Unless we can discover five more Earths, humans will soon become extinct.

by Tim Newcomb; Edited by News Gate Team

• Scientists warn humanity is running low on the resources that sustain it, leading to the destruction of our way of life within decades.
• This is considered the sixth mass extinction event in Earth’s history, but it isn’t the first caused by a natural disaster.
• Fossil record research says today’s rate of extinction is 100 times faster than typical history.

In case you haven’t heard, we’re currently in the midst of Earth’s sixth mass extinction event, and it’s only accelerating. On a recent episode of CBS’s 60 Minutes, Stanford scientists dropped by to ring the warning bells again.

“Oh, humanity is not sustainable,” Paul Ehrlich, the Stanford-based author of The Population Bomb, told CBS’s Scott Pelley. “To maintain our lifestyle—yours and mine, basically—for the entire planet, you’d need five more Earths. Not clear where they’re gonna come from.”

Ehrlich, who earned a bit of a reputation as an alarmist following the 1968 release of The Population Bomb, says our current crisis basically boils down to this: the population growth in humans is stripping the resources that support our lives, including the biodiversity that helps sustain it. “Humanity is very busily sitting on a limb that we’re sawing off,” he said.

Tony Barnosky, a Stanford scientist who studies fossils, joined 60 Minutes to discuss how the pace of extinction we are currently seeing is up to 100 times quicker than usual. Throughout reality, only after significant global catastrophic disasters have the mass extinction levels reached where they are presently in recorded history. According to Barnosky, at least 75 percent of the known species are vanishing off the planet.

The loss of species, habitat, and natural systems, including the food chain and soil fertility, are the first three effects of this mass extinction. Simply expressed, Barnosky believes that the style of life that humans currently lead on Earth will end.

He continued:

“Now we’re witnessing what a lot of people are calling the sixth mass extinction, where the same thing could happen on our watch.”

According to CBS, with an estimated 8.5 billion people on the planet, we currently use 175 percent of what the Earth can replenish. And nothing is getting better. Ehrlich declared that “the rate of extinction is exceptionally high right now and rising steadily.”

by Tim Newcomb; Edited by News Gate Team