by Mickey Huff
2. Abayomi Azikiwe, “US Imperialism in Africa: From Cairo to Cape Town the African Masses Struggle for Justice and Self-Determination,” Global Research, December 29, 2012, http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-imperialism-in-africa/5317219.
3. Mike Crawley, “With Mideast Uncertainty, the US Turns to Africa for Oil,” Christian Science Monitor, May 23, 2002; Jean-Christophe Servant, “The New Gulf Oil States,” Le Monde Diplomatique, January 2003; Daniel Volman, “The Bush Administration and African Oil: The Security Implications of US Energy Politics,” Review of African Political Economy 30 (December 2003), 573–584; Brian Martin Murphy, “Africa: Communication Intelligence and ‘Clientelism,’” in Enduring Freedom or Enduring War?: Prospects and Costs of the New American 21st Century, ed. Carl Mirra (Washington DC: Maisonneuve Press, 2005), 117–118; and Jeremy Keenan, The Dark Sahara: America’s War on Terror in Africa (London: Pluto Press, 2009), ch. 7.
4. Luis Martinez, The Algerian Civil War 1990–1998 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); and Hugh Roberts, ed., The Battlefield Algeria: Studies in a Broken Polity (London: Verso, 2003).
5. Keenan, Dark Sahara, 101.
6. Thomas P. M. Barnett, The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Penguin, 2004), 182–188.
7. Ted Dagne, “Africa and the War on Terrorism,” Congressional Research Service (CRS), Report for Congress, January 17, 2002, http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/7959.pdf.
8. Keenan, Dark Sahara, 107.
9. Robert G. Berschinski, “AFRICOM’s Dilemma: The ‘Global War on Terrorism,’ ‘Capacity Building,’ Humanitarianism, and the Future of U.S. Security Policy in Africa,” Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College (November 2007), 24–25.
10. Stewart M. Powell, “Swamp of Terror in the Sahara,” Air Force Magazine, November 2004, http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2004/November20O4/11O4sahara.aspx.
11. Rudolph Atallah, “Conflict and Instability in the Sahara and Sahel: Local Dilemas, Global Implications,” prepared statement before United States House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Sub-committee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations; Sub-committee on the Middle East and North Africa; Sub-committee Terrorism, Non-proliferation and Trade, Tuesday, May 21, 2013, http://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA16/20130521/100886/HHRG-113-FA16-Wstate-AtallahR-20130521.pdf.
12. J. Peter Pham, “AFRICOM: Terrorism and Security Challenges in Africa,” in US Strategy in Africa: AFRICOM, Terrorism and Security Challenges, ed. David J. Francis (Oxford: Routledge, 2010), 64–77.
13. Jeremy Keenan, The Tuareg: People of Ahaggar (London: Allen Lane, 1977; reprinted London: Sickle Moon Books, 2002).
14. Jeremy Keenan, “AFRICOM: Its Reality, Rhetoric and Future,” in US Strategy in Africa, 125.
15. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 17.
16. Salih Booker, “Africa off the Agenda?,” Foreign Policy in Focus (Institute for Policy Studies), January 25, 2001, http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2001/oioiafrica.html.
17. Barnett, The Pentagon’s New Map.
18. Murphy, “Africa: Communication Intelligence and ‘Clientelism,’” 117.
19. Ibid., 119.
20. Ibid., 121.
21. Jeremy Keenan, “AFRICOM: Its Reality, Rhetoric and Future,” 125.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., 124.
24. Ibid., 125.
25. Ibid., 122.
26. Ibid., 123.
27. Jeremy Keenan, “How Washington Helped Foster the Islamic Uprising in Mali,” Global Research, February 2, 2013, http://www.globalresearch.ca/how-washington-helped-foster-the-islamist-uprising-in-mali/5321468.
28. Ibid.
29. Jeremy Keenan, The Dying Sahara: US Imperialism and Terror in Africa (London: Pluto Press, 2013).
CHAPTER 12
The Sixth Mass Extinction
Julie Andrzejewski and John C. Alessio
Quietly, globally, billions of bees are dying.
