UK Test Finds Biodiversity Loss Ignored in Climate Change Shadow

By Heather Callaghan

There is a funny cult featured in the show Parks and Recreation that call themselves the Reasonablists. Because anyone criticizing them would seem unreasonable. That’s how I feel about the renaming of Global Warming to Climate Change – and using the term “Climate Change denialist” to smear someone who questions that narrative.

Of course the climate is always changing so it would seem unreasonable to deny that, but I have not heard denial from people who oppose chemical aerial spraying and carbon taxes. I hear better solutions offered, rather than punishing people financially and damaging the entire ecological system with jet plumes – over a theory.

Researchers from the UK noticed that in the recent flood of frenzied Climate Change hype, something crucial was lost.

Our very grounds. What we are dealing with, right now. Something that if lost, we stop. Immediately.

New research from the University of Kent suggests that recent high levels of media coverage for climate change may have deflected attention and funding from biodiversity loss.

In a paper published by the journal Bioscience, Kent conservationists also recommend that, to prevent biodiversity from becoming a declining priority, conservationists need to leverage the importance of climate change to obtain more funds and draw attention to other research areas such as biodiversity conservation.

For the study, the team conducted a content analysis of newspaper coverage in four US publications: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. And four UK publications: The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, and the Financial Times. Academic peer-reviewed coverage and project funding by the World Bank and National Science Foundation were also examined.

Among their findings the team discovered that:

• Press attention devoted to biodiversity has remained stable since 1990, but the proportion of climate change reports rose before 2007 and has stayed substantially higher than biodiversity since 2005.
• In scientific journals, papers on biodiversity loss and conservation have increased at a steady pace, but publication of papers on climate change accelerated markedly around 2006 and overtook them.
• Funding by the World Bank shows no evident change over the past 20 years, with climate change projects funded at a much greater rate than biodiversity projects. The US National Science Foundation’s investments directed toward climate change research have increased substantially since 1987, but biodiversity expenditures have increased much less and have held steady since 2004.

In the end, the researchers wanted to lean into climate change by underscoring what biodiversity could do for it. And they wanted biodiversity and conservation to be a part of some UN programs and continue receiving funding. I guess to make it more marketable and popular? So the results do nothing to quiet the hype, just tap the shoulder as a reminder that a more urgent issue needs attention.

You can read the findings at Bioscience and University of Kent.

Pro-GMO mouthpieces have this tired line that instead of “scaring people” over genetically modified food and health effects, we should be focusing on bigger issues like climate change or “insert-big-issue-here.” Yet biodiversity from polyculture is just one of the many ways to help agriculture produce bigger yields and preserve diversity from disease. Monocultures are susceptible to disease and pestilence. Introducing more species of bees into a local region is another way.

Without biodiversity and the bees and the trees, we cease to exist. Or maybe that’s the point. After all, Climate Change proposes that we are a plague on the earth and we really need to go. (So that we can continue to enjoy the earth?) Depopulation sycophants always baffle me.

So now I’m going to go one layer deeper. There’s always going to be a heated tug-of-war when it comes to forests. Want to really protect them, save industry and the world? Let’s switch to hemp!

Heather Callaghan is a natural health blogger and food freedom activist. You can see her work at NaturalBlaze.com and ActivistPost.com. Like at Facebook.