Earth is on the verge of a mass extinction, the sixth of its kind in the planet’s 4.5 -billion–year history, and it’s all humanity’s fault.

Thus a new study in the journal Science Advances (see below) which found that over the past century, 69 mammal species have gone extinct, along with some 400 other types of vertebrates, including birds, fish, and amphibians. Such a loss would normally be expected over a period of 100,000 years. Within two generations, scientists say, 75 percent of the species we know today could be killed off. Earth has seen five previous mass die-offs—the last one, about 66 million years ago, wiped out the dinosaurs. But while those past extinctions were triggered by natural disasters,  this extinction is being caused by pollution, deforestation, and climate change resulting from human activity.  “People think nothing bad will come from species loss, because scientists can’t predict exactly how many need to go extinct before the world collapses,” one co-author  says, “The problem is that our environment is like a brick wall. It will hold if you pull individual bricks, but eventually it takes just one to make it suddenly fall apart.” *

But talk of extinction of animals is just part of the threat.  World population is now estimated to reach, not 8 billion, but 11 billion, before declining, probably violently.  Continued omerta on the issue of population is a recipe for worldwide political uproar, mass population movements, even  world war.  What is needed, although it could be too late, is a massive family planning program along the lines of a huge anti-smoking campaign. But instead we have silence, silence from industry,  which wants an ever- growing population of consumers, and silence from organised religion, stubbornly clinging to pre-historic ideas of unlimited family size. While proclaiming the sanctity of life they are busy destroying it, unwittingly and owing to ignorance.

Our only hope?  The educated and enlightened young, under threat and fully aware of it. Maybe they will come up with answers.  The present bunch of “leaders” haven’t a clue.

*    (“Accelerated modern human–induced species losses: Entering the sixth mass extinction”.  Gerardo Ceballos1,*, Paul R. Ehrlich2, Anthony D. Barnosky3, Andrés García4, Robert M. Pringle, and Todd M. Palmer)