—Avaaz, 20131
Biodiversity has declined globally by around 30 percent between 1970 and 2008; by 60 percent in the tropics.
—Living Planet Report 20122
Although individual news items about particular endangered species or a general mention of extinction may find their way into the US corporate media here and there, a comprehensive picture of the sixth mass extinction of species is fragmented, denied, trivialized, distanced, “resolved,” or missing altogether. As a result, people in the United States are either completely unaware that such a crisis exists, or are lulled into thinking the problem is not that bad, faraway in time or space, or that science will solve it. In a word, the real extinction story has been censored so that the industries profiting from the drivers of extinction can continue to extract the Earth’s resources while decimating other forms of life and/or their means of survival.
This brief overview presents key aspects of the sixth mass extinction, the confluence of harms leading to this extreme event, the current state of environmental and species censorship, the obstacles to accessing and taking the information seriously, and key organizations—including some independent news outlets—providing leadership for actions.
THE MASS EXTINCTION CRISIS
Scientists estimate that approximately 99 percent of all species that have ever lived on Earth have become extinct, most of them during five previous mass extinctions on Earth. Since the 1970s, scientists have documented a contemporary massive decline in species. Evidence clearly indicates that with ever increasing technological sophis-tication, human activities are causing what is now known as the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth. These extinctions are happening so rapidly that they are disrupting the intricate web of life whereby species rely upon each other in complex ways. As explained by the Center for Biological Diversity:
Although extinction is a natural phenomenon, it occurs at a natural “background” rate of about one to five species per year. Scientists estimate we’re now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate, with literally dozens going extinct every day.3
Scientists are already reporting that one of the drivers of extinctions, global warming, is causing ecosystems to “cascade and col-lapse.”4 If this process is not arrested and reversed, even more species will become extinct. Besides the ongoing suffering and deaths endured by animals themselves, such escalating extinctions will cause extreme hardships for human beings, threatening the survival of our own species. Clearly, the extent and import of the scientific research, conclusions, and predictions pertaining to the sixth mass extinction have not been communicated to the US public.
In 2002, the world’s governments agreed to stop the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. That goal was not met; the rate of extinctions continues unabated.5 US corporate media have generally ignored scientific reports released through credible noncorporate sources in attempts to bring public attention to the extinction crisis.6 A few key nonprofit organizations are leading the challenge to stop species extinctions. One of these, the Species Alliance, summarizes the scientific research as follows.
Today, scientists believe that we are entering the 6th Mass Extinction. But unlike the previous five, this one will not take centuries to unfold—in fact, it will take place in our lifetimes. As scientists begin to realize the severity of the crisis and new worldwide assessments are made, the news is diffi-cult to believe. At least half of all plant and animal species are likely to disappear in the wild within the next 30–40 years, including many of the most familiar and beloved large mammals: elephants, polar bears, chimpanzees, gorillas and all the great apes, all the big cats, and many, many others. Bird species are similarly imperiled, songbird populations have declined by 50% in the last 40 years. One out of every eight species of plant life worldwide and almost one third of the plant species within the United States already face extinction. Populations of large ocean fish have declined by 90% s
ince the 1950s. All around the world, birds, reptiles, mammals, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates, as well as trees, flowering plants, and other flora, are all in steep decline.7
Many striking descriptions explaining the magnitude of the problem are available in the United Nations (UN) Global Biodiversity Outlook.8 If the corporate media were doing their job, it would be clear to all that humans have created an oscillating condition that is spiraling out of control. As Barnosky et al. report, the Earth is rapidly moving into a dramatically different state of existence, from which there may be no return.9
This process of oscillation toward a “state shift” is explained by using the concepts of “cascade and collapse,” frequently used to describe power grid and computer network collapses. The cascade and collapse concepts are now being applied to biological systems, as demonstrated in the award-winning film, Call of Life: Facing the Mass Extinction.10 While our tendency is to think in linear relations of cause and effect, ecological systems are so complicated and interconnected that the removal of just one critical component within such a system can result in a downward spiral of an entire ecosystem or a significant portion of it. What does the extinction or dramatic reduction of a particular fish species mean to a crab, and what is the significance of the crab to an entire ecosystem? Altieri et al. answer these questions by examining the cascading phenomenon in marsh ecology.11 Reductions in large fish dramatically increase crab numbers, which in turn dramatically reduce the plant life and, hence, the infrastructure of an entire marsh. Of course, their reported research only captures one small area of one marsh.
