We're Losing More Than Species, We're Losing Potential

Fact: every single thing we wear, eat, sit on, walk through, ride in or drive in, is made from something that at some point, came from nature. From architectural feats to medical miracles, nature houses us, clothes us, feeds us, cures us. It's the raw material with which the awesome ingenuity and creativity of the human mind gets to play. So, as we destroy these stores of raw goods, through climate change and habitat destruction, what does it mean for our capacity to innovate our way into a better future?

Everyday, we're losing more of our natural capital, faster. Many biologists consider the current rate of species extinctions — 1,000 to 10,000 times faster than the previous 60 million years — on par with the five mass extinctions of all time. Those were triggered by meteorites, volcanic eruptions, and climate change; today's event is the first to be caused be one species: us. These previous extinctions wiped out 75 to 95 percent of all species, and it took 10 million years to recover the diversity lost. That's roughly 300 times longer than people have existed.

But this rate of loss doesn't even account for the species we have yet to discover. Given that almost 17,000 new species were found in 2006 alone (not including microbes), there's good reason to worry we may be losing some important stuff.

Take Antarctica's Blood Falls for example. Scientists only recently began unraveling the mysteries behind the iron-rich frozen cascade, an outpouring of a sub-glacial lake that has been isolated from the rest of the planet for almost 2 million years. When the glacier slid over the salty pool back in the Pliocene, it trapped the water and all the life within it. Instead of going belly up from the lack of oxygen, light, or heat, the bacteria in this water thrived and evolved, feeding off of iron and sulfur compounds.

Imagining the unique suite of adaptations that make life possible within this frigid ancient pool is an exercise in science-fiction as much as science, providing clues to extraterrestrial life forms as much as our own primordial genesis.

But what else might we learn, and what traits might be of use to us down the road?  Might we one day harness food or energy from sulfur-based life forms here on earth, or farmed on some distant orb? The concept may seem far-fetched, but it is no more bizarre than the idea that ancient ferns could someday turn into fossil fuels that could be morphed into plastic that would be melted and molded into something as unrealistically proportioned as a Barbie doll. The possibilities are endless, unless we end them.

And that is the risk: as climate change and habitat destruction diminish our natural resources, we diminish our own potential for inventing solutions to our current and future challenges. And that's a risk I don't think any of us want to take.

Photo credit: wikimedia