ABSTRACT
There are many reasons to worry about climate change. Predicted consequences include the spread of infectious disease, depletion of available fresh water, and the disruption of our food systems, our economic systems, and even our political systems, leading to widespread suffering and death. And that’s just for humans. Outside of our species, climate change is likely to lead to a significant increase in the rate of extinction as habitats change more rapidly than adaptive mechanisms can adjust. 1 Some predicted victims of these rapid changes include polar bears, flamingoes, sea turtles, coral, wolverines, giant sequoias, and mangroves. The result is likely to be a decrease in species-level biodiversity worldwide—one estimate puts the figure at between 13%- and 19% worldwide by 2050. 2 Given these worries about a dramatic decline in biodiversity, scientists sometimes mock popular representations of climate change in which the bad consequences are represented simply by the image of a forlorn polar bear on an ice floe. What we should really be worried about is the decrease in biodiversity, they say—that’s an ecological problem, not just a sentimental problem (e.g., “The Arctic Experience” 2007).