The number of these interconnections in a large geographical area representing a complex ecology is so great that, despite what some humans—including many researchers—might think, they are too complicated and vast to “manage.” Our only recourse is to protect these species and interconnections by means of minimized disturbance and a healthy surrounding environment. Once a confluence of significant interconnections is violated, a cascade effect is imminent, and collapse will be sudden and permanent. The cascade and collapse concepts inform us that the existence of any one species, regardless of its current state, can be suddenly and irretrievably brought into jeopardy. Ultimately, this includes the human species as well, a species no less a part of the web of life than the other species on Earth.
CORPORATE MEDIA’S CENSORSHIP OF THE
SIXTH MASS EXTINCTION
Our ProQuest Newsstand and LexisNexis searches of the terms “sixth mass extinction” or “biodiversity loss” from 2011 through May 2013 yielded relatively few hits for a subject of this import. In the searches we conducted, we received from 32 to 169 results depending on the terms used. About one-quarter of the articles had no relationship at all to the mass extinction of plants and animals, and most of the rest were from foreign publications. Only forty-six articles from the US corporate press mentioned the sixth extinction, and none of these articles provided clear, comprehensive material on the subject. Eighteen of these articles mentioned the sixth mass extinction only as part of a book review, or as a tangential component of another topic, and the remaining articles undermined its significance and urgency in various ways. Only two fairly good, albeit short, articles were located during this time period. One was an opinion piece, not a news article, in the New York Times.12 The other was an article on the UN State of the Ocean Report, picked up by a few papers on the East Coast, which identified key causes of the mass extinctions but focused mostly on only one component, oceans.13 Despite its value, this single, short ar-ticle cannot be considered adequate coverage.
It is important to describe and characterize some of the types of articles available to the US public in order to get a sense of how the corporate press avoids discussing the true extent and seriousness of the sixth mass extinction. This analysis will also reveal how selectively this topic is packaged for public consumption. Through omissions, manipulations, and diversions, readers are misinformed and placated in ways that constitute censorship of the real causes and conse-quences of the current mass extinctions.
Denial
In one ProQuest Newsstand search for “biodiversity loss,” the first “relevant” US press article (South Florida Sun) was titled, “We Need to Manage Climate Change, Not Avert Catastrophe.”14 This article argued that too much money is being spent to prevent climate change and should, instead, be spent on helping people adapt to it now. Further, it claimed that serious environmental damage and animal losses are being caused by . . . environmental projects. This article is not really about biodiversity loss at all; rather, it is a climate change denial article that blames environmental funding and projects for causing harm to the world.
