Andy Revkin on The Sixth Extinction

The problem with information and the Internet is, if anything, an oversupply. On any given issue are far too many links, papers, voices, banners; much more than anyone sane could possibly desire.

The problem with information and the radio is the opposite: one is always missing something, hoping for something, overhearing something that might possibly could be checked later (but probably won’t).

But today on Which Way, L.A.?, I heard veteran host Warren Olney, as sharp a questioner as can be found anywhere, talking to veteran New York Times reporter Andy Revkin. Due to static, I could only hear two of Revkin’s responses, but they are, by sheer coincidence, the exact two most worth hearing on the subject of The Sixth Extinction.

For the sixth time on the history of the planet, and the first time since the crash of the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago, half the species or more on Earth, according to one group of scientists at the University of Arizona, face extinction within the century.

Olney asked Revkin: "Does that figure include our species?"

"Uh, no," said Revkin, in his usual modest, reasonable way, and then for a long time all I could hear was static and a mention of 9 billion people with in 50 years.

Then he said:

"It’s time for everybody to wake up…" (static)

Who could argue with that?