RAINFORESTS BIODIVERSITY SCALE OF DESTRUCTION The # 1 Issue Facing Humanity by Mark Elsis At Our Current Rate Of Mass Species Extinctions Due To Rainforests Destruction Omega Point For Homo Sapiens Will Occur Between 2012 - 2016 Dear Citizen of Earth November 1, 1999 The most important piece of Rainforests Destruction information to understand is this: If no action is taken, between 2012 and 2016 the land area of virgin Rainforests will go below the critical built-in natural safeguard threshold providence of 10% virgin Rainforests area with its 50% species remaining. This issue of Rainforests destruction and mass species extinctions is the #1 issue facing humanity. We may have as little as 5 years to create the awareness to completely stop Rainforests destruction before this momentum brings us through our Omega Point. LOVEARTH was formed 11 years ago with the intent to bring awareness to the devastating effects which humanity is inflicting on our beautiful planet. The 6 billion people now living on Earth are already far beyond its carrying capacity. Our reckless expansion into wilderness areas is causing countless atrocities to all life sustaining ecosystems. The virgin Rainforests are home to 61.8% of all the biological diversity on Earth. In this, the richest environment for life, we are destroying a land area which is equivalent to the size of the city of Tokyo Japan ( 240 square miles ) every day. This equals 6417 acres per hour, 107 acres per minute or 1.78 acres per second. This destruction of virgin Rainforests land area causes somewhere between 93 and 1609 Rainforests species extinctions per day. The wide disparity of these species extinction numbers is because of 4 variables the best scientific consensus has yet to agree upon. We believe, based on the Fibonacci series of numbers which are found throughout nature, that there are approximately 558 Rainforests species extinctions per day. This equals one Rainforests species extinction every 2 minutes and 33 seconds. We are but a strand in the fabric of life, all intricately interdependent on one another. And yet here we are, in the mere geological blink of an eye, eroding the very foundation of our own existence with mass species extinctions. This 6th great mass extinction period on Earth that we are insanely causing by the suicidal annihilation of the Web of Life, will very soon bring about our own extinction. In 1992 some 1,700 of the world's leading scientists, including the majority of the most intellectually elite people on Earth, the living Nobel Laureates in the Sciences, signed the document World Scientists' Warning To Humanity. It states, "Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources… and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know." The Omega Point is the point in time, when all of the devastation we have inflicted over the years to our life support ecosystems finally becomes too much and they irreversibly fail, no longer able to sustain Homo Sapiens. What this translates into for our future generations is an ever increasingly nightmarish slippery slope to extinction. If we are going to survive, it is imperative that we change our ways completely and change them right now. As Albert Einstein said, "We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive." We believe that as early as 1991, because of the cumulative shortsighted destruction egregiously caused by Homo Sapiens to all life ecosystems, humanity entered a gray zone where the Omega Point may be crossed for our species at any time. We can tell you with all assurance that we will pass the Omega Point somewhere between the years 2012 - 2016 at our present rate of Rainforests destruction. Between the years 2012 - 2016 we will go below the 10% / 50% Safeguard Threshold Providence ( STP ). This will occur when 10% of Virgin Rainforest Area ( VRA ) with 50% of Rainforest Species ( RS ) are all that remain from what originally had been. This was before our population started growing exponentially 12,000 years ago with the advent of the new food energy technology, known as agriculture. The beautiful providence that nature safeguards is the diversity of life itself. If we fell, level or slash and burn 90% of the Virgin Rainforest Area, only 50% of Rainforests Species will go extinct. Somehow in the last 10% of VRA nature magically holds on to 50% of RS. Lucky for us we realized this in time, before we violate nature's inherent limits. *The 10% / 50% Safeguard Threshold Providence is based upon Island Biogeography discovered by Robert MacArthur and Edward O. Wilson. A good explanation of this can be found on pages 220-221 of "The Diversity of Life" by Edward O. Wilson. ( W.W. Norton & Company ) We use the beauty of this built-in natural threshold, as the barometer to tell us when the Omega Point for Homo Sapiens will occur. If we ever go below this 10% / 50% Safeguard Threshold Providence, we will become extinct. This is analogous to when humans lose more than 90% of their liver function, they will almost