Relatives face extinction

There are seven species of great ape and four of these are close to extinction. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classes the Eastern Gorilla, Western Gorilla, Bornean Orangutan and Sumatran Orangutan as Critically Endangered. That's one step short of extinct in the wild.

Another two - the Chimpanzee and Bonobo - are merely Endangered. 

The seventh great ape - Homo Sapiens - is increasingly numerous though whether our current numbers can be sustained is another matter.

The IUCN estimates the total number of chimps as 170,000 to 300,000 so there are more people in Enfield than there are chimps in the whole world. It estimates the number of bonobos at 30,000 to 50,000 so there are probably more children in Enfield than there are bonobos in the world.

Wilderness lost

Australian researchers have found that about one tenth of the world's wilderness has been lost in the last twenty years. The lost area is over 3 million square kilometers and the losses have been greatest in South America (30%) and Africa (14%).

This is, unhappily, not a surprise. It's one of a series of recent studies that shows the increasing human dominance of the planet. Indeed, it's one of the less pessimistic. Taking the crude numbers it implies that some wilderness will last 200 years.

Wasting the Water of Life

I want to recommend the work of Prof. Arjen Hoekstra, University of Twente.

Hoekstra invented the Water Footprint, similar to the carbon footprint, and has published vast amounts of data. He also has emphatic views:

In Europe, the average consumer’s domestic use is typically only 1 to 2 per cent of their total water footprint: the vast majority relates to the products you consume ... about 90 per cent of our global water footprint relates to food. About one-third relates to the production of feed for the animals we consume.

In California, for instance, the state’s biggest water use is for feed crops. Meanwhile, you have this drought going on, and all of the time the focus is on how terrible it is to have a drought. But the real focus should be on how stupid it is to have such a big water demand in a region where droughts are fully expected.

You can use less and less water per unit of production, but if your population is growing and your consumption booming, then that is simply not sufficient.

Because it imports so many goods, three-quarters of the UK’s water consumption is actually outside of its borders. And about half of that usage is not sustainable.  

We in northern Europe should realise that we are actually quite well off with water, and ask why we import water-intensive goods from water-scarce areas. It doesn’t make sense that we produce so little of our own food.

 All round the world we are mining water rather than recycling it. Ground water WILL run out and if we aren't ready we will all be in bad trouble.