Elizabeth Korbert The Sixth Extinction Summary

According to Elizabeth Kolbert, man-made climate change will cause the sixth mass extinction on earth. Since humans keep harming the planet, multiple animals have the possibility of becoming extinct over the next fifty years. Global temperatures are continuing to rise and our planet is becoming warmer. Coquerel's sifaka (Propithecus coquereli) in the Madagascar is one of the several endangered animals that are predicted to soon become extinct. In fact, they have gone through a vast population reduction over the past 50 years. Coquerel's are endangered due to deforestation, political unrest and humans hunting them as sport and survival. Humans have been hunting these animals, even on protected lands, such as national parks. When coquerel's
Biologists call “the sixth mass extinction” plant and animal extinction and loss due to climate change. Humans are disrupting with various ecosystems, which is putting our planet in danger. Kolbert states that several people do not feel they are responsible for the climate changing or do not feel like they can prevent it from happening. “People continue to use the world’s atmosphere as an open sewer for the daily dumping of more than 90 million tons of gaseous waste. If trends continue, the global temperature will keep rising, triggering ‘world-altering events’ (Kolbert 1). ” In our planet’s past history, extinction has been caused by volcanic eruptions, asteroids, natural climate shifts, but the current mass extinction problem is directly on the impact humans made in the atmosphere. Since humans keep harming the planet, multiple animals have the possibility of becoming extinct over the next fifty years. In this century, the world is experiencing the fastest rate of species becoming extinct, since the loss of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Scientists estimate that the planet is losing 1,000 to 10,000 times the animals than it is naturally supposed to (Biological Diversity