Paul Bunje

Earth on the Brink: A Sixth Extinction, or a Breakthrough in Biodiversity?

Melissa Stevens, Paul Bunje, Thomas Meredith, Jill Robinson, Laura Turner Seydel

The event addresses the sixth mass extinction driven by human activity, highlighting critical threats from factory farming and biodiversity loss while contrasting them with innovative solutions like rewilding and debt-for-nature swaps. Panelists emphasized the urgent need for a $300 to $400 billion annual investment in conservation and showcased how technological surveillance and impact investing are shifting financial incentives toward verified sustainability. By integrating community-led economic models with global policy shifts, the speakers argued that converging exponential growth in renewable energy and AI offers a viable, albeit immediate, path to reversing the current ecological crisis.