New Philosopher – July 2019

Ourveryownmassextinction

mitosis going haywire. Nothing crawls except my skin – in fear at the silence of the place. It’s not really a farm: it’s a food-producing mortuary.

My friend’s farm is a rigorously

organic farm, where they don’t use any herbicides, pesticides, or artificial fertilisers. However the silent farm is doused in chemicals; it grows food of the type you almost certainly eat. The silence is my own direct experience of the

sixth

mass

extinction.

The

last

was

65

million

years

ago,

and

was

caused

by

an

asteroid

hitting

Mexico.

This

one

is

right

now,

and

is

caused

by

us.

We

have

lost

about

two

species

per

year

for

the

last

100

years.

That

doesn’t

sound

dramatic.

But

if

one

compares

that

to

the

estimated

‘background’

ex

• 
  

tinction

rates,

the

pace

of

the

problem

is

clear.

In

normal

circumstances

it

would

have

taken

up

to

10,000

years,

not

100,

for

those

species

to

vanish.

If

a

couple

of

orders

of

magnitude

don’t

worry

you,

or

if

you’re

happy

with

the

idea

of

the

loss

of

irreplace

• 
  

able

organisms,

then

here

are

some

of

the

data

on

the

reduction

of

the

sheer

numbers

of

individuals.

The

WWF’s

biennial

‘Living

Planet’

report

for

2018,

an

audit

of

the

state

of

the

planet,

records

a

60

per

cent

decline

in

the

population

sizes

of

vertebrates

between

1970

and

2014.

A

2017

anal

• 
  

ysis

by

Ceballos,

Ehrlich,

and

Dirzo

came

to

similar

conclusions.

It

found

that

in

a

sample

comprising

almost

half

of

all

known

vertebrate

species,

32

per

cent

had

decreased

popula

• 
  

tion

sizes

and

ranges.

Of

177

mam

• 
  

mals

for

which

there

were

detailed

data,

all

had

lost

30

per

cent

or

more

of

their

geographic

ranges,

and

more

I often go to a friend’s farm in

South West England. It is a thrum

• 
  

ming, singing place. I like to lie under a tree and look up through the canopy. The air is gritty with the carapaces of flying, flailing things. Breathing is risky, for them and for me. I inhale them and feel them bounce off my windpipe. Life hums and throbs – it’s a loud, wild cabaret.

Sometimes, if I’m feeling brave,

I climb over the barbed wire fence into the neighbouring farm. There are no trees here, just oil-seed rape that smells of the air freshener in a factory toilet. If I wade twenty yards from the border the only sound is the growl of a GPS-controlled harvester half a mile away. Nothing flounders through the air, or seethes or creeps. My airway is safe in the short term; my neurones and my DNA probably aren’t. I don’t feel any bugs in my hair; I just feel my

Illustrations by Aida Novoa & Carlos Egan

NewPhilosopher