Zooplankton collapse undermines humanity
November 26th, 2008 by Jim JustFigures contained in the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) document Marine Programme Plan ahow a decline in zooplankton of more than 70% since the 1960s.
The data for graph at p. 9 of the report came from a 2005 assessment of the state of the UK’s
seas. The graph charts a steady decline in zooplankton from 1990 to 2006 – a decline described by the environmental group Charity Buglife as “a biodiversity disaster of enormous proportions.”
These microscopic sea animals are at the bottom of the food chain. They are food for crustaceans and fish, which are food for sea birds and mammals. And the oceanic food web plays a crucial role in the planetary biosphere.
Richard Heinberg ruminates on the grim implications for humans:
At the top of the global food chain sits a species that we really do care about—Homo sapiens. The ongoing disappearance of zooplankton, amphibians, butterflies, and bees is tied directly or indirectly to the continuing growth of our own species—both in population (there are nearly seven billion of us large-bodied omnivores, more than any other mammal) and in consumptive voracity (water, food, minerals, energy, forests—you name it).
But the current economic Armageddon (that we care about) is related to human-induced biodiversity loss (that many of us don’t notice) in systemic ways. Both result from pyramid schemes: borrowing and leveraging money on one hand; on the other, using temporary fossil energy to capture ever more biosphere services so as to grow human population and consumption to unsustainable levels. Our economic pyramid is built out of great hewn blocks of renewable and non-renewable resources that are being made unavailable to other organisms as well as to future generations of humans.
The financial meltdown tells us these trends can’t go on forever. How the mighty have fallen!—Masters of the Universe reduced to begging for billion-dollar handouts in front of a television audience.
Next will come a human demographic collapse (resulting from the economic crisis, with poor folks unable to afford food or shelter), as mortality begins to exceed fertility.
In all of this it’s important to remember that the species on the lower levels of the biodiversity pyramid have been paying the price for our exuberance all along.
The pyramid appears to collapse from the top, while in fact its base has been crumbling for some time.