“A majority of the nation’s biologists are convinced that a “mass extinction” of plants and animals is underway that poses a major threat to humans in the next century, yet most Americans are only dimly aware of the problem, a poll says.
The rapid disappearance of species was ranked as one of the planet’s gravest environmental worries, surpassing pollution, global warming and the thinning of the ozone layer, according to the survey of 400 scientists commissioned by New York’s American Museum of Natural History.”
Joby Warrick, Staff Writer
Washington Post, April 21, 1998
The Sixth Great Mass Extinction from VisionQuest Pictures on Vimeo.
Our favorite internet resource for information about mass extinction is: www.massextinction.net
From What A Way To Go:
“Currently we are driving species to extinction probably a thousand times faster than they should be. We will lose somewhere between a quarter, maybe as many as a half, of all the species on earth within the next century.”
Stuart Pimm, Duke University, has written numerous books on the effects of humans on the rest of the community of life. You can read more and watch a video clip of Dr. Pimm from What A Way To Go.