What does it matter if the Atlantic puffins get extinct?
.…or say the Asiatic lions.
We don’t have any to-the-point answer for such näive questions.
Of course, species extinction doesn't seem to change people's lifestyle right now.
But it does matter.
To explain that, Stanford ecologist Paul Ehrlich proposed a hypothesis.
The Rivet Popper Hypothesis.
He said (paraphrased),
An airplane is assembled using thousands of rivets that hold all the parts together.
If every passenger in it takes a rivet home with them, it may not seem like a significant issue at first.
But if this continues, the plane will gradually become weaker and less safe over time.
Also the location of the rivets that are removed is also critical.
Removing rivets from the wings is a more serious threat to flight safety than removing one from seats or windows.
Now imagine the airplane as an "ecosystem" and the rivets as "species."
Every passenger removing the rivets cause extinction of species.
Initially extinction of a few species doesn't affect much.
But over a period of time our ecosystem stops proper functioning.
And loss of key species—rivets of wings—will obviously have much serious consequences.
So next time you see one making stupid remarks on climate and wildlife activists,
Try sharing this hypothesis as a potential counterargument!
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