Dear Editor: Wildlife can't protect itself

   Dear Editor:

    I am one of those people who fight every day to try and protect the wildlife because they cannot protect themselves
from humans.

   As David Wallace-Wells writes in his book "The threat from climate change is more total than that from the bomb. It is also more pervasive.

   In a 2018 paper 42 scientists from around the world warned that, in a business-as-usual scenario, no eco-system on earth was safe, with transformation 'ubiquitous and dramatic', exceeding in just one or two centuries the amount of change that unfolded in the most dramatic periods of transformation  in the Earth's history over tens of thousands of years.

   Half of the Great Barrier Reef has already died, methane is leaking from the Arctic permafrost that may never freeze again and the high-end estimates for what warming will mean for cereal crops suggest that just 4 degrees of warming could reduce yields by 50%.

   If this strikes you as tragic, as it should, consider we have all the tools that we need today, to stop it all: a carbon tax and the political apparatus to aggressively phase out dirty energy; a new approach to agricultural practices and a shift away from beef and dairy in the global diet; and public investment in green energy and carbon capture."

   And I repeat that we must protect the wildlife that cannot protect itself from the greatest predator on Earth, man!

   Mike Vandeman