For a different example, the Miami Herald published a review of a new book, Fate of the Species: Why the Human Race May Cause Its Own Extinction and How We Can Stop It, by Fred Guterl. This review outlined some aspects of the sixth mass extinction but ended with denial by the reviewer: “And while it is easy to see how millions, and even billions, of humans could die as a result of these adventures, it is hard to see how even these prodigious die-offs could cause the human species [to] disappear.”15
Another form of denial is to focus on one study that challenges the crisis. In this case, the Los Angeles Times fostered doubt about extinction predictions in an article titled, “Less Dire View of Extinction: Scientists Using a New Method to Calculate the Rate at Which Species Are Dying Out Say the Crisis Is Bad but Overestimated,” suggesting the predictions are exaggerated. And the first sentence undermines the seriousness of the issue further by a snide introduction, “Hit the snooze on the ecological doomsday clock for a minute: The world’s species may not be going extinct quite as fast as we thought they were. Scientists may be overestimating the crisis by as much as 160%, according to a new study.”16
Following this pattern, the Philadelphia Inquirer published an article titled, “Mass Extinction: Humans Have Edge.” The article is punctuated with trivializing statements like, “Mass extinctions are interesting,” and they “periodically reboot the system.” The final sen-tences, however, demonstrate a level of denial of the consequences that is hard to comprehend:
If it’s any reassurance, humans have the profile of survivors. We live in a wide variety of habitats across a huge geographic range. If we’re in a self-inflicted mass extinction, we may lose billions of people, but as a species, our odds are good, Jablon-ski said. “Humans will be the hardest thing to kill off.”17
Another article in the Patriot-News (Harrisburg PA) speculated il-logically, “During the current mass extinction, humans will be able to adapt, but our crops and animals might not.” In the Christian Science Monitor article “Mass Extinction? Man May Still Have Time to Catalog Earth’s Species,” the human destruction of other species is ignored by focusing on whether there is time left to discover and catalog them.18 All these forms of denial serve to pacify the public and downplay the reality and gravity of extinctions.
Trivialization and Exploitation
In some articles focused on profiling individuals, or the authors of books, extinction is mentioned only peripherally. In an article about Richard Leakey, for instance, the New York Times focused on his adventurous life with one short quote about five mass extinctions and a mention of “the sixth.”19
Another New York Times article, introducing basic information about the possibility of a sixth mass extinction, quickly devolved into a debate among scientists about the use of statistical models, the precision of predictions, whether the extinction of a particular species could be linked to climate change, and so on. When this major report predicted a great loss of species, one scientist cautioned, “We don’t want to give a false impression of what our confidence is.”20 Instead of reporting on the rapidity and extent of extinctions to create a sense of urgency and concern, the article trivialized the evidence and encouraged readers to doubt it.
In yet a third New York Times article, endangered species are actually touted as an enticement for
tourism in Cambodia, complete with a list of resorts. “Thanks to this new accessibility, travelers are now discovering the area’s awe-inspiring biodiversity, which includes one of Southeast Asia’s largest tracts of virgin rain forest; some 60 threatened species, including the endangered Asian elephants, tigers, Siamese crocodiles and pileated gibbons.”21
Impractical or Imprudent Solutions
Finally, a few articles take the extinction crisis seriously and report some alarming data, but present one type of “solution” or another that may serve to pacify readers or lull us into a false sense that scientists are addressing the problem. None of the solutions proposed addressed the actual drivers (root causes) of extinction as discussed below. For instance, a BBC article reported that conservationists think “we should accept ecosystems that incorporate non-native species, value them and try to conserve them,”22 rather than more accurately portraying conservationists as preservers of native species. It also referred readers to another article about how science is working on cloning extinct animals.23 One article addressed the issue of rapid urbanization, a key driver of habitat loss, and recommended creating and maintaining green spaces in urban areas.24 Activism for more green areas is an urgent cause that can slow down the process of extinction, but actions to address global extinctions must certainly go beyond green spaces in cities.
Newsweek, however, takes the prize for human arrogance and reckless “solutions.” In the longest and most detailed article located, the causes of mass extinctions were cavalierly dismissed with “assigning blame is less important than figuring out how to prepare for the inevitable and survive it.” The answer: “What we need to do is actually quite unnatural. . . . we need to adapt the planet to suit humanity.” Calling humans “extremely cunning,” author Annalee Newitz proceeded to lay out various geo-engineering schemes including sun blockage efforts referred to as “solar management.” Ships could spray “aerosols high into the air” or “inject reflective particles into the stratosphere.” Admitting that unintended consequences could be disastrous, Newitz declared,