Human selection and preservation of biome diversity

Biology Questions & Posts

(01) Biomes and Diversity - Extinction is a natural selection process. Should humans strive to preserve a representative sample of all biomes or aquatic zones? Why should humans be concerned with the extinction rate?

Disregard for the conservation of the earth's biomes is an example of how human ignorance and hubris can result in irreversible environmental destruction. At any particular point in time, human beings cannot be certain that they know all they will ever need to know about the environment, about the potential benefits that may still be derived from ecological habitats. The perfect workings of the earth's biomes cannot be understood from the perspective of a demos that is not schooled in science, biology, ecology, geology, and other natural sciences. In their ignorance or negligence, human beings continue to rapidly bring devastation and irreversible pollution on the global natural environment. An important consideration is that humans are not the only living forms on the earth -- it does seem that our "special case" that is due to our knowledge and intellect affords us, too, additional responsibilities to those other life forms. "We must consider the consequences of our actions" ("The World's Biomes, 2007, ¶1). It is important to recognize that approximately one quarter of the medicines that people use all across the globe are derived from plants. The rain forest -- one of the world's biomes -- major source of these plants that are fundamental to medicine as it is now practiced and as it has been practiced in earlier days. Should the rainforest be irrevocably destroyed, it could cause a backward thrust in medical practice that is completely unacceptable by modern standards. Not only would patients be severely impacted by an inability to obtain medicine that saves lives and alleviates suffering, but medical researchers would face the enormous challenge of trying to produce synthetically what is present in nature. The reality is that it might not be possible.

Sources:

The World's Biomes. (2007). The University of California Museum of Paleontology, Retrieved http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/exhibits/biomes/index.php

World Biomes.com. (2002). Retrieved http://www.worldbiomes.com/

(02) Trends in the Environment - In the 1980s a popular environmental slogan was "Reduce, Reuse and Recycle" and now "Go Green," is a popular message. Consider the Reusable Grocery Bags sold in markets everywhere. What are the pros and cons that you see in this latest trend? Give examples of the potential environmental impact. (01page).

Without a doubt, thin plastic shopping bags are a potential form of litter and pollution. "The worldwide annual consumption of disposable plastic bags is somewhere between 500 billion and a trillion - that works out to be around a million bags a minute" ("Green Living Tips, 2011). WorldWatch (cited in "Green Living Tips, 2011) argues that it takes 430,000 gallons of oil to manufacture 100 million disposable plastic bags. Although many of the bags are recyclable, they often end up being downcycled -- a process that is limited by the degradation to the plastic as it is transformed to lower quality plastic products. True recycling -- making the same product again -- can result in huge energy savings, as it takes about one-tenth the energy to recycle plastics. And that doesn't include the savings in the processing of oil to create the raw material from which the plastic bags are originally made. Also, people tend to throw them away rather than recycle them or else they use them to bag their garbage so they end up in the landfill anyway. Many grocery stores and shopping outlets such as IKEA have instituted charges for recyclable shopping bags and make preferred alternative bags available. Many of the bags offered as alternatives are made of cloth, of recycled materials, and/or biodegradable materials, but they are durable and are made to be used many times over -- until they virtually wear out and fall apart. At that point, they can be recycled, and in during the time that the reusable bags were in service, they saved the bag owner / user from consuming many hundreds of film plastic shopping bags. The key point here is durability because the more bags one purchases, the greater the environmental impact. Reusable fabric bags can be selected instead of plastic bags, but it is important to consider variables like the amount of water needed to grow the plant, if the fiber plant was grown organically without pesticides, and if dyes or bleach were used unnecessarily. In addition, some bags that have printing have been found to contain lead -- and all reusable grocery bags need to be washed regularly to avoid contaminating foods with bacteria that may be harbored in the fibers of the reusable shopping bags (Lalwani, 2011).