They say extinction is the only real certainty. Species are constantly blinking in and out of existence. This may or may not be of concern depending on your scale of interest. In 2007 we're doing all sorts of things to pillage and plunder life on this incarnation of planet earth, but of course 2007 is a rather arbitrary number.. for even if space and time do exist, who's counting and to what end? In any event, I do remain interested in the here and now because that's where I live. You do too. So it's worth taking note when Biological Letters reports the first probable human-caused extinction of a cetacean species: The Yangtze River dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer), or baiji.
We are forced to conclude that the baiji is now likely to be extinct, probably due to unsustainable by-catch in local fisheries. This represents the first global extinction of a large vertebrate for over 50 years, only the fourth disappearance of an entire mammal family since AD 1500, and the first cetacean species to be driven to extinction by human activity.
Now I've never seen the Yangtze River dolphin nor visited the Yangtze River for that matter. Is it personally relevant then? Arguably, no. So perhaps I'm overly sentimental. But this news is reflective of a growing global trend: the loss of ocean species through fishing down food webs and incidental bycatch. Many of the big critters are dwindling as we've altered the slowly evolved colorful abundance of animals living offshore. In other words, we're overharvesting our way toward boring oceans full of algae, seaweed - and very few bluefin tuna.
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Don't forget the jellyfish! Of course that's sea turtle paradise... if there are any of those left. :(
Pete Seeger is one of my favorite artists and inspired me by his political activism and music. I am pleased young people today continue to think of him in these troubled times.
You're right: you are being purely sentimental. Because human beings live about 70 years, our perspective on extinction, climate, or anything else measured on the human time scale is of exactly zero relevance.
For that matter, we are the only thing in the universe that gives a species - or even a galaxy - any value whatsoever. Clearly the earth does not "value" its inhabitants, nor the Universe value any of "its" contents.
For THAT matter, extinctions caused by humans are no worse by any value judgement (except the purely sentimental human one) than extinctions caused by comet strike, flood basalt, or pyroclastic flow - or any other "natural" cause. When a human being decries an environmental "disaster" including for example climate change, or extinction caused by a human, they are displaying both their sentimentality and their profound ignorance of nature, and degrading and defaming their species - the results of decades of conditioning by an insidious anti-human movement we think of as "environmentalism" that is in fact a pathological view of humanity's place on earth.
This pathology is likely the result of both deep confusion and resentment about technology and where it is taking us (to more and better-shared prosperity - statistically proven), as well as feelings of self-loathing and powerlessness. Impotent demagogues of like mind tend to band together and shove their viewpoint down the throats of everyone with the time to listen (which in the end is a form of life-stealing encouraged and proliferated by journalists and politicians alike), so, voila, the environmental movement.
You don't have to agree; and I won't be back to this site, but when you have something you know is worth hearing, you want to share it. Cheers.
At first I thought Michael was being facetious, but the more I read the less I was sure of this. "When you have something you know is worth hearing, you want to share it." So your gem of timeless wisdom is because human beings place "value" on things, but the universe doesn't, we should take the universe's lead and stop being such "profoundly ignorant" sentimentalists, and let the good times roll, because "technology" will save us all and give us rainbows and chocolate rivers and good cheer regardless of our resource-reckless civilization? Let me add a few more question marks after that: ?!!????! Please come back and end the joke, Michael, you're making me nervous.