The annual United Nations Climate Change Conference, better known as COP, that starts Nov. 30 in the United Arab Emirates will bring together governments, businesses, international organizations and NGOs to shine a spotlight on the climate emergency the world faces and consider solutions to the crisis. The alarming rates at which we are losing species is not just a tragedy of epic proportions – the destruction of biodiversity also robs humanity of one of its strongest defenses against climate change.
An alternative approach concentrates on conserving what biologists call keystone species that play a critical role in holding the ecosystem together. An example is the gray wolf in Yellowstone National Park, whose presence regulates prey populations like elk and deer, which in turn have cascading effects on vegetation and the overall ecosystem structure and function.
The Bible suggests a contrasting approach in the Lord’s dictum to Noah before the great flood: “Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.”
A solution
One of the most original and interesting answers to this question was provided by the late Harvard economist Martin Weitzman, who applied economic analysis to address the conservation of endangered species. In a pioneering 1998 paper titled The Noah’s Ark Problem, Weitzman viewed the challenge of figuring out which species to conserve with limited resources as a modern-day equivalent of the problem the biblical patriarch Noah faced when trying to determine what to take with him – and hence save – on his ark.
The annual United Nations Climate Change Conference, better known as COP, that starts Nov. 30 in the United Arab Emirates will bring together governments, businesses, international organizations and NGOs to shine a spotlight on the climate emergency the world faces and consider solutions to the crisis. The alarming rates at which we are losing species is not just a tragedy of epic proportions – the destruction of biodiversity also robs humanity of one of its strongest defenses against climate change.
An alternative approach concentrates on conserving what biologists call keystone species that play a critical role in holding the ecosystem together. An example is the gray wolf in Yellowstone National Park, whose presence regulates prey populations like elk and deer, which in turn have cascading effects on vegetation and the overall ecosystem structure and function.
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