AD 2017 Q4

So it’s a matter of balancing priorities?
We are more likely to find solutions sooner through
understanding biodiversity than through understanding
quarks. At the very least we ought to fund biodiversity
research and documentation on a scale that’s within an
order of magnitude of the funding of these other big
science projects, not five orders of magnitude lower.
You’re saying that we spend 100,000 times more on
physical science than we do on biodiversity?
Basically, yes. The closest thing that the National
Science Foundation (NSF) has done to address
biodiversity is something called the Planetary
Biodiversity Inventory (PBI), which began as a
partnership with the All Species Foundation. They gave
out grants averaging $3 million over a 10-year period
for a total of $30 million. Compare that to $9 billion
for the Large Hadron Collider, $144 billion for the
Apollo Project and $150 billion for the International
Space Station. Heck, we spent $196 billion on the
space shuttle.
So $196 billion down to millions is about five orders
of magnitude. I’m not saying we need $196 billion to
solve biodiversity, but how about $3 billion as opposed
to $3 million?
Are decision makers listening?
Big ideas like climate change and the human genome
project were around for decades before they captured
widespread attention and received financial support.
That’s where the “biodiversity matters” movement is
today; the scientists are all on the same page. As one
biodiversity expert put it, “If the physicists can get
billions of dollars to fund their ‘super-conducting trash
compactors,’ why can’t we?”
Our focus now is to spread the word as widely as
possible. Think of the role the film An Inconvenient Truth
played in catalyzing the climate-change movement. Once
the public starts to care, politicians will too, and scientists
can build a case for them to get behind. That’s how
priorities get set for government-funded agencies such as
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA), the NSF and others.
And what about you?
I think the biodiversity story is the most important
issue confronting humanity, and so I try to convey
this message at every opportunity that I get, whether
it’s to a group of scientists or my wife’s high school
students. It just makes sense to me, so I’m going to
keep preaching it. I’m not going to stop. AD
N
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