The Open Mind: Nature and Extinction with Gerardo Ceballos

Conservationist Gerardo Ceballos discusses the dramatic decay of biodiversity on The Open Mind with Alexander Heffner.

Let me tell you what is good news: if it is caused by humans, it means it can be solved, that we humans can do something to change it… We know what is causing it. We know what our activities are doing to them and therefore we know what can be some of the solutions, and the solutions are important to understand, because it’s a way we have to change our activities, and, uh, to save the species.

Every time we take an animal and a plant, every time one of these populations become extinct or a species become extinct, it’s like we are taking a, a break on this world and people say, well, if you take one break nothing really happens, and we expect that the world won’t collapse, but it start to work, work less, uh, properly, more, uh, noise, dust, whatever. So, we’re taking too many of those breaks from the world, and what is we’re saying here is there are so many that eventually, sooner, very soon, uh, we, we will take some of them and the whole thing will collapse.

So, we are learning, we have all the science and technology to understand how can we do a much better job. The only thing we have to do is to understand that this is a problem and that the solutions require just changes in our attitudes. That’s all.

Watch and read the full interview here.