Saving Gaia

We're in the middle of the Holocene Extinction and few people even talk or care about it. It's the most important event of the geologic age, the last mass extinction being 65 million years ago. An expert on extinction, Dr. David Jablonski of the University of Chicago, predicts by mid-century all the familiar animals we grew up with will be gone forever. The "narrowly endemic" species, with a limited environmental niche like the koala bear, magnificent parrots and hummingbirds are the first to go. But lions, tigers, zebras, giraffes, polar bears, rhinos, elephants - the painful list runs on and on, practically any animal you can think of - will certainly become extinct as well! At the turn of the twenty-second century, 80 years from now, on seeing and living with the devastation, the citizens of the new century are bound to ask tearfully, "What were you thinking? How could you let it happen? The animals are all gone. The Earth is ravaged and devastated. Didn't you have any brains?