Earth currently experiencing a sixth mass extinction, according to scientists | 60 Minutes

In what year will the human population grow too large for the Earth to sustain itself? The answer is around 1970,

according

to research by the World Wildlife Fund, in 1970, three and a half billion people were sustainable on the planet, but on this New Year's Day the population is 8. billion plants and animals The wild animals are running out of places to live. The

scientists

you're about to meet say the Earth is suffering a

mass

extinction

crisis on a scale not seen since the dinosaurs. We're going to show you a possible solution, but first take a look at how the Humanity is already suffering from Wild's disappearance, the story will continue at one point in Washington State, the Salish Sea helped feed the world this climate and the way things feel once I get out here, it's Time to fish, that's what it feels like for commercial fisherman Dana Wilson to support a family in the legendary salmon-rich Salish Seas.

He remembers propellers churning the water off Blaine Washington and cranes straining to capture the state's $200 million annual catch that used to be a buying station. They are no longer there. they don't buy anymore, so that building over there used to buy salmon they don't buy salmon anymore, it's just not here in 1991, a species of salmon was endangered today, 14 salmon stocks are sinking, they've been displaced from rivers due to habitat destruction, warming and pollution Dana Wilson used to fish all summer today a conservation authority grants a rare and fleeting permit to cast a net there was a season there was a season now there is a day there is a day and sometimes it's ours sometimes you could take 12 hours 16 hours in that we are here the wild disappearing sank a way of life that began with native tribes a thousand years ago I don't remember anyone doing anything other than fishing for salmon fisherman Armando Briones is a member of the Lummi tribe who call themselves salmon people, didn't imagine that Rich Harvest would end up with their five fishing boats, suddenly you're trying to figure out well how I'm going to make that paycheck for my family good for me it was like well , I have an endorsement for an endorsement for an endorsement for an endorsement Briones' endorsements include his new food truck pivoting to crabbing and consulting on cannabis farms.

His struggle to adapt is repeated around the world, says a study by the World Wildlife Fund. that in the last 50 years global wildlife abundance has collapsed by 69 percent mainly for the same reason too many people too much consumption and growth Mania at the age of 90 biologist Paul Ehrlich may have lived long enough to see it fulfilled some of their dire prophecies right, it seems like you're saying that humanity is not sustainable, oh, humanity is not sustainable to maintain our lifestyle, yours and mine, basically for the entire planet, you would need five more Earths, no it is clear where they will come from only in terms of resources that would be necessary resources that would be necessary the systems that support our lives which of course are the biodiversity that we are eliminating humanity is very busy sitting on a branch that we are cutting in 1968 Ehrlich, professor of biology at Stanford became an apocalyptic celebrity with a best-seller that predicted the collapse of nature when the population bomb came out you were described as an alarmist I was alarmed I am still alarmed all my colleagues are alarmed the alarm that Ehrlich sounded in '68 warned that overpopulation would trigger widespread famine was wrong to say that the Green Revolution fed the world, but he also wrote in '68 that the heat of greenhouse gases would melt the polar ice and humanity would overwhelm nature.

Today, humans have taken over 70 percent of the planet's land and 70 percent of its fresh water. The

extinction

rate is extraordinarily high now and increasing every time we know that the extinction rate is extraordinarily high because of a study of the fossil record by biologist Tony Barnowsky Ehrlich's Stanford colleague, the data is rock solid. I don't believe it. We will find a scientist who says we are not in an extinction crisis. Barnowsky's research suggests that the current rate of extinction is up to 100 times faster than is typical in the nearly four billion year history of life. These peaks represent the few times life collapsed globally. and the last were the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

There are five times in Earth's history where we had

mass

extinctions and by mass extinctions I mean at least 75 percent, three-quarters of the known species are disappearing from the face of the Earth right now as we stand. Witnessing what many people call the

sixth

mass extinction, where the same thing could happen on our watch, is a horrible state of the planet when common species, the ubiquitous species that we know, are declining. Tony Barnovsky's colleague in the study of extinction. It's his wife, biologist Liz Hadley, faculty director of Stanford's Jasper Ridge Research Reserve in California, you know, I see it in my mind and it's a really sad state, if you spend any time in California, you know, the loss of water means that there are dead salmon that you see in the river right before your eyes, but it also means the disappearance of those birds that depend on salmon fishing.