always die. If they lose less than 90% of their liver, they most likely will survive. As of November 1, 1999, all that remains of the Virgin Rainforest Area is 23.88% with 57.71% of Rainforest Species. The amount of VRA that is being destroyed by humanity this year alone is equal to the land area of all the following states put together: Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, New Jersey, New Hampshire, ermont, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Maryland and South Carolina. This is almost the size of the United Kingdom. This bleak situation of breaking the 10% / 50% Safeguard Threshold Providence between the critical years 2012 - 2016 gets even worse when you take into account the enormous momentum of our exterminating machine. It will take about 3 to 6 years for us to put on our brakes to stop it. This means that as early as 2006 if we have not created the awareness and changed our status quo lifestyles we will slide through the Safeguard Threshold Providence of 2012. There is yet another factor that hastens this outcome by approximately 1 more year, and that is, there is a difference between a Virgin Rainforest Area that has never been touched by man and one that was. If we were to walk from a VRA to a Rainforest leveled 1000 years ago and left alone for the intervening years, we would not recognize the difference between them. They look very much the same to the untrained eye. Now we have learned in the Rainforest leveled a 1000 years ago, only about 17% of the original inhabiting species are found today. This means 83% of the original biodiversity has still not returned. Nature takes her own time to heal and fully restore. It can take as short as one to two million years, providing there is a favorable geological environment for nature to rebalance and achieve full self organization restoration. Therefore when only 10% Virgin Rainforests Area remains, somewhere between 5% and 10% of these Rainforests will not be virgin. They will have been touched by man at sometime in the past, resulting in many fewer species. This means we will reach 50% Rainforest Species remaining, when there is about 11 % Virgin Rainforests left. This is where the 10% / 50% STP will lose another year. Then minus the 3 to 6 years to stop our momentum and we are looking at the years 2005 to 2012. This leaves us as little as only 5 years to become aware and take action before it's too late. Nothing is more important than the issue of these mass Rainforests extinctions. This is the number one issue now facing humanity. With the manmade ecological disaster of mass species extinctions we are losing the full richness of nature's beauty. Each time we lose a species we lose their invaluable genetic code. Their form-field vanishes forever. The fabric of life is losing too many strands and is quickly beginning to unravel to a point of no return. Homo Sapiens cannot survive without this Web of Life that supports us all. What about the all of the still unknown detrimental effects that Rainforests destruction and mass species extinctions will have on the oxygen / carbon cycle, the hydrological cycle and the electromagnetic cycle? And what about the 50% or more of all the drug compounds to help cure diseases that are found in the Rainforest? They are forever gone with every extinction of life. What do we do to stop future plagues, when in fact, it is we who are creating them by the very destruction of the Rainforests in the first place? Mass species extinctions are creating havoc with the checks and balances found throughout nature. Plague causing life forms will run amuck and spread uninhibited up the food chain. A quick and certain Catch-22 to extinction for Homo Sapiens, if we let it be. We must change our ways immediately. We must become sustainable so that we may leave our future generations a beautiful Earth upon which they may flourish. Rainforests Biodiversity Scale Of Destruction ( see scale below ) shows in an easy to understand way the exact scale of annihilation we humans are causing to the Rainforests. Over a 37 year span it shows year by year what percentage of Rainforests Land Area and what percentage of Rainforests Species remain. It also shows what percentage of species are going extinct per year and how many are going extinct per day. The scale is based on the 25 million square kilometers of Rainforests that once covered our beautiful Earth and the current rate of deforestation, 222,000 square kilometers per year. These numbers are computations from many sources including satellite imagery, World Resources Institute, Friends of the Earth, The United Nations and most recently the Woods Hole Research Center. This scale also takes into account that if the current trends are to continue, we would peak at 250,000 square kilometers per year in the period from 2005 to 2010 and then would begin to fall because not enough Rainforests would remain to sustain such high declines. As of today, November 1, 1999 there are 5.97 million square kilometers left