Please Pass the Soylent Green

29% of all fish stocks have collapsed.

32% of all amphibians globally are threatened with extinction, and 43% of all amphibian species are in decline.

14% of all bird species are predicted to be extinct by 2100 (as opposed to 1.3% for the 500 years previous), and total number of birds globally estimated to have dropped by 20-25%.

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Current trends remind me ever so much of the plot line from The Mote in God's Eye, how the moties developed into multiple species, and the only animals, even the livestock, are descended from the same fallen from grace specie. Watch you don't get caught in the obese group for too many generations!

Yeah, that was a great book. I especially liked how the moties in space were so stricken with poverty, they refused to use bullets on the grounds it wasted precious metals.

Yes, the daily news of our lovely and intricate natural world's unravelling, strand by strand, link by link, breaks my heart.

In Aldo Leopold's essay--Round River, which dates back to 1948--he wrote, "One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds." And he goes on, with incredible prescience...

So, I spent the afternoon working for the birds by phoning for Get Out The Vote--for MN candidates who are not Bush clones, who understand cause & effect, who are aware that environmental quality actually is relevant to life, and who support the teaching of science--not religious dogma--in public schools.

The theory, of course, is that Action is the Antidote to Despair... (sometimes that actually works, too.)

Or, if you're a morlock, please pass the eloi.