Biodiversity and the Glass House

The other chapter I presented on in class of The Ecology of Eden was Chapter 4, entitled "The New Pangea." Something I was unable to go into detail on in class, largely due to the lack of time, was just how fragile an area with no biodiversity can be. Eisenberg uses the example of how a blight nearly wiped out all corn in the United States, as it was all a single strain of hybrid corn that made up 80% of the US crop that year. Luckily, it had not yet taken over entirely, but it exemplifies the principle of what happened without biodiversity. For each action we take as biodiversity decreases, it is as if we are throwing stones at a glass house. The glass could shatter, or the rock could just bounce off, but even those that bounce create small, hairline fractures that hurt the foundation. So what happens when the house falls?

There is no answer to that question. While we have examples of what happens when biodiversity becomes so restricted to be only one species, such as kudzu in the southern US, it is unprecedented on a global scale. The ecology, and in turn, the culture, everywhere on earth would collapse in on itself. In a way, this would be the death of humanity as we know it, as we are shaped by our different environments and their interactions with the earth. However, we have not yet hit the point of no return, I would like to think. By shifting where we put resources, there is still a chance to stop our slow decline, and potentially even bring back the diverse world we once knew and grew from.