Madam, - When people tell me that environmental awareness has grown dramatically in recent years, I tend to be sceptical. True, during the past two years, there has been a sea-change in public knowledge of the dangers of climate change. Still, in my experience, only about 30 people will turn up to a talk on climate change in any average-sized town in Ireland, and most of them will be over 50.
No such awareness has yet emerged regarding the destructive consequences of the massive extinction of species which is taking place across the world today. The renowned Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson believes that the "quenching of life's exuberance will be more consequential to humanity than all the present-day global warming, ozone depletion and pollution combined".
Yet the media coverage of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Bonn (May 19th to 30th) has been minimal. Arguably, this conference is the most important in the world this year. The reason is simple: we are now witnessing the sixth largest extinction of life on the planet since life began 3.7 billion years ago. We need to halt this haemorrhage immediately, or future generations will have to live on a biologically impoverished planet.
While it is important to discuss the Lisbon Treaty, 1,000 years
from now people will be mixing up the Lisbon Treaty with the Treaty
of Westphalia. On the other hand, a million years from now, if
humankind survives, people will still be mourning the
impoverishment of the life of the planet which took place in the
late 20th and early 21st centuries. They will ask why those living
then were so short-sighted and destructive. - Yours, etc,
Fr SEAN MCDONAGH,
Dalkan Park,
Navan,
Co Meath.