If in your lifetime you watch a species go extinct, or plummet almost to the point of extinction, that is a sign that something really serious is going on. Elizabeth Kolbert More Quotes by Elizabeth Kolbert More Quotes From Elizabeth Kolbert Letting things slide is always the easiest thing to do, in parenting no less than in banking, public education, and environmental protection. A lack of discipline is apparent these days in just about every aspect of American society. Why? This should be is a much larger question, one to ponder as we take out the garbage and tie our kids' shoes. Elizabeth Kolbert shoes ties kids The Earth is big. There are huge natural forces that have worked over geological time. But it turns out, when you look carefully at the geological time, you can't find anything like us. Elizabeth Kolbert earth natural looks I did not mean to suggest that autism could be traced to Neanderthal genes. The point is that some genes that have been implicated in autism changed pretty significantly between the time Neanderthal line and human line split. Elizabeth Kolbert neanderthals autism mean I don't think there are too many places left that humans haven't pretty thoroughly explored. Elizabeth Kolbert humans havens thinking What are the Chinese doing, what are we doing, what are - so we need, both the developed world and the developing world, really need to be moving, once again, getting all your arrows in the same direction if you want to have any impact. Elizabeth Kolbert arrows impact moving Well in the scientific there is virtually no debate over certain things. For example, that we are changing the world. Humans are changing the world very radically, very dramatically. Climate change, which I assume is one of the points you're alluding to, is at the heart of this. Elizabeth Kolbert climate example heart Parents want their kids’ approval, a reversal of the past ideal of children striving for their parents’ approval. Elizabeth Kolbert kids children past You're an animal that needs to move across the landscape, you can't anymore, and that's another way we're just changing the surface of the Earth in very dramatic ways. Elizabeth Kolbert earth animal moving Neanderthals were pretty smart, and if we actively killed them off, then probably we did so in the same way that humans kill each other. Elizabeth Kolbert neanderthals smart way We're talking really huge global-scale change, and I did not feel that I had the prescription for that kind of action, so I'm going to leave it to the reader. Elizabeth Kolbert kind action talking Most of the world's major waterways have been diverted or dammed or otherwise manipulated - in the United States, only two per cent of rivers run unimpeded - and people now use half the world's readily accessible freshwater runoff. Elizabeth Kolbert rivers running two Several decades ago, a detachment of the American right cut itself loose from reason, and it has been drifting along happily ever since. If the birthers are more evidently kooky than the global-warming "skeptics" or the death-panellers or the supply-siders or the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, they are, in their fundamental disregard for the facts, actually mainstream. Elizabeth Kolbert cutting fundamentals facts We have all this Paleolithic art that suggests that our ancestors really venerated animals and that they depended on wild animals to survive - as opposed to domesticated animals that we depend on. Would it radically change things if we had more rhinos in our midst? I kind of suspect it would. Elizabeth Kolbert kind animal art Increasingly developing countries are asking for aid to help deal with the consequences of climate change, which we don't want to give. Elizabeth Kolbert climate giving country 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 mass-extinction climate events Even very smart people can try to shoehorn new information that just doesn't fit into an existing paradigm.For a long time the story that we've been telling ourselves is that humans are just another animal. We evolved from other animals and our place in the universe isn't particularly special. What I'm trying to convey in my book [The Sixth Extinction] is that we are unusual. Elizabeth Kolbert smart animal book Mitochondrial DNA, which is a sort of abridged version of DNA, is passed directly from mother to child, so it's something that can be looked at to trace matrilineal descent. Elizabeth Kolbert dna mother children It seems that the Neanderthal DNA that modern Europeans and Asians (and also Native Americans and basically all non-African people) are carrying around is random. This means there are different bits and pieces in different populations, but it doesn't seem to amount to much that's significant. Elizabeth Kolbert dna native-american mean People sometimes say we need to be really almost on a wartime footing if you want to change. Our whole economy is based on burning fossil fuels, which is taking CO2 out of the ground and putting it up into the air. Elizabeth Kolbert air people needs One of the reasons that people, many people, many environmentalists are critical of President [Barack] Obama's policies towards global warming is on the one hand he says the right things and he says he's committed to trying to reduce our current emissions. Elizabeth Kolbert trying hands people