or 23.88% Virgin Rainforests Area, with 57.71% Rainforests Species remaining. You will find Rainforests scale a useful tool to help yourself, your family and friends to understand the ramifications of not taking action immediately. Once again let us remind you, there is nothing more important than the issue of these mass extinctions. It is the number one issue now facing humanity. Please share this study and scale. Part II Scale of Destruction Scale of Destruction Table (print separately) Notes: * Scientists now agree between 20 and 100 million species inhabited the Earth before Homo Sapiens population started growing exponentially and destructively 12,000 years ago with advent of agriculture. * We use the Fibonacci Series and Golden Rectangle number 1.618 which is also found throughout nature and apply this to how many species there originally where per square kilometer. Then times it by the 25,000,000 square kilometers -once the original size of the Rainforests and you get 40,450,000 Rainforest species. * The Rainforests were home to 61.8% of the original species, Biodiversity, Web of Life found on Earth. This makes the total for all of the species originally on Earth 65,453,075. The above graph is a combination of two studies by Friends of the Earth and World Resources Institute in collaboration with the United Nations. Part III Rainforests Destruction Solutions Creating A Unity Of 1% "After the final no There comes a yes And on that yes The future of the world depends." Wallace Stevens We believe the only way stop this endgame is by creating a Unity of 1% of people who truly realize 100% that we are about to go extinct. When this 1% understand and believe, they become like a tuning fork that resonates at a frequency that transmits and brings this awareness to the other 99%. This critical mass spontaneous combustion of awareness goes by quite a few different names. You may know it as Universal Consciousness, the 100th Monkey Theory or the brilliant new science called Morphic Resonance. What ever you want to call it, the phenomenon works. We need to reach the masses to get through to the 1% with this knowledge and information and we need to reach them very quickly. The intent of the LOVEARTH Network is to lovingly create this Unity of 1% through the development of hundreds of environmental, humanitarian and educational websites. These websites are in the areas most important to help humanity become aware of the magnitude of the destruction that we are doing to life sustaining ecosystems. They will awaken humanity to all of the wonderfully brilliant ideas and solutions that are still possible to save our species dance on the stage of life. These websites are in the following areas: environment, education, renewable energies, overpopulation, science, politics, technology, computers, world history, alternative and holistic medicines, religion, humor, children, social and humanitarian issues, health and nutrition, meditation, fitness, the arts, love, peace, holistic, organic, music and many more categories. We know that to disseminate this urgent environmental message the most efficient way is the Internet. This is the perfect medium and we believe the only medium left to effectively create the awareness and reach the greatest number of people, in the shortest amount of time. The number of people on the Internet has on average doubled every year for the last 11 years and is expected to keep growing exponentially for the next decade or more. It is the last avenue for free speech that the corporations don't yet fully control. We are aware that the television, computer and phone will merge into a single communication center within just 2 to 4 years. We also realize, and this is so very important, that every website will be just like a television channel because of new technologies such as full motion video, ever increasing bandwidth and constant improvements in compression of software. Computers with cable modems are now capable of getting moving images off the Internet and within 4 years a website will be almost the same as a TV channel today. The LOVEARTH Network of hundreds of websites plans to take full advantage of these technologies. We will be offering creative and well documented quality ideas and information with a wide ranging scope. This information will first go up as text and pictures and then on real audio on all websites. We then want to have, as soon as possible, the best worldwide ideas, documentaries, exposes and lectures on video, available upon demand on the LOVEARTH Network. One of our immediate goals is to make a film of every living Nobel Laureate who signed the 1992 document World Scientist' Warning To Humanity. Each would give a two minute answer to the questions: When do you believe Omega Point will occur? Why? And what would be your solutions to avoid this? From these two minute clips an in depth film will be put together featuring each Nobel Laureate's statements to this, the number one issue facing humanity. There is nothing more