Make Conscious Decisions about Extinction

Elizabeth Kolbert makes a good point here when she encourages us to make conscious decisions about extinction. Every day in every way, species are dieing out and the whole of humanity is unconscious about them.

Many are dieing because we are cutting down the rainforests to make land available to raise cattle. The funny thing is, this rainforest soil is not suitable for growing the crops needed to feed the animals. Furthermore, animal agriculture accounts for more than 51% of all global warming. Contributing factors are the loss of rainforests. animal out gassing, animal waste, soil degradation, and transportation from farms to slaughter houses to consumers.

Over fishing in parts of the world are destroying species in the ocean as well. Many varieties of fish are caught in fishing nets and left to die.

Facing Extinction | February 11, 2015 There are a lot of decisions we’re going to be making, consciously or unconsciously, that are going to impact other species, and a lot of choices for us to make that will maximize or minimize that impact. I’m trying to bring those choices into consciousness, because right now we are simply making them unconsciously; we are making them by not making them. – Elizabeth Kolbert, “No Easy Answers”

Tricycle Magazine interviewed Elizabeth Kolbert about her new book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. In the interview, she talked about possibly being in a new geological epoch which she called the Anthropocene. We already learned that Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry said that we were heading into one of two epochs – the Ecozoic epoch or the Technozoic epoch, depending on our ability to make conscious decisions about extinction.

Elizabeth Kolbert did not give any suggestions on how to make the conscious decisions about extinction. Her purpose was to educate us to make conscious decisions about extinction. Do you think we will be able to do so?

Books by Elizabeth Kolbert

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST Over the last half-billion years, there have been Five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitori… [Read More…]