Conservationists are possibly being fooled by the media into believing global warming is having a terrible effect on endangered species, despite readily available information showing it affects less than 20 percent of species, The New Yorker magazine reported Thursday.
The magazine referenced a post published in the scientific journal Nature to buttress its argument. Nature’s report showed that three-quarters of species are damaged by human activities such as logging, fishing, and hunting, while 60 percent are harmed by land conversions to logging industries.
The percentage of those hurt by climate change, according to the report, is so small it may not be worth conservationists time worrying about.
“Less than twenty per cent,” for example, “are currently endangered by the many effects of climate change—drought, extreme temperatures, severe storms, and flooding,” Nature explained.
The report apparently sparked a sunburst of wisdom in the New York Magazine – specifically, it’s possible that “current causes of species loss appear to be inversely proportional to the media attention.” In other words, if conservation issues were to receive the same amount of media as global warming related topics, then former Vice President Al Gore would be winning Nobel Peace prices for making documentaries about habitat loss.
But as it is: Stories about habitat loss and invasive species are not sexy, The New Yorker admits. Global warming, on the other hand, attracts a lot of attention, according to The New Yorker, because it has the “advantage of relative novelty and, in recent years, of urgency.”
The environmental movement has been coopting much of conservationism, likely making it more difficult for those concerned about deforestation and endangered species to distinguish between conservation and global warming.
Sanjayan, a scientist at the journal Nature Conservancy, for instance, told the Courier-Journal in 2013 that the environmental movement was failing.
“On virtually every measure, the environmental movement is not keeping up with the needs at hand,” Sanjayan told the Journal, essentially conflating the conservation movement and environmentalists’ stances on global warming.
“Species extinction, deforestation, climate change — we are playing and have been for two decades a rear-guard action,” Sanjayan added. “We are slowing the decline, perhaps, but not nearly enough. We don’t have a movement. We have a niche. It’s mostly mono-chromatic in culture, in political belief, and in socioeconomic status.”
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