This BBC story really brings home how bad things have become. A new scientific study shows that vertebrate species are disappearing at a rate 114 times faster than normal. Since 1900 more than 400 additional (higher than the expected number) vertebrates have disappeared. Bear in mind that that number is just the species that we noticed the extinction of. Another study puts the number much higher.

Just to be clear, we are not talking about all extinctions, but only vertebrates, so excluding insects, arachnids, crustaceans, worms corals, bacteria and amoeba and the like. So, the study only describes as small fraction of the total rate of extinctions. Some non-vertebrates are species upon which we depend, directly or indirectly for food: bees, corals, and some soil bacteria, to name but a few.

The study compares the current situation with the event, 65 million years ago, that wiped out the dinosaurs, along with the majority of other species on earth at the time.

If we continue abusing our planet as we currently are, the natural world will be all but wiped out, and humans will likely be one of the species to be wiped out. If the human race survives, our population will be enormously reduced, our civilisation destroyed, and life will become unpleasant and incredibly hard.

This is the future that we are building for our descendants.