Guest Post – from BioIntegrity

You know this. Today’s environmental problems are vast, small and enormous all at once. Without really setting out to, the last 200 years of human expansion have put the next 200 years of human continuation in real jeopardy.

Because of the combined impacts of our sheer number today (the ecological extractions, consumptions, pollutions, extinctions, etc.), all humans on Earth today face global environmental challenges. The “most conservative” science estimates 75 percent of all animal species will be extinct within 250 years. Unless we fix things. 

This may come as a surprise. Since 1970 human expansion has destroyed more than half of the world’s wildlife. We are currently engaged in creating the greatest extinction debt in the history of humankind. Experts say we’re sitting in the middle of the beginning of the greatest extinction event of the last 65 million years, losing at least 100 species to extinction every day. Let’s stop that by protecting the world’s most biodiverse ecosystems. That’s what my project BioIntegrity.net aims to help accomplish. More on that below. 

Today’s extinction challenges are hitting us from all sides. Most people think Climate Change is the main driver, but it’s not. Habitat Loss is. Every day we destroy or dismantle at least one acre per second of the world’s most biodiverse, climate-critical, life support ecosystems, our tropical rainforests. 

 The opportunity before us now, to protect and restore our tropical rainforest ecosystems, is big enough to single-handedly turn the ship on our climate and biodiversity challenges within the next 10 to 20 years; well before today’s massive “extinction debts” come due. 

Tropical Rainforests:

• provide 20 percent of Earth’s oxygen,
• sequester 20 percent of global greenhouse gasses,
• are determinant in global rainfall production and distribution,
• are determinant in global temperature regulation (cooling the Earth),
• are determinant in global food production, and
• have the potential to immediately reduce greenhouse gas emissions 25-35% “overnight” once their deforestation stops. 

When we stop destroying and start restoring our most biodiverse ecosystems, the Tropical Rainforests, the most significant ecological systems on our planet, we will reduce global warming pollution up to 50% en masse by 2050, restore global rainfall regularity, literally reduce global temperatures, stop the extinction crisis, protect the world’s last indigenous peoples. . . 

Restoring Tropical Rainforests restores “Earth’s lungs,” “Earth’s sweat glands,” and “Earth’s gonads,” pardon the term. Tropical rainforests are believed to contain up to 50 percent of all biodiversity. Oceans, which cover nearly 3/4 of the planet, contain as little 25 percent of Earth’s total biodiversity. (Coral reefs contain roughly 25% of ocean life.) Tropical Rainforests are the Earth’s most productive vital organs, and most multi-faceted, the oldest/richest living ecosystems on Earth. 

So what can you do? Help my company BioIntegrity.net protect tropical rainforests in Papua New Guinea, that’s what.  We’re partnering with RainforestTrust.org to do this as our designated Earth Day cause. The project is already ¾’s funded and is an expansion of the only protected area in all of Papua New Guinea.

As much as 6 percent of land-based biodiversity lives on the island of New Guinea, also home to the greatest concentration of culturally diverse indigenous peoples anywhere on Earth.

The economic efficiency of helping this project succeed is unmatchable by any technology (see above). A $0.63 tax deductible donation (with RFT’s matching donation) protects an entire acre, helps expand Papua’s only protected area, secures land rights for the roughly 12,000 indigenous people living there, helps prevent the extinction of more than 1,500 threatened plant and animal species, and keeps roughly 250 tons of forest-stored carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere. $0.63! Got $0.63? 

A $25 donation protects 39.7 acres and dramatically multiplies most of the positives impacts listed in the paragraph above. Give to one of the top 5 most globally-beneficial environmental solutions this Earth Day, in Papua New Guinea. Donate to our partner Rainforest Trust via this link: https://www.rainforesttrust.org/project/matschies-tree-kangaroo-png/ with your credit card, and tell them BioIntegrity sent you.

Here’s that link again: https://www.rainforesttrust.org/project/matschies-tree-kangaroo-png/

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Global Citizens, All

Humanity’s last 45 years of influence on our global life support systems, aka. “ecosystems,” is unprecedented. Less than 20% of land-based wildernesses – Earth’s most productive life support systems and most biologically diverse habitats, also humanity’s best bet for healing the climate system, remain fully productive today.

By investing equally in Nature and Technology we’ll win, all of us, on all of today’s biggest environmental challenges. Global humanity. Global life. By recognizing the value of wilderness to the future of Earth’s biodiversity and protecting and restoring the Earth’s biological integrity, we can win on both the climate and extinction crises, strengthen our most productive global life support systems, and protect the continuation of humanity’s remaining indigenous cultures.

Visit BioIntegrity.net to get involved and learn more. Thanks.