The Causes Of Human Extinction In The Future

In this paper, I will be talking about human extinction. I’ll be going into more depth about what will most likely cause humans to go extinct. The main topics I will be talking about are: climate change, global trends in the extinction of species, and how we can prevent human extinction from happening. We are in our sixth wave of extinctions and what’s different about this sixth wave is that it’s because of humans, while the other five were not. Humans will be the cause of not just human extinctions, but the elimination of other species. In the words of Stephen Luby, professor of medicine at the Woods Institute and the Freeman Spogli, “Without a thriving biosphere, there is no human future.” I believe that if we do not change our ways, and continue to create more and more ecological footprints, we will wipe out the whole human population and other living species.

One of the major components of life coming to an end is climate change. Climate change is a system made up of five connecting parts: the atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, and lithosphere. It’s a change in climate patterns and is usually caused by atmospheric carbon dioxide produced by fossil fuels. Studies have shown that if we don’t dodge from two degrees of warming in the climate system, 153 million people will die from just air pollution. In the words of a journalist who wrote a book mentioning this, David Wallace-Wellssays that the event of 153 million people dying from air pollution is the equivalent of “25 Holocausts”. Apparently two degrees is considered our “best-case scenario.” I think you can imagine what it could be like if it wasn’t just the best-case scenario. Climate change is a subject a lot of people are talking about right now, including the political world, because this topic is something that will most likely be the reason for the end of living species, and possibly even planet earth. It all depends on the change that we make and if we’re actually willing to make that change to save future generation and to also make life more pleasant for the people who are still living to this day because we will be affected by this too.

There are species already going extinct to this day and it’s only a matter of time until we all do too, which brings me to my point about global trends in the extinction of species. One of the organisms that is on its way to becoming extinct are the coral reefs. A coral reef is an underwater ecosystem. Coral reefs are used as a home for small fish and people like to see coral reefs when scuba diving or snorkeling. “500 million people depend on these underwater rain forests”. Recent studies have suggested that a quarter of the whole world’s species may go extinct by 2050. The coral reefs are going extinct because the sea waters are heating up because of climate change and the little organisms that keep the coral reef alive (and give coral reefs their lively color) are dying. These little organisms are called Zooxanthellae. The Zooxanthellae start traveling in big groups to the coral reefs and, while they’re doing that, they’re dying because of the heated waters. Therefore, the coral reefs start to die and lose their beautiful colors. This process is known as coral bleaching. Another event where climate change leaves negative effects is places that have ice caps and glaciers. Because of climate change and how it’s heating up our earth, the cold places aren’t doing too well at surviving with the heat. Ice caps and glaciers are melting and the species that live in these colder places need it to stay cold for them to live. For example, polar bears live in cold parts of the world and climate change is a major threat to them because they need the cold weather and ice to live. Glacier National Park, which was created in 1910, is estimated to be home to 150 glaciers. The number has decreased and most of those remaining have shrunk by two-thirds.

The question most people are thinking about when human extinction is a topic is, “when will we go extinct?” There is no exact date on when the world is going to end, but there are predictions from research about how much time we have to prevent this from happening and when other non-human species will go extinct. Scientists already predict that by 2050 most species will be extinct and there will be as much trash in the ocean as there are fish.

Can we prevent human extinction from happening? Yes, but we will need a big dramatic political change to produce policy change. It’s been predicted that we have only about 30 years to make a dramatic change so that our world will not be difficult to live in because of the pollution, loss of animals, loss of plants, more droughts, heat waves and more. If we don’t make a change it can lead to the whole human population dying off. 30 years is not long. Some people have told me, “it’s going to be our kids dealing with all of this stuff, not us,” but it won’t just be our kids and future generations. It’s going to affect anyone who will be alive by 2040 if we don’t make a change. We need to make very intense changes in every single sector of our world, including energy to transportation, to our infrastructure and to our agriculture. The journalist who wrote the article I’m basing most of my information on about climate change said, “Absolutely every aspect of modern life has a carbon footprint, and we need to not just reduce those carbon footprints, we need to eliminate them entirely.' If we don’t make a change in 30 years, there’s no going back. We will go extinct.

In conclusion, climate change will be one of the main causes of humans and other species going extinct and the process of species dying off is happening to this day. If we don't change how we’re treating our planet, we will go extinct sooner than later. It all depends on what we do.