William Temple Hornaday was an early--and probably a founding--member of the American conservation movement, and was also director of the National Zoological Park. He wrote a tremendously bitter and accurate report for the U.S. National Museum in 1894 on the extermination of the American bison, an absolute head-shaker, detailing the history of the bison in North America and its destruction at the hands of sportsmen, hunters, mindless dolts and many others who massacred tens of millions of the animal ("murdered" is the word Hornaday uses constantly). To put the whole issue in perspective, Hornaday issued a famous map showing the shrinkage of the North American bison herd, setting out the enormity of the issue instantly on one piece of paper, a summary of hundreds of pages of bad stories and big numbers.
posted by Trurl
on Jun 15, 2011 -
18 comments
80 percent of Americans say global warming is real and poses a threat to humanity. Which is good because if the global temperature raises by
4 degrees we're all dead. However only 44 percent would be willing to face any financial hardship in the name of a solution.
posted by Artw
on Aug 10, 2008 -
89 comments
Earth, 2100 AD. Atmospheric CO
2 has doubled to 1000 ppm.
From shore to the horizon, there is but an unending purple color -- a vast, flat, oily purple. No fish break its surface, no birds. We are under a pale green sky, and it has the smell of death and poison. Paleontologist Peter Ward's
new book links past mass extinctions to global warming
and shows, absent major changes,
"Our world is hurtling toward carbon dioxide levels not seen since 60 million years ago, right after a greenhouse extinction." Maybe it's time for a
heresy: nuclear energy's green, and renewables aren't.
posted by Bletch
on Oct 9, 2007 -
168 comments
The 2004 International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources'
Red List of Threatened Species.
posted by Gyan
on Oct 20, 2005 -
6 comments
The World Summit on Sustainable Development, aka "Earth Summit II," will start soon in Johannesburg, ten years after the Rio
Earth Summit. Have things improved at all in the last ten years?
While there are some reasons to be
optimistic, the data isn't cheerful. Our
climate is growing unstable; tens of millions are
dying or likely to die, and hundreds of millions more likely to be made refugees, because of environmental pollution and degraded ecosystems; and half the plants and animals on the planet seem
headed for extinction over the next century. In short, things are grim.
What steps, big or small, are you taking to do your part for the environment?
posted by AlexSteffen
on Aug 17, 2002 -
30 comments
The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement "Phasing out the human race by voluntarily ceasing to breed will allow Earth's biosphere to return to good health. Crowded conditions and resource shortages will improve as we become less dense." More inside...
posted by Irontom
on May 30, 2002 -
21 comments
