ABC News: Human survival cannot be left to politicians. We’re losing our life support systems
David Shearman, honorary secretary of Doctors for the Environment Australia and emeritus professor of medicine at Adelaide University

“…[Jonas Salk] warned ‘if all insects on Earth disappeared, within 50 years all life on Earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the Earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish.’ Eighty years later, scientists understand these words, but governments do not. … Scientists and environmentalists recognize that many species are disappearing from the Earth and 26,000 are threatened. … These extinctions are the tip of the iceberg which will affect food production and therefore the economy, and the pillars of human health and survival, water, air, biological resources, and soil. … In a world of increasingly complex issues, survival cannot be left to political opinion — it has to be guided by our best scientific and technological minds … Together hundreds of thousands of species provide humanity with free ecological service to filter, purify, and conserve our water, provide temperature, climate, and rainfall control, stabilization of soils, carbon storage, and air purification. Not only that, they continue to provide humanity with the biological secrets of many medical cures and treatments” (9/13).