Eagles means you know things like minks and otters that depend on fish. It means that our habitats that we are used to are forests, you know that three thousand year old forests are going to disappear, which means silence and it means some very catastrophic events because it is happening so fast that it means that you look out the window and three quarters of what you think should be no longer exists, this is what mass extinction looks like, what we see only in California, you know, the loss of our iconic state symbols, we no longer have grizzly bears in California, the only grizzly bears in California are on the state flag, that's our state mammal. and they are no longer here, it is too much to say that we are killing the planet.

I would say that it is too much to say that we are killing the planet because the planet is going to be fine. What are we doing? We are killing our way of life, the worst of the killing is in Latin America, where World Wildlife Fund studies say wildlife abundance has fallen 94% since 1970. But it was also in Latin America where we found the possibility of Hope, the Mexican ecologist Gerardo Cevalos. He is one of the world's leading

scientists

on extinction. He told us that the only solution is to save the third of the Earth that remains wild to prove it.

He is conducting a 3,000-square-mile experiment in the collectible Biosphere Reserve near Guatemala. He is paying his family. That the farmers stop cutting down the forest, we are going to pay each family a certain amount of money which is more than what they will get if they cut down the forest if they protect it and how much they will pay each year. For example, each family here will receive about a thousand dollars more than enough to compensate for lost farmland. In total the payments amount to one and a half million dollars a year or about two thousand dollars per square mile.

The bill is paid through the charity of rich donors the investment to protect what remains is, I mean, very small, the benefit of that investment is being collected in the jungle chambers of Savalia thirty years ago, the jaguar was almost extinct in Mexico, now Savalia It says that about 600 have been recovered in the reserve, there are other places where there are There are reserves around the world where populations of certain species have been able to increase, but I wonder if all these small success stories are enough to avoid extinction massive, all the great success we have in protecting forests and recovering animals like tigers in India.

The Jaguars. in Mexico, the elephants in Botswana, etc., they are an incredible success, but there are like grains of sand on a beach and to really have a big impact, we need to scale this up 10,000 times, so they are important because they give us hope , but they are completely insufficient to deal with climate change, so what the world would have to do, what we would have to do is really understand that climate change and the extinction of species is a threat to humanity and then put all the machinery of political, economic and social society. toward finding solutions to problems Finding solutions to problems was the goal two weeks ago at the United Nations biodiversity conference where nations agreed on conservation goals, but at the same meeting in 2010 those nations agreed to limit the destruction of Earth by 2020 and not one of those goals was met despite thousands of studies, including the ongoing research of Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich.

You know there is no political will to do any of the things you recommend. I know there is no political will to do any of the things. That worries me, and that is exactly why I and the vast majority of my colleagues think that we have already achieved it, that the next few decades will be the end of the kind of civilization we have become accustomed to in the 50 years since the population bomb of ehrlich humanity has tripled the feast of resources we are already consuming 175 percent of what the Earth can regenerate and we consider that half of humanity around 4 billion live on less than ten dollars a day aspire to have air cars conditioning and a rich diet but they won't be fed by Washington's Salish Sea fishermen, including Armando Briones, the tribe has been fishing for salmon here for hundreds of years, yes, and your generation is seeing the end of that.

It's getting more and more difficult. I hate to say no. I don't want to say it's the end, why do you feel so emotionally attached to this? It's all we know. I'm lucky to know where. I know a lot of different things. I have done many different things in my life. I've gotten good at evolving and changing, but not everyone here is built like that and for some of us this is what you know, this is all you know, the five mass extinctions of the ancient past were caused by natural calamities, volcanoes and a asteroid today if the science is correct Humanity could have to survive a

sixth

mass extinction in a world of its own creation