The Sixth Mass Extinction – Is It Pure Speculation? Or is it an indisputable fact? Or an outright lie? On January 10, 2022, a study published in Biological Reviews gave a new piece of evidence and conclusions – humanity is in the midst of its sixth mass extinction due to climate change, over-hunting, habitat destruction, and natural pollution!
In fact, there is still some controversy about the sixth species extinction, and some opponents believe that according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the rate of extinction of today's species is not much different from the rate of background extinction (the background environment without human interference). In other words, we are experiencing only an ordinary biodiversity crisis, far from rising to the point of mass extinction. However, new evidence overturns this miscalculation – the data shows that as many as 13% of The Planet's invertebrate species may have gone extinct over the past 500 years! Its absolute number is about 260,000, mainly terrestrial invertebrates.
That's because there are so few records of invertebrates on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (only 882 species are extinct) that don't reflect the true rate of species extinction on Earth. Combined with estimates of the true number of invertebrate extinctions, the current rate of extinction of species on Earth greatly exceeds the rate of background extinction, which means that at this moment, humanity is undoubtedly in the historical process of the sixth mass extinction.
Admittedly, the discovery is based on a "bold hypothesis" that has not yet been definitively verified, but the researchers still conclude that the sixth mass extinction event has begun! And it is a catastrophe caused by human activities. Unlike the sixth mass extinction, the five mass extinction events in Earth's history were caused by natural phenomena such as asteroid collisions with the earth and climate crises, but the sixth species extinction should be responsible for it by humans.
Humans are the only species on Earth for more than 4 billion years that can manipulate the rate of mass extinction on a large scale, and the only species that has the ability to consciously choose the future of humanity and the future of the planet's biodiversity. Thus, the sixth mass extinction event caused by humans is by no means just part of the natural evolution of life on Earth. Rather, denying the current crisis means ignoring the shared responsibility of humanity and paving the way for the planet's complete descent into the tragedy of the sixth mass extinction.
While this claim may sound alarmist, the available statistics also show that there is no evidence that plant and marine animal species are in a similar stage of rapid extinction.
Can you imagine that the sixth mass extinction is literally playing out on our planet today, when human civilization is extremely prosperous? Scientists warn that humanity now has a responsibility and a need to take urgent measures to do its utmost to avoid accelerated biodiversity loss.
At the same time, a growing number of scientists believe that we have not yet reached the point of no return, and that there is still time to turn the tide and save the diversity of life on Earth. As Professor Kolbert said, when humans have a definitive answer to the question of the sixth mass extinction, perhaps 3/4 of all species on Earth have disappeared.
参考文献：Cowie R H, Bouchet P, Fontaine B. The Sixth Mass Extinction: fact, fiction or speculation? [J]. Biological Reviews, 2022.