It has been debated for some years: is Earth in the 6th great extinction or is the rate of extinction just "natural average background rates"?
My novel Flight of the Goose deals with this through the eyes of both the Birdman (scientist) and the Shaman. Though the story was set in 1971, some people then were aware of the danger of extinction.
The journal Science Advances reports this week that yes, Earth is in deep shit and we and all the other species are going over the abyss as we speak.
(Or in Geek Speak) "Our analysis shows that current extinction rates vastly exceed natural average background rates, even when (i) the background rate is considered to be double previous estimates and when (ii) data on modern vertebrate extinctions are treated in the most conservative plausible way. We emphasize that our calculations very likely underestimate the severity of the extinction crisis because our aim was to place a realistic “lower bound” on humanity’s impact on biodiversity. Therefore, although biologists cannot say precisely how many species there are, or exactly how many have gone extinct in any time interval, we can confidently conclude that modern extinction rates are exceptionally high, that they are increasing, and that they suggest a mass extinction under way—the sixth of its kind in Earth’s 4.5 billion years of history.."
Lest you be bored to tears and mutter blah blah blah, let me translate that yet again plainly:
Earth is up a creek without a paddle.
And guess what, Homo sapiens a species like any lizard or elephant!
And hominid bodies rely on the ecosystem to survive.
