Extinction of any species is a terrible thing especially if it happens above the background rate which this clearly was. To be the unnatural cause of this places a heavy load on all of us. But extinction of Mammals is a little stretch. Earth, as is pointed out, has seen 5 major extinctions in its history, some caused by asteroid impacts. But interestingly we’ve never lost a whole class of animals (Mammals are a class). Even the Dinosaurs survived as birds today. This said,it’s still a terrible thing.
But here’s the rub. The climate change diagnosis has been around for a while. Al Gore and the IPCC won the Nobel Peace Prize more than a decade ago. Stories like this diagnose the problem but we need more than that at this point. As we write about climate change it is essential that we focus on prescribing a better outcome based on science. Fixing the problem is possible as I write in the piece below. We need to think bigger, about solutions and we need to act.
