A long, long, long time ago, approximately 3.5-39 billion years ago the very first living organisms appeared on Earth1. During the Cambrian Period/Explosion the first true diversification occurred on Earth. Prior to this point there was still no vegetation and the oceans had yet to be oxygenated. It is believed that a reduction in the oxygen depleting bacteria lead to the oxygenation of the oceans which lead to the development of hard shelled organisms and an increase in invertebrates as well as other types of algae.2 Now the organisms from this period did not simply evolve from this time period and then today happened. There were many natural factors that occurred wiping out most of these organism. Then where did everything come from? Processes
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The word biodiversity is quite simple to understand, bio- life and diversity- variety. So, what? If one day you decide find out that all you can eat for the rest of your life is Cheetos. One day some freak accident occurs and the last Cheeto plant is destroyed and now you have nothing to eat. Sure, somehow you could evolve to eat something else, but evolution takes a lot of time (time you don’t have). If you ate things other than just Cheetos this would not impact you as much. This is an exaggeration and an oversimplification of a reason for biodiversity. Biodiversity allows for a more stable ecosystem. With between 10 and 100 million different species on believed to be on Earth there is a great diversity of life forms here, but is it enough, and how long will it take before this number starts plummeting?3 We all are all aware of how terrible species extinction is, and are constantly being told how it is all a human caused problem. It is common for species to go extinct naturally, but at a low rate. The annual background extinction rate is believed to have been somewhere around 0.0001%, which amounts to about the extinction of 10 species per year.4 Extinction is not as dark and depressing as it is sold on …show more content…
We cannot rely on doing whatever we want and then, later on when things get so bad they finally start to impact us directly, trying to back track. There is plenty harm done between our actions and when they finally affect us. We cannot continue being so selfish and only working for our here and now. This is not so say destroy our current was of living, and go live naked “off the land”, but we can strike a balance by finding more sustainable ways of living. The more biodiversity we can continue to have the more sustainable the environment is. We currently over fish and hunt certain areas severely injuring the biodiversity of those areas. By creating regulation on hunting and fishing we have helped the sustainability of those niches. Sustainable living does not mean cutting off or eliminating the use of all possible threats to the environment. Sustainable living simply means using our available resources wisely. We can coexist with other species. Being the dominant species does not mean being the only species. Human beings do not have to be the monsters we have made ourselves out to be. Biodiversity is the key to survival. If we as a global society can learn to inhabit the earth in a more sustainable way and continue to conserve the resources
The word biodiversity is quite simple to understand, bio- life and diversity- variety. So, what? If one day you decide find out that all you can eat for the rest of your life is Cheetos. One day some freak accident occurs and the last Cheeto plant is destroyed and now you have nothing to eat. Sure, somehow you could evolve to eat something else, but evolution takes a lot of time (time you don’t have). If you ate things other than just Cheetos this would not impact you as much. This is an exaggeration and an oversimplification of a reason for biodiversity. Biodiversity allows for a more stable ecosystem. With between 10 and 100 million different species on believed to be on Earth there is a great diversity of life forms here, but is it enough, and how long will it take before this number starts plummeting?3 We all are all aware of how terrible species extinction is, and are constantly being told how it is all a human caused problem. It is common for species to go extinct naturally, but at a low rate. The annual background extinction rate is believed to have been somewhere around 0.0001%, which amounts to about the extinction of 10 species per year.4 Extinction is not as dark and depressing as it is sold on …show more content…
We cannot rely on doing whatever we want and then, later on when things get so bad they finally start to impact us directly, trying to back track. There is plenty harm done between our actions and when they finally affect us. We cannot continue being so selfish and only working for our here and now. This is not so say destroy our current was of living, and go live naked “off the land”, but we can strike a balance by finding more sustainable ways of living. The more biodiversity we can continue to have the more sustainable the environment is. We currently over fish and hunt certain areas severely injuring the biodiversity of those areas. By creating regulation on hunting and fishing we have helped the sustainability of those niches. Sustainable living does not mean cutting off or eliminating the use of all possible threats to the environment. Sustainable living simply means using our available resources wisely. We can coexist with other species. Being the dominant species does not mean being the only species. Human beings do not have to be the monsters we have made ourselves out to be. Biodiversity is the key to survival. If we as a global society can learn to inhabit the earth in a more sustainable way and continue to conserve the resources