important for you to realize in your life. We are about to go extinct as a species. This is why the LOVEARTH Network needs your support today. Only by working together can we put up this essential network of hundreds of environmental, humanitarian and educational websites, creating the awareness to form the Unity of 1%. Contribute what you think is just, to create this loving sustainable Earth, for our children, grandchildren and all of the future generations that are to follow. Our promise to you and future generations is that we will find the best and the brightest sustainable ideas and solutions among our teachers, scientists, environmentalists, researchers, investigative journalists, writers, webmasters, film and video makers, religious and spiritual leaders, photographers, musicians, artists, poets, and children from around our Earth. We will publish their ideas in text, pictures, audio and then video. Nothing will stop us, for nothing is more important to do. The LOVEARTH Network will lovingly create the awareness for sustainability in the 1% so the truth may resonate out to the other 99%. Only then will the next generations have the same chance we have had to flourish on Earth. Only then will these next generations have the chance to pass on a sustainable Earth to their future generations, so they in turn may flourish forever in harmony. The Top 10 Things To Do To Spread The Message And Create A Unity Of 1% 1) Please carefully read and fully understand Rainforests Biodiversity Scale Of Destruction. It states that the number one issue now facing humanity is the manmade ecological disaster of mass species extinctions that results from Rainforests Destruction. We will reach the point in 2012 - 2016 where only 10% Virgin Rainforests remain, leaving only 50% of Rainforests species. We must not go past this natural threshold. www.Rainforests.net Rainforests is formatted for easy printing. 8 sides for the Text, 1 side each for the Scale of Destruction table, plus comparative tables of 1 side each for Cities and Countries, and 2 sides for Rainforests Variables and Math 2) Read the one page summary of Rainforests Biodiversity Scale Of Destruction www.ExtinctionForDummies.com 3) Please use one of the following types of paper: Kenaf, Hemp or 100% Post Consumer Recycled when printing. For Kenaf, the most environmentally correct paper go to www.VisionPaper.com For Hemp Paper go to www.LivingTreePaper.com or www.EcoAmerica.com For 100% Post Consumer paper use Domtar Sandpiper at www.AtlanticRecycled.com 4) Give, send or E-mail copies to Family member(s) and / or Friend(s) Local / National Newspaper(s) / Magazine(s) Radio / TV talk show host(s) Local / Environmental / Humanitarian / Educational / Religious / Scientific Group(s) Governor / Congressperson / Both Senators / The Vice President / President / as well as every Candidate that is running in 2000. 5) Post on Environmental / Humanitarian / Educational / Religious / Scientific / Kids / message boards and news groups. 6) Call into local and national Radio / TV talk show(s). Simply highlight the 2 or 3 significant points you found in reading Rainforests. Clearly mention the website where the study is on www.Rainforests.net 7) Write your own brief letter or print out a copy of Rainforests and send to one or more of the 365 Top Earth Conscious Celebrities and get all of their snail mail addresses @ www.Celebrity-Websites.com 8) Visit the LOVEARTH Network now with over 300 Websites www.LOVEARTH.net Including www.Extinction-Solutions.net Where you can read about the top 36 Extinction Solutions and post your own. 9) We seek E-Mail lists of all Earth conscious organizations and influential people. 10) E-Mail us your questions, suggestions or solutions to help spread the message and Create A Unity of 1% as quickly as possible. We will do our best to answer you within a day or two. Tell a friend to read Rainforests. Mailto:SpreadTheMessage@Rainforests.net THE LAST SONG Singing and singing For a mate But there are no mates To be found The last of his kind But he keeps on singing I wonder if he knows How beautiful he sings The last song © ME May 1, 1996 "We must always remember that we are but a small point on a long line of time God has allowed us to extend. Small as it may be, it is ours... ours to fill with purpose and meaning, ours to make honorable and distinguished... and ours to defend in the court of history." Jerry Brown Twice Governor of California A three time U.S. Presidential Candidate and presently Mayor of Oakland, California LOVEARTH® SARASOTA: 5683 Midnight Pass Road Suite 106 Sarasota FL 34242 NEW YORK CITY: 84-10 53rd Avenue Elmhurst NY 11373 Phone: 1 877 LOVEARTH = 1 877 568.3278 Or Outside The United States: 1 941 349.9426 Fax: 1 877 WEB OF LIFE = 1 877 932.6354 Or Outside The United States: 1 941 349.0295 E-mail: SpreadTheMessage@Rainforests.net LOVEARTH BE YOUR BEST RESONATE LOVE Mark Elsis and The Wondrous Local And Worldwide Staff LOVE ALL LIFE ON EARTH FOR OUR FUTURE GENERATIONS GO IN PEACE