Ending the sixth mass extinction

By The Colcom Foundation | 1 March 2022
The Overpopulation Project

One of the biggest obstacles to addressing overpopulation is the ignorance and timidity of most environmental funders regarding population issues. So we were happy to recently come across the following text on the website of the Colcom Foundation, a major environmental foundation out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. Particularly welcome are the direct links they draw between overpopulation and biodiversity loss, and their clearly stated moral claim that humanity must take the steps necessary to avoid causing a mass species extinction. If more environmental leaders had this moral and scientific clarity, we would have a much stronger global environmental movement.

Life on Earth is made of and made possible by an inconceivably intricate web of relationships among myriad and diverse species. Each species has been shaped by evolution and woven into an ornate ecological tapestry across eons that dwarfs the totality of human history. Beyond the grasp of human intellectual powers, the complexity of the biosphere is perhaps best comprehended by its beauty – beauty visible both in its mossy, roaring, shimmering presence and in its abstract, geometric and mathematical elegance. 

The global web of ecosystems is resilient and can withstand a certain amount of shock and abuse. Some extinction, some disturbance, won’t destabilize the whole. However, as more threads are broken, the fabric risks tearing apart. It took nature billions of years to weave this life-creating tapestry and human activity over the last 200 years is wearing it thin. What ecologists call the “Sixth Mass Extinction” is the definitive sign that holes are beginning to form in the tapestry of life. Humanity destroys its home at its own peril.

The Problem

Practical: The greatest threat facing humanity is the ongoing species extinction crisis, referred to by scientists as the Sixth Mass Extinction. The extinction crisis is the unraveling of humanity’s biological life support system.
Moral: The greatest moral imperative facing humanity is to end the extinction crisis – all human and non-human life hangs in the balance. The ongoing Sixth Mass Extinction is the moral equivalent of genocide against the natural world and civilizational self-destruction.

The Background

Extinction is normal. Species regularly go extinct as a consequence of competition, natural selection, and environmental change. Mass extinction is not normal. In a mass extinction event, species go extinct much faster than what is historically normal. There have been five other mass extinction events in geological history. Each has been caused by a cataclysmic disturbance to Earth’s systems – a giant meteor impact, a chain of volcanoes erupting for centuries, etc. The Sixth Mass Extinction is different. This time, the mass die-off of species on Earth is being caused by the voluntary actions of a single species. This time mass extinction is a choice.

“The next few decades will be the end of the kind of civilization we’re used to.”
Humanity is consuming 175 percent of what the earth can regenerate. Biologist Paul Erlich says that our current way of life is unsustainable. https://t.co/AwaKLZFGsj pic.twitter.com/MU1jHpuMwI
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) January 2, 2023

The Cause

The Sixth Mass Extinction is fundamentally an issue of carrying capacity. Humans require resources to survive, so each additional individual exacts a resource toll on the environment. Humans, like all other species, require habitats that supply water, food, physical space, shelter, and a variety of other goods (the human footprint is far larger than the human carbon footprint). Further, humans share a planet with countless other species that also need habitats and resources. Therefore, the human carrying capacity of the Earth must not be set at the absolute physical limits of the Earth itself, but at a point of balance which allows other species to survive and flourish. The ongoing Sixth Mass Extinction is incontrovertible proof we are already far out of balance.

The chief cause of the Sixth Mass Extinction is explosive, exponential human population growth that has far exceeded Earth’s human carrying capacity. The world population in the year 1800 was under one billion. Today it is eight billion. Simultaneously, technological advancements have enabled many humans to consume far more resources per capita. Indeed, to suggest technology is the solution to humanity’s environmental woes is to ignore the overwhelming historical trend of technological progress enabling additional resource consumption, not reducing it. Technology will not provide a magic solution to the extinction crisis. The only solution is for humans to make the choice to adopt an ethics of limits.

Half of the babies born worldwide are expected to be born in Africa by 2100, up from three-in-ten today. https://t.co/geJJAUzrn4 pic.twitter.com/O53dARBLdJ
— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) August 26, 2019

The Solution

The locus of action for solving complex, global problems is in and among nations. Every nation on Earth must choose to do its part to end the extinction crisis by gradually shrinking its population. Citizens of every nation have the right and the duty to collectively choose to adopt a national ethics of limits to population growth and implement both family planning and immigration policies to realize these ethical principles.

The degradation of our natural world results ultimately from the press of human numbers.”
—Cordelia S. May, Founder, The Colcom Foundation

Reprinted with permission from Frank Götmark – Project leader of The Overpopulation Project (TORP); Professor, Animal ecology and Conservation Biology, University of Gothenburg.