Mass Extinction Quotes

• Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

  Carl Sagan

  Nature, Exception To The Rule, Survival

  Carl Sagan (2006). “The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God”, p.76, Penguin

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• Our planet is currently undergoing a mass extinction of species called the Anthropocene - the Age of Man.

  Louie Psihoyos

  Men, Age, Planets

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• We torture and kill two billion sentient living beings every week. 10,000 entire species are wiped out every year because of the actions of one, and we are now facing the sixth mass extinction in cosmological history. If any other organism did this, a biologist would consider them a virus.

  Philip Wollen

  Animal, Years, Two

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• Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

  Ronald Reagan

  Strength, Peace, Children

  Ronald Reagan (1983). “A Time for Choosing: The Speeches of Ronald Reagan, 1961-1982”, Gateway Books

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• The extinctions ongoing worldwide promise to be at least as great as the mass extinction that occurred at the end of the age of dinosaurs.

  E. O. Wilson

  Promise, Age, Ongoing

  "Planet Of The Year: What on EARTH Are We Doing?" by Thomas A. Sancton, content.time.com. January 2, 1989.

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• If we are to save humanity and the planet from the worst mass extinction of all time, worse even than that at the end of the Permian, we must stop at two degrees.

  Mark Lynas

  Two, Humanity, Climate

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• Of the four billion life forms which have existed on this planet, three billion, nine hundred and sixty million are now extinct. We don't know why. Some by wanton extinction, some through natural catastrophe, some destroyed by meteorites and asteroids. In the light of these mass extinctions it really does seem unreasonable to suppose that Homo sapiens should be exempt. Our species will have been one of the shortest-lived of all, a mere blink, you may say, in the eye of time.

  P. D. James

  Eye, Light, Four

  P. D. James (2010). “The Children of Men”, p.24, Vintage

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• Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.

  Ronald Reagan

  Veterans Day, Freedom, Our Veterans

  Labor Day Address at Liberty State Park, delivered 1 September 1980, Jersey City, New Jersey

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• If we don't cut carbon's money pipeline, we will pay for their gasoline with floods, droughts, fires, super storms, drowned cities, mass extinctions, wars, and collapsing civilizations.

  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

  War, Cutting, Fire

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• No matter what we call it, poison is still poison, death is still death, and industrial civilization is still causing the greatest mass extinction in the history of the planet.

  Derrick Jensen

  Civilization, Matter, Poison

  Derrick Jensen (2012). “The Derrick Jensen Reader: Writings on Environmental Revolution”, p.87, Seven Stories Press

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• Mass extinctions may not threaten distant futures, but they are decidedly unpleasant for species caught up in the throes of their power.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  May, Caught, Species

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• With respect to phenomena like mass extinction, somebody might say why worry about it because in a geological perspective mass extinctions aren't so bad, they wipe out some things and then 10 million years down the road we get new and interesting objects.But I tell you mass extinctions are really awful for folks caught in the midst of them.

  Richard Lewontin

  Years, Interesting, Perspective

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• What is your personal carrying capacity for grief, rage, despair? We are living in a period of mass extinction. The numbers stand at 200 species a day. That's 73,000 a year. This culture is oblivious to their passing, feels entitled to their every last niche, and there is no roll call on the nightly news.

  Lierre Keith

  Grief, Years, Numbers

  Derrick Jensen, Aric McBay, Lierre Keith (2011). “Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet”, p.20, Seven Stories Press

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• I would want us to start our quest to survive mass extinction by rethinking how we build cities. Cities should be commonplaces of production, rather than consumption - they should be producing food, and fuel.

  Annalee Newitz

  Cities, Fuel, Quests

  Source: therumpus.net

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• There is one living organism, called a tardigrade, that has survived the five great mass extinctions on Earth, and it can survive in vacuums in space and boiling hot water and freezing subzero temperatures.

  Alycia Debnam Carey

  Space, Water, Earth

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• The early Triassic was a period when the planet was recovering from the worst mass extinction it had ever known - that was the end Permian extinction, where climate change caused in part by mega-volcanic eruptions wiped out ninety-five percent of life on Earth. It took about ten or twenty million years for the planet's ecosystems to stabilize. During that time you saw a lot of weird, out-of-balance ecosystems where, for example, crocodile-like predators ripped the crap out of each other along the coasts.

  Annalee Newitz

  Years, Ecosystems, Balance

  Source: therumpus.net

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• So science alone cannot solve this problem [mass extinction of humans]. It's something that we can only tackle by bringing science together with culture, economics, and even politics.

  Annalee Newitz

  Together, Culture, Problem

  Source: therumpus.net

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• We can't say that when x happens we get a mass extinction. To the extent we understand mass extinction, one has been caused by glaciation event, one has been caused by a massive climate change, and one has been caused by an asteroid. These events turn out to have no precedent.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Climate, Events, Asteroids

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• It is a fact that the ecological devastation of the planet can be traced to the consumption of meat and dairy, which contributes to water, soil, and air pollution as well as global warming and the mass extinction of many species of plant and animal forms.

  Sharon Gannon

  Animal, Air, Water

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• To be fair, if we are having a mass extinction, we're in the early stages of it. I think it's knowing facts like that which has made me less fearful about the future. Mass extinction is a long, complicated process that we are just now beginning to understand - and likewise, we are just beginning to understand how we might prevent one.

  Annalee Newitz

  Thinking, Knowing, Long

  Source: therumpus.net

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• If we return abruptly to a Miocene-like climate, it's reasonable to think that we would experience a lot of extinctions, and maybe even a mass extinction in the long term. Would the life on Earth be radically different? Of course we can't say for sure, but I think a lot of it would look familiar. Like a lot of people, I worry a lot about whether marine mammals would survive, especially whales. Ocean acidification is one of the major killers in climate change events, and that makes the ocean a very inhospitable place.

  Annalee Newitz

  Ocean, Marine, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

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• We tell our children they're trapped like rats on a doomed, bankrupt, gangster-haunted planet with dwindling resources, with nothing to look forward to but rising sea levels and imminent mass extinctions, then raise a disapproving eyebrow when, in response, they dress in black, cut themselves with razors, starve themselves, gorge themselves, or kill one another.

  Grant Morrison

  Children, Cutting, Sea

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• Part of what I wanted to do in my book was point out that we have almost reached the point where we can prevent a mass extinction with the science and technology we have today. We can build carbon neutral cities.

  Annalee Newitz

  Book, Technology, Cities

  Source: therumpus.net

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