I’ve been reading a book, titled, The Rights of Nature by Canadian environmental attorney, David R. Boyd. About halfway through the book, the author calls attention to the conclusion that ‘Nature needs half’. The fact is our Earth is losing its precious biodiversity at a rapidly accelerating rate. This is due without question to the exploding human population taking more and more of the land, water, and other finite resources on the planet for themselves.
The Rights of Nature author, David Boyd credits ecologist E.O. Wilson for defining ‘Nature needs half’ as a cardinal rule for restoring the vitality of our planet’s heavily stressed biosphere. It means that human must ‘relinquish their claim of priority’ to at least 50% of every ecosystem on the planet.
Boyd writes, ‘Some countries are surprisingly close to this ambitious goal, including Bhutan, Seychelles, Slovenia, and Turks and Caicos. Others, such as Austria, Belize, Benin, Brazil, Costa Rica, Croatia, France, Germany, Morocco, Namibia, New Zealand, Norway, Slovak Republic, Spain, Tanzania, and Zambia are all over 25 percent.’
The U.S. and Canada are ‘hovering between 10-15% of their land in protected areas. Moreover, the current U.S. government is headed in the wrong direction, as the Interior Department and the EPA feverishly strip away prospected status from huge swaths of Federal lands, while shredding regulatory protections that took decades to put in place.
The solution will come from the grass roots, as young people recognize that their future is being squandered by a small cabal of elitists, who use their money and power to control public policy, putting the focus on their personal profit to the exclusion of all else.