The Sixth Extinction

As of writing, there’s a huge hellfire in California, heat waves across North America and Europe, and at the same time people’s cars are getting swept away in floods and yet others are getting pounded with golfball sized hailstorms. The world’s changing, and we’re part of changing it; what’s often overlooked are other inhabitants of Earth, and this book focuses on their extinction and endangerment. The book dives into 13 different species that have gone extinct or are endangered, and gives in-depth accounts that weaves theory with stories from field practice. The history is interesting, and it largely paints the narrative that doesn’t directly shove the ethics down one’s throat (as lamentably many other far lefts concerned with anthropogenic extinction do). The book is very easy to read and suitable to anyone curious.

One major point implicit in the book, that I’m skeptical of, is that humans should definitely save endangered species. My objection is that our work will have minimal teleological impact, and whatever impact it will be towards the vain self-satisfaction of the biologists. It’s akin to trying to play God in nature’s game, when we are in fact, weak and mortal and merely a player in the grand game. Case in point, Darwin had noted that humans could have caused great extinction, yet his impartiality to humans is one of the most admirable and convincing tenets that drove home evolutionary theory; that humans aren’t special, that we’re just animals, that we affect nature and are affected. As we cause more species to march toward the evolutionary guillotine, what’s wiser may to admit the cruel reality that we’ve lost control of us, that species we love will die and while we can spend effort, it won’t matter when we look at the cold and unforgiving numbers. But, we’ll be safely assured that life goes on even after mass extinction as it’s done in the distant past; it may be without us, but in giant rats or mutant cockroaches. In that world, we’ve no right nor basis to say that it will be worse than our world.