Makenna Sowards—Outside Reading 3, The Sixth Extinction

 A very interesting book that has a lot of information on the current state of our world's environment is the Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert. In this novel, Kolbert explores the five mass extinctions that have occurred since the origin of species. Her main argument, is that the sixth mass extinction is happening now, and is a direct result of human activity causing greenhouse gas emissions to rise drastically, global temperatures to warm, natural disasters to become more devastating, habitat loss as a result of agricultural and urban development, etc. Background extinction is the natural rate at which species go extinct, as part of the usual rhythm of life on the world. Within the last 114 years, the number of extinctions is equal to what previously would have taken 2,000-14,000 years. The loss of this biodiversity has adverse effects on all other parts of the environment and our ecosystem, it begins dismantling the carefully constructed food chain and then the stability of our functioning ecological system. In class, we talk a lot about paying attention to the nature around you, and loving it for what it is, not what it can give you. Unless a larger number of people take this stance of appreciation of nature for the amazing phenomenon it is, I worry that there will continue to be a large number of extinctions before we accept the change we are enacting on the world is not the kind of mark we want to leave in the geological timeline of the Earth.