Credit: Time
Y’all. It’s time to wake the hell up. WE ARE DOING THIS PLANET-INHABITING THING WRONG. Like, very wrong. And though we can focus on the mega-deadly weather atrocities or how the global poor are getting massively screwed over extra-hard by droughts, floods and related food price fluctuations, let’s focus, for a hot second, on animals. Because everyone and their mother loves a good cat GIF or a vid of a puppy chasing its tail or even weird/hilarious Tumblrs, often relying on these adorable distractions to get through their work days.
Well I'm here to tell all these people: We are killing animals. A veritable shit ton of them. Whole species. Gone. Because we suck at living on planet Earth.
Here are but three examples of how we are crucifying our planet—and the animal inhabitants that we purport to adore.
First off, train your eyes on the poor fucking walruses at the top of this story right now.
Are you looking at the picture? Do you see them all crammed together like they’re in a massive, frantic line for a Walrus iPhone 6? They’re not. These estimated 35,000 beasts are squished on a beach near the village of Point Lay in northwest of Alaska because there’s no more ice for them to chill on, taking a much-needed breather from swimming. Because of global warming and melting ice. Aka, because of us human-asshole-types. We’re causing a “slow-motion catastrophe in the Arctic,” to borrow the words of Lou Leonard of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
And speaking of the WWF and screwing animals over, the organization just put out a report yesterday that says the animal population has been halved in the last 40 years. The World Wide Fund for Nature’s Living Planet Index, which draws on research from WWF’s database of 3,000 animal species, shows a 52% decline in wildlife between 1970 and 2010. Humans, greedy dicks that we are, need one and a half earths to sustain our current demands.
And lest you think mass animal death is the only cost, this shocking decline in species is set to cost us billions of dollars. Per Marco Lambertini, the threat to oceans could translate to $428 billion in economic losses by 2050—the global fishing sector gives more than 660 million people jobs and fish provide more than 15% of protein in human diets.
Not compelled yet (you monster)? How about the fact that the United States is imperiling nearly half of our birds? In a, we’re-on-track-to-murder-nearly-50%-of-American-birds-within-this-century kinda way. The Audubon Society recently released its Birds and Climate Change Report, which found that climate change/shrinking and shifting habitats could straight up kill off half our avian friends.
And with that, we once again direct your attention to the top of the page. Look at how miserable we are making adorable walruses. What else will it take for us care about the impacts of climate change?
