Raven: We’re driving them to
extinction at an unprecedented rate.
The Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change estimated that 20% to 40% of the species of organisms on
Earth are likely to go extinct during the present century on the basis
of global warming alone, without even the other factors coming into it.
HOST:
Halo, eco-wise viewers, and welcome to Planet Earth: Our Loving Home.
Today’s program features world-renowned botanist Dr. Peter Raven, who is
a professor at Washington University, USA and the current president of
the Missouri Botanical Garden, USA.
Honored as a 『Hero for the
Planet』 by TIME magazine in 1999 , Dr. Raven has worked for decades to
conserve the world’s plant and animal species. He is highly respected
and is a member of 21 different national science academies across the
globe. Dr. Raven has won many prestigious awards, including the
International Prize for Biology from the Japanese government and the US
National Medal of Science, the USA’s highest scientific honor.
Recently,
he received the 2009 Award for International Scientific Cooperation
from the Chinese Academy of Sciences for his contributions to Chinese
botanical research.
He is also the author of the
internationally best-selling textbook 『Biology of Plants.』 Vibrant
biological diversity is a sign of ecological balance and brings
tremendously benefits to humankind.
Unfortunately, human
activities across the globe are rapidly destroying key areas of
biological richness including rainforests, wetlands, coral reefs and
grasslands.
Scientists warn that global biodiversity is in grave
peril and thus the survival of humanity is at stake. The Lung Ying-tai
Cultural Foundation’s (龍應台文化基金會) MediaTek lecture series featured a talk
by Dr. Raven at the National Central Library in Formosa (Taiwan)
entitled 『Are We Saving Them or Ourselves? Global Action on the Rescue
of Endangered Biodiversity.』
We now present excerpts from an
interview with Dr. Peter Raven, as well as from his talk in Formosa
(Taiwan) and begin with him addressing some of the reasons why
biodiversity is so important to our planet.
For more details on
Dr. Raven, please visit
WUBio.wustl.edu/Raven 『Biology of Plants』
and
other books by Dr. Raven are available at
www.Amazon.com