with financial matters must not be allowed to obstruct the decline in the Earth's natural systems."The financial crisis is nothing compared with the environmental crisis," the deputy head of IUCN's species programme, Jean-Christophe Vie, told BBC News.
"It's going to affect a few people, whereas the biodiversity crisis is going to affect the entire world. So there is a risk that because of the financial crisis, people are going to say 'yeah, the environment is not that urgent'; it is really urgent."
Only an academic middle class person could say something so stupid. The financial crisis is not "going to affect a few people", it is going to affect pretty much everyone. And it would be interesting to see any opinion poll where people think that the "biodiversity crisis" ranks anywhere near the top of priorities for people on the planet. How about clean water for all humans, decent education for all humans, decent health care for all humans, decent homes for all humans. Although you can easily claim that biodiversity has some link to many other issues, hardly anyone (outside the academic middle class) is going to claim that biodiversity is the main problem that needs to be sorted in order to progress these other goals. The world economy has much more relevance.
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