Cars, Hurricanes and the Sixth Extinction

Melting icecaps, rising seas and the art of denial

The increasing frequency - and ferocity - of tropical hurricanes has been linked to higher ocean temperatures caused by global warming. Since 1995, the annual on-slaught of Atlantic hurricanes has increased by more than 40 percent. The major contributor to the greenhouse effect: gas-fueled cars. In advance of Hurricane Floyd, the US ordered 2.6 million people to evacuate coastal cities from Florida to North Carolina. They did not leave in convoys of buses or depart on trains.

More than a million sedans, pick-up trucks and SUVs jammed the roads in the biggest peacetime evacuation - and the biggest traffic-jam - in US history. On some roads, gridlock stretched for 100 miles as drivers crept along at 9 miles an hour.

The Journal conservatively estimates that the impact of putting an estimated 1.3 million cars on the road pumped 54,000 tons of globe-warming CO₂ into the atmosphere in a single day - and more when the evacuees headed home.

Just as the tobacco industry has been plagued by lawsuits from the families of cancer victims, the day may come when the oil industry is held accountable for the billions of dollars in damage caused by climate change linked to the burning of fossil fuels.

In the meantime, hurricanes, floods, megafires and drought will continue to destroy property and lives. The polar icecaps will continue to melt. The oceans will continue to rise. And the Earth's Sixth Extinction - the decade's most ignored news story - will escalate.

Oxford University ecologist Norman Myers sounded the alarm 20 years ago in his book, The Sinking Ark.

In 1998, 400 scientists surveyed by the American Museum of Natural History named the extinction of species as "the planet's gravest environmental worry, surpassing pollution, global warming and the thinning of the ozone layer."

"The speed at which species are being lost is much faster than any we've seen in the past - including those related to meteor collisions," claims University of Tennessee ecologist Daniel Simberloff.

According to the Washington Post, a poll revealed that "nearly seven out of 10 biologists" believes the Earth's sixth "mass extinction" is now in progress. Between 17,000 and 100,000 species vanished from the Earth last year and a majority of the world's biologists now believe that "one-fifth of all living species could disappear within 30 years," the Post reports. A September 13 New York Times full-page ad signed by Earth Island and 17 other environmental organizations noted that "Species are dying 10,000 times faster than natural exinction rates: faster than at any time in the last 65 million years."

If greenhouse gas emissions (the US emits the most) remain unchecked, Earth's temperature could rise by more than 6° Fahrenheit over the next century - the biggest jump in 10,000 years.

"All creatures of the Earth have their own intrinsic right to exist," the ad concludes. "If we do not appreciate that, then the best case scenario for us will be a dry and shallow existence. The worst case is that we will go extinct with the rest of creation." - GS