IT'S funny reading about our own extinction.
You flick through the paper: a political row; prospects for the economy; a lander on a comet; charity walk; medical breakthrough; extinction of human race; macaroni pie furore; foreign news; cinema; football.
Whoa, reel back there, cowboy. Extinction of human race? Allow me to clarify: this is both true and untrue. It's true: the papers were full of stories about a mass extinction on Earth, the controversial planet. It was mostly buried away under "Other news".
It's untrue in that it doesn't directly concern us. But ultimately it might, in the arguably serious sense of wiping us out.
Here's the juice: we, or at least you, the human race, have triggered the start of Earth's sixth mass extinction. The last one was 65 million years ago, when it was the dinosaurs that got it in the neck-flap.
"Well," you say, "they deserved it. Roaring and running aboot like that." That is a good point, well made. But the universe doesn't judge. It just extinguishes.
So are we next? Not quite. The sixth mass extinction, initially at least, is of all the wee, daft creatures. Since 1900, 69 mammal species, 80 bird, 24 reptile, 146 amphibian and 158 fish have gone the way of all flesh.
Vertebrates have been disappearing 114 times faster than would normally be expected. Vertebrates bring me back to us. Loss of wee, daft species, it says here, disrupts ecosystems, causing serious knock-on effects for the human race, a big, daft species.
Well, it's arguable, I suppose. Scientists say that "without any significant doubt", we are entering the sixth mass extinction event, though not before the new football season starts.
But what to do? I tried flapping my arms and running around the room, but nothing changed. The fact is, many decent ratepayers are now sceptical about over-optimistic and over-pessimistic stories.
They're weary of health cures that will be available in - all together now - "ten years' time", because they never transpire. Similarly, climate change, mass extinction and so on might all be true, but they're so damned slow. We want everything now. Cures, extinction: get on with it.
I jest, of course. I've read online correspondence about climate change in particular, and it attracts a lot of capital letters and exclamation marks.
In the meantime, I think it only right that mass extinction, possibly including our own, should remain bracketed under "Other news". Maybe when it gets nearer to kick-off, we can move it more towards the front.
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