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What If COVID is Just Nature Pushing Back Against Its Degradation?

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Humans' damage to the planet is due to an explosion in population (doubled since 1970), staggering economic growth, and global trade that has led to destruction of forests, particularly in tropical areas.

Between 1980 and 2000, 100 million tropical forest hectares disappeared, mainly due to cattle ranching in South America and palm oil plantation farming in Southeast Asia.

The wetlands are worse.

Only 13% that existed in 1700 were still around 300 years later.

Our urban areas have also doubled since 1992.

Plastic pollution has increased ten times since 1980, and each year we dump 300-400 million metric tons of heavy metals, solvents, toxic sludge, and other waste into our oceans, rivers, lakes, and streams, from which 33% of fish stocks were harvested at unsustainable levels in 2015, compounded by evidence that our appetites for fish and meat are growing.

In most animal and plant groups studied, approximately 25% of species are already facing extinction.

On average, natural ecosystems have declined by 47%.

Wild mammal biomass has dropped by 82%.

Zika virus, dengue fever, chikungunya, and West Nile cases are expected to more than double by 2050.

Now we have the COVID-19 virus against which the United States appears to be completely powerless.

In her book This Changes Everything, author and activist Naomi Klein argues the reason the United States fails to adequately address climate change is because of the obscene amounts of money fossil fuel companies pump into lawmakers' (mostly Republican) campaigns.

We have already passed too many tipping points to avoid some of the climate's most devastating effects, and many scientists theorize the world has begun a sixth mass extinction.

Yet there is still hope as long as we heed the experts' advice.

The question is, will we?

Or will we continue doubling down on a smash-and-grab strategy to extract every drop of fossil fuels the planet can yield for pure profit?

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Ted Millar is a writer and teacher. His work has been in featured in myriad literary journals, including Straight Forward Poetry, Better Than Starbucks, the Broke Bohemian, Caesura, Circle Show, Cactus Heart, Third Wednesday, and The Voices (more...)
 

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